Turnout Steady in 1st Post-Katrina Voting

04/22/2006

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - A steady stream of voters, some from storm-scarred neighborhoods and others by the busload from evacuee havens across the nation, cast their first ballots since Hurricane Katrina in a crucial election Saturday to decide who oversees how their city is rebuilt.

Incumbent Mayor Ray Nagin predicted he would lead the field, but he faced 21 challengers, including the state’s lieutenant governor. If none gets more than 50 percent, a runoff between the top two vote-getters will be held May 20.

Because of the Aug. 29 storm, what ordinarily would be a routine municipal race has become an unprecedented experiment in democracy: Of the city’s 297,000 registered voters, more than 20,000 cast ballots early by mail, fax or at satellite voting stations around the state.

Turnout figures would not be available for hours, but Secretary of State Al Ater said steady streams of voters were moving in and out of polling places he visited Saturday morning. He said there was no way to measure whether turnout was light or heavy because the election was so unusual.


Several hundred people traveled from Atlanta to New Orleans on buses provided by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s former church, Ebenezer Baptist Church.

“We’re still citizens of New Orleans,” said J. Todd Smith, 24, who made the trip from Atlanta. “We still want to know what’s going on there. I still have my driver’s license. My license plate still says Louisiana.”

The line was already 80 voters deep when the polls opened Saturday at the University of New Orleans. The enormity of the task facing the city’s leadership weighed heavily on Rosalie Ramm, 52, who was in line shortly after 6 a.m.

“It feels like a lot of responsibility,” she said. “I don’t take it lightly.”

Nagin, who cast his ballot during an early-voting period more than a week ago, arrived at the polling place in his neighborhood Saturday to accompany his wife, Seletha, as she voted.


He noted that another hurricane season is rapidly approaching and said there’s no time for a transition of administrations. “We don’t have a year to wait,” Nagin said.

The winner of the mayoral and city council races will face a host of politically sticky and racially charged decisions about where and what to rebuild in a city where whole neighborhoods remain uninhabitable.

Four-fifths of the city was flooded, and large parts of New Orleans are still woeful tracts of ruin. Rebuilding plans - and the federal money to pay for them - are being debated. Nearly all the public schools remain closed, and the tourism business, long the economy’s mainstay, has drawn few conventions.

The election “is hugely important. I’m not one to fall into hyperbole, but for New Orleans and Louisiana and potentially even the country, as a whole, it’s critically important,” said political analyst Elliott Stonecipher.

The election, which includes seven City Council seats and other local offices, was originally scheduled to take place Feb. 4 but was postponed because of the damage and dislocation caused by Katrina.


Ater said he’s confident that election officials, who have fielded thousands of calls from voters on where to vote, have done what they can to educate voters.

But not all evacuees who returned to New Orleans Saturday were able to cast ballots. Dana Young, an 18-year-old college freshman, transferred to Spelman College in Atlanta from Dillard University after Hurricane Katrina struck last fall.

Poll workers told her they had no record of her registration. Young said she had a voter registration card but lost it along with her birth certificate during the hurricane.

“I’m really upset,” she said as tears welled up in her eyes. “I came all the way down here and now I can’t do anything about it. They said they couldn’t find me in the system, so I can’t vote.”

The turnout is being closely watched by civil rights groups, which have questioned whether the election in a city that once was two-thirds black will be fair with so many black voters scattered around the country. Of the early ballots, about two-thirds were cast by black voters, but analysts caution that the numbers may not be reflective of overall turnout.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson said civil rights activists would challenge the election outcome in court regardless of the winner. He said the election violates the 1965 Voting Rights Act because all the complications of displaced voters were not addressed.

“The Voting Rights Act itself is in jeopardy for lack of enforcement,” said Jackson in New Orleans.

Less than half the city’s pre-Katrina population of 455,000 have returned. As a result, candidates have had to travel to cities like Atlanta and Houston, where many evacuees live, to get their message out. Many of those remain scattered outside the city are black.

Pre-election polls have offered little guidance because they account only for residents with home phones in New Orleans - a minority of potential voters. But most observers believe Nagin, who is black, will advance to the runoff against Louisiana Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu or executive Ron Forman. Both challengers are white. The city has not had a white mayor in nearly three decades, when Landrieu’s father, Moon Landrieu was mayor.

Nagin has sought to paint himself as the leader who stayed behind in a city overwhelmed by catastrophe.

Landrieu and Forman, a nonprofit executive who turned the zoo around, have been hesitant to openly criticize Nagin’s leadership. Both, however, argue the city needs someone new for the unprecedented rebuilding.

“The next mayor has got to be able to unite the city and get the job done,” Landrieu said Saturday.

Four other candidates, considered among the second tier, appeared during a nationally televised debate Monday: corporate lawyer Virginia Boulet, businessman Rob Couhig, the Rev. Tom Watson and former City Councilwoman Peggy Wilson. Twenty-three names are on the ballot for mayor, but one candidate withdrew.