Whites Take Majority on New Orleans Council
Whites Take a Majority on New Orleans’s Council
By ADAM NOSSITER
Published: November 20, 2007
NEW ORLEANS, Nov. 19 - In one of the clearest signs yet of Hurricane Katrina’s lasting demographic impact, the City Council is about to have a white majority for the first time in over two decades, pointing up again the storm’s displacement of thousands of residents, mostly black.
In local elections on Saturday, a veteran white politician, Jacquelyn B. Clarkson, defeated an African-American candidate, Cynthia Willard-Lewis, by 53 percent to 47 percent, in a contest for an at-large Council seat decided largely along racial lines. In addition, substantially more whites than blacks appear to have voted. Ms. Clarkson will become the fourth white member on the seven-member Council.
The total number of votes cast in the election - 52,614 - was sharply down from 113,000 in the election for mayor in May 2006. The low number called into question recent optimistic estimates that the city’s population had attained as much as two-thirds of its prestorm level, which was about 450,000.
In the 2006 election, many of those displaced by the hurricane voted absentee or drove into New Orleans to cast ballots. That vote from elsewhere appears to have been largely absent on Saturday, over two years after the storm.
"I think many people have moved on," said Gregory C. Rigamer, a local demographic analyst whose work has been widely cited here. "When you look at this, you have to think the lower voter turnout would indicate that some people who previously cast votes from afar have lost interest."
To read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/20/us/nationalspecial/20orleans.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&ref=us&adxnnlx=1195588829-yoK9zsoz8fvDRDCXCmS3pQ
Response: So much for Nagin's chocalate city.....good for the people of New Orleans and props to the state of Louisiana for copying what Mexico has been doing for over twenty years. It, like Mexico found places to dump it's poor.
By ADAM NOSSITER
Published: November 20, 2007
NEW ORLEANS, Nov. 19 - In one of the clearest signs yet of Hurricane Katrina’s lasting demographic impact, the City Council is about to have a white majority for the first time in over two decades, pointing up again the storm’s displacement of thousands of residents, mostly black.
In local elections on Saturday, a veteran white politician, Jacquelyn B. Clarkson, defeated an African-American candidate, Cynthia Willard-Lewis, by 53 percent to 47 percent, in a contest for an at-large Council seat decided largely along racial lines. In addition, substantially more whites than blacks appear to have voted. Ms. Clarkson will become the fourth white member on the seven-member Council.
The total number of votes cast in the election - 52,614 - was sharply down from 113,000 in the election for mayor in May 2006. The low number called into question recent optimistic estimates that the city’s population had attained as much as two-thirds of its prestorm level, which was about 450,000.
In the 2006 election, many of those displaced by the hurricane voted absentee or drove into New Orleans to cast ballots. That vote from elsewhere appears to have been largely absent on Saturday, over two years after the storm.
"I think many people have moved on," said Gregory C. Rigamer, a local demographic analyst whose work has been widely cited here. "When you look at this, you have to think the lower voter turnout would indicate that some people who previously cast votes from afar have lost interest."
To read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/20/us/nationalspecial/20orleans.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&ref=us&adxnnlx=1195588829-yoK9zsoz8fvDRDCXCmS3pQ
Response: So much for Nagin's chocalate city.....good for the people of New Orleans and props to the state of Louisiana for copying what Mexico has been doing for over twenty years. It, like Mexico found places to dump it's poor.
posted by J.C. "Fanz23" Lewis, Jr | 4:02 PM
<< Home