Incumbents Prevail in New Orleans Races

04/23/2006

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Contrary to speculation that incumbents could be thrown out wholesale after Hurricane Katrina, voters on Saturday held steady for many of the leaders they had before the disaster.

In seven City Council races, incumbents won outright or made it into runoff elections, according to unofficial results.

That trend also prevailed in the mayor’s race. Mayor Ray Nagin outpaced his 21 challengers but will face second-place finisher Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu in a runoff because he did not receive more than 50 percent of the vote.

“I ran on my record of 16 years,” said Jacquelyn Brechtel Clarkson, a City Council member running for one of two at-large city council seats. She moved into a runoff.

Katrina displaced many voters, most of them black, and one of the biggest questions was whether there would be a change in the racial balance of the City Council, which has four black and three white members.

But the council president, Oliver Thomas, won outright, as did two other black council members. The three other incumbents who sought re-election, one black and two white, made it into runoffs.

“We’re going to have to lean on each other, hug each other,” Thomas said about what will be needed to facilitate the city’s recovery.

A number of other positions up for grabs also resulted in little change. Voters retained the incumbent civil and criminal sheriffs as well as the civil clerk of court.

Voters appeared to have shot down an effort to eliminate the city’s archaic system of tax assessors that critics say leads to uneven, unfair and politically influenced property assessments.

Each of the assessor districts had a candidate who ran on a pledge to eventually consolidate the seven offices into one. Each adopted the same nickname: “I.Q.” for “I Quit.” One of those candidates won outright and two others made it into a runoff, according to unofficial results; four lost.