Louisville The ACORN National Board was meeting this weekend in Louisville, Kentucky. To all of our surprise this turned out to be the weekend when they the city celebrated “Thunder over Louisville.” Not sure exactly how to describe this outpouring other than a loud welcoming of spring in Kentucky accompanied by airplanes and then a loud and large fireworks display attended by 800,000 people down by the Ohio River.
Somehow it seemed more natural to hear the booms and explosions outside of the hotel windows at the same time I was reading the blackberry and web reports from the Election Day counts on Saturday night from New Orleans. Boom-boom, 20% of the vote in and the top candidates were all tied — even the zookeeper, Foreman — when the largely white early precincts came in. Boom-boom-boom as the east bank joined the numbers and the zookeeper slipped and the mayor rose to the lead. It went on like this until I couldn’t imagine my absentee vote moving the election and could tell the trend line was as we were predicting for the last month — Nagin winning and Landrieu in the runoff. This will become the face-off for the future for the May 20th election.
As we predicted the diaspora was disenfranchised when all was said and done, and as we could tell on the ground both in the city and around the country working with Katrina survivors, people were now “stateless” with a city in their heart but in the majority caught without the connections and convictions to vote and to fight. Around 100,000 votes were cast. Perhaps one-third of these votes were early voters and absentee votes. Not inconsequential, but also not overwhelming since they could have turned any tide.
Some things now seem true, though we could argue about it.
Nagin can not win. He’s toast. On the dividing line of race, looking at the other candidates he can only expect to pick up about 2500 votes if he gets what might be out there for him, while Landrieu will inherit the zookeeper and minor league (Couhig) votes just because he is the only white guy still standing, and suddenly it seems to have become “white boy day,” as the movie line said years ago.
The Times-Picayune is also the big loser, though they will try to recoup in the finish. They backed the white business footprint plan on Foreman and lost big. Their assessors’ fake rebellion also lost overwhelmingly. They will have trouble in the runoffs picking up the IQ protest candidates.
Either way the neighborhoods will win, because Nagin will promise big now, and Landrieu knows he can not govern as the “great white hope,” and hopefully doesn’t want to. Certainly, he can’t if he still hopes to help his sister, Mary, have one chance in hell of re-election next time which depends on a big, black margin coming from New Orleans.
The state may also find some peace finally with a Mayor who as Lt. Governor at least wants to be on the same team as the Governor.
The people have spoken, even though their thunder is not what the Canizaro’s and the uptowners and the business elites wanted.
Hopefully they could hear it in New Orleans, just as I could hear it in Louisville.
April 23, 2006
