Last night’s mayoral forum focusing on housing and transportation at Our Lady of Holy Cross College in Algiers, provided a glimmer of the political fireworks that have largely been missing from the forums thus far. With apparent front-runner Mitch Landrieu absent, several of the candidates leveled both subtle and outright attacks at his candidacy and even his desire to be mayor. Republican Rob Couhig, who has been Landrieu’s harshest critic in the debates, continued his jabs, alleging that Landrieu was using the job as a political springboard for a possible run for national office. Couhig also said Landrieu would continue the process of cronyism that continues now at City Hall. Troy Henry claimed Landrieu has not done an adequate job as Lieutenant Governor of getting federal recovery funds released from Baton Rouge. John Georges echoed this argument, but seemed somewhat tone-deaf when he bragged that unlike Landrieu, his personal extensive wealth would prevent him from ever being bought by lobbyists or political donors. While Landrieu’s campaign sent a statement that was read at the beginning of the forum, it didn’t compensate for the fact that he was unable to rebut any of his detractors’ comments.
When he wasn’t lambasting Landrieu, Couhig rightly pointed out that New Orleans has recovered to the extent it has because of the passion and commitment of its citizens — and not from the help of the government. He said the goal of the next mayor should be to support that grass roots effort. It was also encouraging to hear the commitment all the candidates have to enhancing and improving the city’s existing public transit so that there is increased service with greater reliability.
Disappointingly, though, the majority of the candidates missed several opportunities to link housing and transportation issues to the obstacles facing New Orleans’ youth. Because of this, despite the apparent relevance of the forum’s topic to the problems facing the city, the discussion often seemed more esoteric than practical. Only Nadine Ramsey repeatedly addressed the link between the lack of reliability of the city’s public transit system and the difficulty encountered by kids trying to get to afterschool programs. Before leaving early, James Perry discussed his vision for an expanded public transit plan but failed to mention why this is a necessity for one of his key iniatives – the augmentation of NORD. Simply put, regardless of how much money is pumped into NORD, how are kids supposed to access the city’s facilities if they have no means of transportation from school? And until the candidates provide the details on how they’ll fund and implement the bold initiatives they seek, it’s difficult to know what is attainable and what is simply wishful thinking.
