Race

Race
Originally uploaded by Noladishu

Took a break from studying to go see "Race", When I first got there, the filmmaker introduced herself with a British accent and then the movie started with lots of Doug Brinkley interviews and I thought, 'oh crap, time to head for the exit'. I stuck around and it thankfully got much better than that.

The later parts of the film featured much less of Brinkley and much more of Jim Carvin, the political consultant who has never lost a mayor's race. He's a fascinating character who can at a instantly dissect both candidates strategies and their chances of victory. Among his main features of advice: run for politics like you're playing golf (stick to the plan, don't get flustered and don't pay attention to what the other guy does).

There was also lots of Nagin. My favorite part was when Nagin interrupts an interview, says, 'hey man, let me tell you about Sun Tzu', reaches into the top drawer of his desk and gingerly pulls out this copy of "The Art of War" that's covered in dog ears and book marks and underlines. The book is falling apart and it looks like he reads the book every single day.

The movie is only 60 minutes long, so there's plenty that's left out, but nothing that really throws the story off too much. If I could give one piece of advice: cut Brinkley's scenes and add much more Carvin.

Congratulations, Mitch!

We'll see how the down-ballot votes go, but so far, congratulations Mr. Landrieu.

You won outright majorities every way you break it down: black, white, male, female, Uptown, Downtown. You're the only thing other than the Saints that the entire city has gotten behind.

Good job, Mitch and good job, New Orleans.

UPDATE- NY Times writeup. With a nice little jab at Jefferson Parish in there.

UPDATE 2- The Mitch-mentum came through in a total repudiation of everything Nagin.

My favorite quote:

So the Mayor's race is decided. New Orleans is a predominantly black city with a white mayor-elect, a Vietnamese-American U.S. Representative, and a state governor of Indian descent. Gumbo coalitions, baby.

Voting begins for Mayor 2010

Collection of political pamphlets.

Today is the first day of early voting for the mayor's race (along with Assessor, City Council, etc.). One big piece of news: The Times-Picayune Editorial Board has endorsed Mitch Landrieu for Mayor. Wow, I'll bet that must have been painful for some of them to do. Also, if you'll look through the pamphlets at the top, one of them notes that Leslie Jacobs has endorsed Mitch. He's got the Mitch-mentum.

One other observation I have about the election:

Assessor sign on abandoned building

There are a bunch of political signs on abandoned buildings. I don't like this. Especially the ginormous 5' x 10' signs. I ESPECIALLY don't like this for assessors. It says to me, "I'll keep the property taxes so low, these properties will NEVER be put back into commerce." I haven't seen a single Janis Lemle or Mitch Landrieu sign on an abandoned building.

Here's my Flickr set of some of the NOLA Election signs around town. There are some areas of town much more represented than others, because if I'm driving, I don't want to be taking photos at the same time. For example, I've got lots of Uptown (sliver-by-the-river) Jay Batt signs, but no other signs in his district. The Mid-City part of District A is covered in anti-Jay Batt signs. Half of the Jay Batt signs Uptown are actually not in his district.

Mayoral Campaign: Hot/Not

A few notes on the race:

HOT:

* James Perry - Continues racking up great debate performances. If the rest of the campaign gets its act together and he raises money, look out.

* Mitch Landrieu - Everyone else implodes while he treads water. Victory by default? He just better not rest on his laurels.

NOT:

* John Georges - Shorter Georges: "I am not a crook." He's illustrated that he's secretive and suspicious, or he's an idiot and can't even control his own campaign. Loki tracks the connections. Note to old farts: these internet thingies are easily tracked. The harder you try to cover your tracks, the worse you'll look. Georges' response is FAR, FAR worse than anything in the video.:


* Ed Murray - I liked his first commercial, but his new one says it doesn't matter whose fault the levee failures are and his debate performances are as awful as can be.

* Leslie Jacobs - Out of the race. I'll be interested to know whose signs replace hers:


* Troy Henry - Troy Henry's campaign went out and put up tons and tons of signs. Unfortunately, they didn't quite know the rules and lots of them were quickly torn down. One egregious example came from the old Shell station at Lee Circle:

The signs were torn down and the irate owner replaced them with Georges signs that were twice as large. Note to the Enron alumni: learn the rules.

Bobby and Mitch

Lost in all the news that Mitch Landrieu announced his intention to run was one little point on who will benefit the most: Bobby Jindal.

It should be clear to anyone that Bobby Jindal has national ambitions. If he's going to run, he needs a robustly rebuilt New Orleans. He can't allow it to haunt him on the campaign trail ("Why should you be president if the biggest city in your state is still drained of people - look at the Lower 9th Ward and Chalmette and..."). Bobby Jindal also seem to be one of those rare Republicans from up north that get how important New Orleans is to the state economy.

No matter how the race turns out, Jindal won't have to worry about Mitch running against him in 2011 (he'll either have his hands full or he'll be politically dead from the loss). He'll also have an easy path for appointing his chosen successor as governor into the lt. governor's chair*.

Jindal should do whatever he can to support Mitch's bid. It would show off his "bipartisan" credentials, which the national press fawn over and he can also be "tough on corruption" {"dragonslaying"} by helping clear out Nagin, who is intergalactically despised.

A Jindal-Mitch alliance would be yet another example of strange bedfellows in Louisiana politics, but it makes a lot of sense for Jindal. If conservatives could think actual strategy, instead of absurd "triple bank shots", they wouldn't shoot themselves in the foot with this infantile shit.

_________________
* Sidenote: who might that be? Timmy Teeple? Anyone got any ideas?

Snoozing on Politics Until...

I wanted to post a few of campaign commercials for the mayor's race and comment and then this happened. Mitch is now the front runner and, frankly, I think he has my vote right off the bat. It's a ballsy move. He'll either be a phoenix rising from the ashes or this will absolutely destroy his political career. So much for the overly cautious "reluctant warrior." Be sure to read DuBos' writeup.

Anyway, I'm going to post the campaign commercials anyway. I'm posting them in the order I've come across the candidates.

Ed Murray


James Perry


Leslie Jacobs


John Georges


Troy Henry
Video Here. Embedding disabled.

Some notes:
* Murray was the first out of the gate. He needed to be. Liked the first ad, but haven't heard from him since.
* James Perry had a slam-dunk during a debate, but had some issues with his campaign video. I think it balanced out in his favor by a lot.
* Leslie Jacobs got creamed in the same debate Perry aced (not just the Youth Studies Center question). She comes in with the best credentials (on paper), but even before Mitch entered, she was flailing.
* Georges: Yawn.
* Troy Henry: Big ad buy during the Redskins game. As Dambala points out, he's Nagin's man.
* Couhig: I'm still hoping Nagin will endorse Couhig as a belated (and totally unwished-for) favor for his influential endorsement. Nagin's endorsement is the kiss of death (just ask Bobby Jindal). Between Nagin and Mitch, I think it's actually become a fun race, if for no other reason than to watch Couhig flail in agony and misery. If you think I'm being mean to him, remember that I actually donated money to him. Boy, was that a mistake.

UPDATE- 1 more:

Mitch

Local Politics Roundup - Cinco De Mayo Hangover Edition

Bobby "My middle name is ethics" Jindal kills effort to shine light on Governor's records. Trying to reverse a loophole in his "gold standard" ethics laws that make the Governor's records MORE secret than before.

Mark St. Pierre dropped from suit. Did he just turn snitch?

Mayor Ray Nagin and family went to Jamaica courtesy of Greg Meffert and NetMethods. David Hammer brings the hammer down. Big cover story about Nagin/Meffert and the trips and credit cards. Lots of details about strip clubs.

Nagin's 2008 calender. Analysis by Clancy DuBose, et. al. Works few hours, rarely meets with important individuals (his COO, and his soon to depart Recovery Chief). Nagin tries to hide 2008 meetings with Meffert and Bernardo? I get hiding the Muppet meetings, but why Bernardo? Was Bernardo delivering the mayor some Colombian nose powder or something?

At the end of this article about the red light cameras, TP drops a juicy little tidbit:
ATS, linked to the infamous Johnson Controls (Morial/Pampy Barre energy contract), runs part of the red light cameras.

John Colvin arrested for defrauding Katrina victims in prefabricated housing scheme. None of the articles mention his party affiliation, but from the NY Times archive, I found an article from the 90's saying he was part of a G.O.P. plan to take the legislature in Alabama. Could this guy have some interesting stories to tell? Maybe.

Famous political party switchers: Jim Jeffords, Michael Bloomberg, RAY NAGIN, Loretta Sanchez, Jim Webb, Charles Barkley, Teddy Roosevelt, Rick Perry, and Norm Coleman.

Mitch Landrieu mulls run for mayor. Hmmm... Wonder what the magic 8 ball says about that one.

Depressing thought of the day

Mitch Landrieu's campaign slogan. "We have one chance to fix this city and our margin for error is zero." One chance. And we blew it.

Oh yeah, one of his campaign promises was to replace Warren Riley and have a national search for his replacement.

He was our Tommy Carcetti, but we reelected Royce instead (ask Ashley).