Hopefuls Speak to Katrina Exiles

ATLANTA — At times, the New Orleans mayoral forum held here Saturday felt less like a political event than a family reunion, bringing Hurricane Katrina’s exiles face to face with the colorful menagerie of established politicians, wannabes, grousers and do-gooders who are promising to put their broken city back together again.

“I miss y’all so much,” said Marie Galatas, who said she was called by the Holy Spirit to run.

“Y’all are New Orleanians -- you don’t belong here,” said another longshot candidate, Johnny Adriani, in that distinctive, twang-free brogue that immediately identifies a south Louisiana resident to his fellows away from home.

If there was some comfort to be taken from such sentiments, there were also expressions of deep anxiety from the crowd of about 100 displaced New Orleans residents who attended the event. The forum, sponsored by an evacuees support group, attracted seven candidates, including incumbent Mayor C. Ray Nagin and Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, one of his top challengers.

Before the forum began, voters wrote down questions and put them in a “Gumbo Pot” for candidates to choose from. It proved to be bitter tasting. Who, they asked, would rebuild the public hospital system? How could the city improve the troubled police force? And how could anyone guarantee the city would be safe when hurricane season starts June 1?

Similarly grave questions are being asked in far-flung states that continue to house Katrina evacuees, making this mayor’s race one of the most unusual in American history. With about a third of New Orleans’ nearly half a million residents back in town, the major candidates -- and a few minor ones -- are hitting such cities as Atlanta, Houston and Memphis, Tenn., to make their pitches.

The candidates’ swing through Atlanta may have been more important as an expression of solidarity than as a strategic culling of votes. Greg Rigamer, a New Orleans political consultant, has analyzed the diaspora and determined that 5,050 registered New Orleans voters have indicated on change-of-address forms that they live in Georgia. About 1,100 of them appear to be living in and around Atlanta.

Nearly 44,000 registered voters are known to be living out of state. But Rigamer said the race would probably be won locally, because the bulk of the city’s voters -- about 240,000 of them -- are back in New Orleans or one of seven surrounding parishes.

The Atlanta contingent Saturday had a chance to scrutinize the styles of Nagin and Landrieu, who are considered two of the three front-runners among a field of 24 candidates. (The third, Ron Forman, a civic leader and official with the Audubon Institute, did not attend.)

Nagin, a former cable TV executive, won election four years ago with a promise to bring a no-nonsense business style to City Hall. At the forum, he focused on straight talk about the state of the city and the lessons he learned from the hurricane.

For one, he said he would never again use the Louisiana Superdome to house residents who remained in the city after a hurricane warning. Instead, he said, he would use buses and trains to evacuate everyone.

Nagin also warned that it would be a bad idea to change administrations at such a crucial juncture for the city.

“Do we have the luxury of allowing somebody coming into office with some cute ideas and nice thoughts and to immediately be thrust into the hurricane season?” he asked.

Landrieu took almost no shots at the mayor’s handling of the disaster, instead contending more generally that he would offer superior leadership.

Landrieu, who is white, is the son of Edwin “Moon” Landrieu, a former New Orleans mayor legendary among black residents for overseeing city desegregation in the 1970s. Some say Lt. Gov. Landrieu might be able to capitalize on his father’s legacy in the campaign against Nagin, who is black.

“New Orleans is the soul of America,” Landrieu said Saturday to the mostly black audience. “How do we maintain that soul ... and then figure out how to have the brain of an Atlanta or a Houston?”

Voter Dana Harper said she was unimpressed by Landrieu and the other contenders.

“I can honestly tell you I don’t like any of them,” said the 37-year-old, who has been living in Atlanta since her housing project was flooded.

It was a common enough sentiment, but Harper’s circumstances betrayed how strange this race will be: She said she might not move back to New Orleans for 10 more years.