Memories of an Election
Note: Recent events in the 2024 presidential campaign contribute to a sense of a nation in crisis. This feeling percolates into our lives in different ways. As I try to manage my own anxieties while leading an organization and caring for two young children, I find myself looking to the past for solace and strength.
In 2009, I directed a project about the mayors of New Orleans. There was an election coming and the city still felt very much adrift in its recovery from Hurricane Katrina. We hear today of an America that is in peril—New Orleans in 2009 had that covered and then some. The effects of the flood waters were still visible in many neighborhoods, still palpable in the social fabric. Any progress filtered through a tortured relationship with the federal government and a local political establishment with the equivalent of a collapsed roof. Four years after the levees failed, the city was divided and gasping for air.
So it was with some anticipation that people looked toward the mayoral election, the winner of which would succeed the term-limited C. Ray Nagin. Among the electorate were the many new residents who’d come to town post-disaster and who were experiencing that special phenomenon that is Big Easy politics for the first time.
At the time, I managed the Louisiana Humanities Center, an event space on the first floor of Turners Hall, headquarters of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. Since the center’s opening in 2007, we had developed public programs that included film screenings, teacher workshops, and lectures. Most interesting to me, though, was a series of what we labeled “live oral history recordings” with members of the city’s brass bands. An audience of up to 100 people would hear the trombonists and sousaphonists and snare drummers talk about their lives, their friendships, how they learned to play, and the challenges of earning a living in this devastated landscape. Then the band would take a break before performing a set for the crowd.
The goal: Contribute to the repair of a portion of the city’s psyche by giving musicians the opportunity to speak directly with their fellow residents. In a culture dependent on call-and-response, the storm had disrupted the bond between culture bearers and audiences. We hoped to give the musicians room to breathe and reflect (and earn extra revenue). We wanted residents to hear from these men, nearly all of them African American, on the impacts of displacement, the city’s increased focus on tourism, and their views on education, politics, and racism. We hoped that everyone in the room would experience again the connections we shared as New Orleanians.
With the approach of the mayoral election, we saw another opportunity for the humanities to contribute to the city’s recovery. New Orleans politics has a colorful, oft-caricaturized history, one that now appears like a precursor for the personality-driven circus (to be kind) of the last decade on the national level. Beneath that circus, however, there were door to door campaigns, public and backroom decisions, and the machinations of city government.
At LEH, we wondered how we could we apply the live oral history model for programs related to the coming election. We could bring together members of previous administration along with journalists and scholars to talk about those times, with an aim of building a living job description for a New Orleans mayor.
Before the election unfolded, the series could provide context on how the city arrived at this place. Katrina overshadowed almost everything in our daily lives, but voters—long-time or first-time—could use more information about the years preceding that event. What knowledge, we asked ourselves and our key partners, would help someone make this important choice?
Because here we were—and are—as voters, essentially reviewing candidates for a job we need them to do. But what is the job? Yes, there are statues and balances of power and ceremony. But what does the job look like when you’re doing it?
For the three months leading up to the Feb. 2010 election, we convened panels every other week on the previous seven mayors:
I began to put the panels together. This involved seeking out two different sheriffs at two different luncheons, tracking down retired newscasters, handling inquiries from family members, and verifying who was close to the seat of power and who might be willing to talk honestly. I called in favors and went down fun and not-so-fun rabbit holes, all while flyering and managing RSVP lists. I set up the tables and microphones the day of, too.
Right away, we were asked: “Did you talk to Mayor —?” To address this without turning the panels into a loyalist road show, we set out to interview the living mayors. I interviewed three of the four (Nagin declined) for videos we would share prior to the discussion and online. The videos were produced by Dirty Coast and directed by Steve Wolfram. You can watch them and the panels on the YouTube page of 64 Parishes.
Once the series began, it was clear that we were on to something. There were lines to get in, near physical confrontations at the entrance when the building reached capacity, and sustained interest from people who wanted to share their own stories. Every event felt historic because, well, we were creating histories. Audience member asked sharp questions and contributed their own memories for the record. The present mayoral campaign was a bit listless, but the looming deadline of election day added pressure on the series. It was like no experience I had previously, and it certainly shaped every experience thereafter.
The conversations revolved around seven leaders who oversaw the same geographic location during a transformative six decades. The time period included the end of WWII, desegregation of public schools, the election of the first African American mayor, the construction of the Superdome, the rise of the oil industry, corruption and anti-corruption efforts, repeated issues with criminal justice, a steady economic decline, hurricanes not named Katrina, and one named Katrina.
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These were seven very different men, but in the eyes of their contemporaries, they shared key characteristics for doing the job. Relentless energy, especially during Carnival season and disasters. An ability to seek out consenus and broker compromises. A street-level understanding that each community within the city needed their attention and a fair shake, even if they didn’t always get one. Most staffers praised their boss for his courage and decisiveness. No one doubted that the job was incredibly difficult.
The panelists defined each mayor’s legacy in the context of the job’s roles and responsibilities. How well did he manage the crucial relationships with the state and federal governments? How was the city reshaped by the capital projects started and completed during these administrations? Were contracts on the up and up? What was the rapport with city council? With the media? Investments in the cultural sector, the hiring and firing of police chiefs, securing community development block grants—these made up the scorecard, and were the things the next mayor would surely face.
To be clear, these men made mistakes. In print programs handed out before each event, we detailed population shifts, economic indicators and key events of their tenurs. No matter what their staffers said, none of us could look at New Orleans as it stood prior to Katrina and feel that these mayors were successful. We knew that the city they molded over the course of 60 years was one of the poorest in the nation, with the highest murder rate, and a failing public education system. The point of the project was to understand how it happened.
On an afternoon in his home in the Broadmoor neighborhood, Moon Landrieu told me that, once you become mayor, every pothole belongs to you. Landrieu was remembered for his efforts to desegregate City Hall, a decision with political benefits and limitations. Forty years later, he spoke with the conviction of someone who could live with his choices and see their consequences. (To be honest, I was intimidated by Moon in a way I never was again as an interviewer.)
In a board room at our headquarters, Marc Morial chose his words carefully as he expressed frustration with the city’s post-Katrina leadership and the initial plans for redeveloping certain neighborhoods. “It created a climate where everyone distrusted everyone else’s agenda,” said Marc Morial in our board room, describing the racial divisions that persisted. Fifteen years later, his New Orleans sounds a lot like America.
Over those three months, there were more than a few jokes and funny stories. But what I remember most is the seriousness of the discussions, whether with those former mayors, the panelists, or with my fellow residents. We understood that the city needed help, right away, and we talked about what that could look like based on what had transpired since 1946 and since 2005. It was not a somber exercise—this was still New Orleans politics—but it was a search for what we used to call “real talk.”
I think of that project and those people often, especially now. The Mayors series established a reputation for the Louisana Humanities Center. It gave me street cred locally and changed my career path. I still believe in the humanities’ power to contribute to the electoral process, to convene people across lines of difference, and to make courageous dialogue possible.
But I wonder how—or if—conversations like these would unfold in today’s environment. We seem so far from discussions of roles and responsibilities, buried under an avalanche of misinformation and viciousness. Any local dispute can escalate instantly to fit within the two polar opposites of national politics. There are people in public office who endorse the coup attempt of January 6, 2021.
Now we talk only of two opponents locked in a death match, of their health and hatreds. There is no room to examine the legacies of the administrations that brought us to this point. A job description feels antiquated, even though a job needs to be done. We are locked in a savage present, with so many fires to put out and a chorus of firestarters blocking the path to the hoses.
The job opening for mayor of New Orleans in 2009 called for a person willing to meet the city’s incredible immediate needs as well as the deep structural flaws that created all those potholes, real and metaphorical. The potholes belonged to no party and impacted everyone. I came to understand the towering role of a mayor but also the plumber-like willingess one must posess to roll up one’s sleeves and fix things.
Right now, we seem only to shout, post, and argue about the specific individuals and not the myriad jobs that need to be done. We stand in the midst of disasters and point fingers rather than trace causes. Perhaps that allows us to ignore just what it will mean to lead America over the next four years.
…
Oh, and who won that mayoral race? Mitch Landrieu, Moon’s son. Then the state’s Lieutenant Governor, he jumped into the race late and finished with an election victory the night before the Saints won the Super Bowl.
Luck, either in birth or on the playing field, that was part of the job description, too.
Owner at Steph Craig Studios
7 个月This was a much needed and really powerful read. Thank you for writing and sharing it.