RemodelingGuy
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Registered: 03/02/01
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Loc: Houston, Texas
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New Orleans - Hurricane Katrina in August left much of New Orleans under water and made Mayor Ray Nagin the face of the jazz metropolis around the world.
Now, Nagin is fighting for his job.
A mayoral vote will be held Saturday, three months later than originally scheduled. The elections were postponed because of hurricane damage, but the vote still might come too soon for Nagin to repair his image, which has been tainted by mismanagement at the local level in the aftermath of the disaster.
Katrina killed hundreds of people in Louisiana. The storm's death toll across the five worst-hit states is more than 1,300, and hundreds of thousands of people remain displaced.
Before Katrina, the population of New Orleans was more than two- thirds African American. More than half the city's total population - has not yet returned to New Orleans, and blacks have been disproportionately less able to return.
Nagin, who is black, faces several opponents including two powerful white candidates: Louisiana Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landrieu and Ron Forman, leader of an environmental institute.
The pitting of white challengers against a black incumbent has focused national interest on New Orleans, which still faces vast reconstruction.
New Orleans has not had a white mayor since 1978. For many black residents, a victory for a white candidate would confirm their worst fears: that New Orleans, a city steeped in African-American culture, tradition and music, is on the way to becoming a majority white city.
Racially charged accusations have been made in the campaign over who has the best plan for reconstruction. Even the date selected to hold the election has been disputed by community groups and civil- rights activists, who have challenged the legitimacy of the vote, with city council seats and other offices also on the ballot.
Their efforts were blocked on March 27, when a federal judge in New Orleans said that vote must go ahead, even if the election was 'a work in progress.' While saying the groups' concerns were legitimate, Judge Ivan Lemelle declined to allow out-of-state voting centres or ease absentee voting restrictions.
Some New Orleans refugees will be able to vote from their temporary homes at polling places to be set up for early voting in 10 parishes in Louisiana. That right was previously granted by the Louisiana legislature.
Absentee-voting by mail is a complicated option: voters must apply for a ballot in writing, fill out the ballot form properly and mail it in on time.
A number of civil-rights activists gathered recently in Washington to announce plans for a demonstration in New Orleans to protest the election and to accuse the US Department of Justice of failing to enforce the federal Voting Rights Act.
The rally was endorsed by the Reverend Jesse Jackson, president of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, the Reverend Al Sharpton, who sought the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, and the presidents of the NAACP and the National Urban League, the nation's largest black civil-rights organizations.
The racial divide in New Orleans was obvious in television images seen around the world after Katrina blew ashore on August 29. The people who were driven out by the hurricane and who lost their homes were overwhelmingly black. They lived in the poor, lower-lying areas of the city that were most flooded when the levees broke.
Of the 480,000 residents of New Orleans, 354,000 lived in areas that were devastated by the storm and flood. Seventy-five per cent of the displaced were black, and about 29 per cent lived under the poverty level. Only one-third of the population has reserved.
New Orleans has long been one of the country's most important majority black cities, but with nearly 1 million families from the region displaced, an influx of white property buyers is expected. The flooding spared predominately white neighbourhoods.
The city's hard-hit Ninth Ward remains in turmoil, with searches still turning up dead bodies amidst mold-ridden destruction. Until just last week, it was unknown if or how it would be rebuilt because federal officials delayed in setting standards for flood insurance and approving more money for additional reinforcements of the levee system.
In a long-awaited move, federal officials mandated that homes in the most flood-threatened areas need to be built on one-metre stilts, and the White House made a commitment to obtain an additional 2.5 billion dollars for the levees.
It is clear that many black residents would like to return, according to their representatives, including Stephen Bradberry of ACORN, a community organization of middle- and low-income families. He fears that a large proportion of black Katrina refugees will not be able to rebuild on their old homesteads because they lack financing. In some cases, the probability of future flooding makes it impossible for them to get insurance, without which lenders will not issue mortgages.
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