New Orleans chooses mayor for huge recovery task

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - New Orleanians voted on Saturday for a mayor to lead the battered city’s huge recovery through the next hurricane season and beyond after one of America’s most closely watched civic-election campaigns.

Incumbent Ray Nagin, New Orleans’ face to the world since Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city last year, hopes residents and evacuees alike stick with his vision for rebuilding over that of his rival, Louisiana Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu.

With about half the precincts reporting hours after the polls closed, the election was still too close to call with Nagin and Landrieu running neck and neck.

As the world watched, Louisiana Secretary of State Al Ater said his staff would not rush the counting of ballots cast in town on Saturday or by thousands of absentees in recent weeks.

Much rides on the outcome with the hurricane season less than two weeks away, the state of the levees uncertain, many neighbourhoods still uninhabitable and more than half the pre-storm population of 470,000 scattered across the country.

Hundreds of residents displaced in Texas, Georgia and elsewhere arrived in buses or drove back to the city to vote.

Evacuees are disappointed that the candidates have offered few specifics about when they can safely return to rebuild after nine months, Thomas Wells, who helped organise 250 voters from Houston for the Industrial Areas Foundation’s Katrina Survivors Network, said at a boisterous rally at city hall.

“There is so much uncertainty, and they could have been better on the job of giving people more understanding to let people know they were fighting for them,” said Wells, 55.

Landrieu, son of New Orleans’ last white mayor, admitted many of his policies are similar to those of the outspoken Nagin, an African American. But he has touted his ability to bring together diverse interests, a skill needed to hasten the plodding recovery from the August 29 storm that killed more than 1,500 people in Louisiana alone.

Voters complained about the scant differences in the platforms of Nagin and Landrieu, both Democrats who emerged as first- and second-place finishers in the April primary out of a field of 22 candidates.

Nagin is a former cable executive who drew attention for his forceful pleas on behalf of the city in Katrina’s immediate aftermath, but was also criticized for a halting management of the emergency. He won 38 percent of the April vote, and garnered the most support from the black community.

He said he expects that blacks and conservatives who like his businesslike approach will support him, although some analysts have predicted Landrieu will get the white conservative vote.

Analysts have said the city’s changed racial makeup since Katrina could give the edge to Landrieu. The storm displaced as much as half the historic city’s black community.

“He and I are both crossover candidates — he can attract black voters and I can attract white voters,” Nagin said after casting his ballot. “It’s probably the best thing for the city because if it had been a couple of other candidates, it could have been much more divisive.”

NEW AND OLD PROBLEMS

Rivers Galloway, a 46-year-old building contractor, said after voting that with the new hurricane season starting June 1, it is the wrong time for big changes at city hall.

“Philosophically, they aren’t that far apart, but Ray Nagin, let him finish the job he started,” Galloway said.

New Orleans is still struggling with storm-related problems including a housing shortage, mounds of debris and junked cars along boulevards, and its violent-crime rate has begun to rise.

Unlike the weeks before the April 22 primary, candidates did not campaign in other cities with large populations of displaced voters, like Houston and Atlanta.

Still, absentee and early voting was brisk, with more than 24,000 people casting ballots at satellite polls throughout Louisiana and by mail, according to state figures.

(c) Reuters 2006. All rights reserved.

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