[StBernard] mayoral debate tonight

[Westley Annis]

There is good news and bad about the N.O. mayoral debate Monday night. The
good news is that the candidates are going all out,not mincing words,
telling it like it is to the audience and each other, and they indicated,
rather clearly, where they agree and disagree on many issues. The runoff
will be interesting. The voters have had plenty of opportunity to know what
the candidates stand for, or at least have indicated what they want to be
known to stand for.
 
The bad news is that it aired a lot of dirty laundry about Louisiana and New
Orleans that may cause many  in the country to re-think supporting our cause
if they were originally our supporters.  Perhaps the point made about why a
taxi driver in Chicago should want to see federal dollars save our area and
the point made that although below sea level, the federal levee failure was
the problem, not the elevation, may have hit home to the nationwide
audience, although I don't know that millions were watching MSNBC.
 
This election may seal the fate of New Orleans' recovery for better or
worse. It won't be long before St. Bernard is in an election year.
Hopefully, all our candidates for every office will run a campaign based on
a clear, concise platform that is based on the real issues, a recovery plan
(we'll be in recovery mode for many years), and on their qualilfications of
the candidates to be great leaders and decision makers. 
 
As an even smaller parish, we won't get the media coverage that New Orleans
gets for an election. We'll need to have our civic and business
organizations host several public forums, debates, etc in order to promote a
good, transparent election where voters can make informed choices rather
than vote on personalities, impressions, name recognition, etc. that often
cloud the election process.
 
It will be interesting to see if the state changes the state legislative
districts based on population shifts (i.e. St. Tammany and Jefferson have
increased, while Orleans and St. Bernard have decreased and the future
predictions vary from widely pessimistic to optimistic). LIkewise, we may
not need as many council districts in the smaller St. Bernard, or maybe we
do need the same number of districts so that each council person can focus
on their district's needs (i.e. districts based on distinctive
characteristics regardless of the population).  
 
What a great time to be a St. Bernardian!  St. Bernard is at a pivotal point
in its history. Maybe Katrina is an awakening for us all. Perhaps we were
getting too complacent with the status quo and depending too much on a few
to do it all. Perhaps it took a major catastrophe like this to shake us up
to get off the sidelines and into the game.
 
ddk