Mayor endorses Willard-Lewis

16th April 2012   ·   0 Comments

By Christopher Tidmore
Contributing Writer

Late Thursday afternoon, Mayor Mitch Landrieu enthusiastically endorsed Cynthia Willard Lewis for the Council At-Large slot. His Honor joins Congressman Cedric Richmond, Assessor Erroll Wil­liams, Sheriff Mar­lin Gusman, and former U.N. Ambas­sador Andrew Young in pro­moting the veteran council­person, state re­presen­tative, and senator in the seat left open by the retiring Arnie Fielkow.

Landrieu defended his endorsement, after sitting out the primary, with the words, “Now people will say, ‘Why, mayor, did you get involved with this race? Why didn’t you just sit on the sidelines?’ The answer is simple. Mayors don’t always have the choice of sitting things out. I know both of these ladies who are running for council at-large and I like them both. But I am called upon to make a decision on who would make the best partner for me and who would represent all of the City of New Orleans better at this time. So I have chosen to endorse the next Councilman at-large Cynthia Willard-Lewis.”

The person who has not spoken out, though, as this newspaper went to press, is the third place finisher in the March 24 election—State Rep. Austin Badon.

For the first time since Hurricane Katrina, in a special election, the collective majorities of the African-American At-Large candidates outpolled the votes earned by the white Contenders with 53 percent of the total electorate opting for Willard-Lewis, Rep. Austin Badon, or William “Poppa” Gant. Despite this, however, Head may still have the advantage in the April 21, 2012 runoff.

Common wisdom assumes, that all — or even a disproportionate share — of the 18 percent earned by State Rep. Austin Badon would break for a fellow Black candidate like Willard-Lewis. There is compelling evidence to the contrary, that large portions of Badon’s support were white, conservative, in many cases Republican, and more likely to vote for Stacy Head.

An analysis of 64 precincts in Orleans Parish, each with more than a 70 percent Caucasian registered electorate, showed Badon nearly matching — and often exceeding —Willard-Lewis’ per precinct vote. Elsewhere in the city, in African-American majoirty precincts, Badon mostly earned less than half of Willard-Lewis totals, or less.

Take for example, precinct 05-13. With 87 percent of the electorate Caucasian, it was a Stacy Head stronghold, with 125 votes, out of the 154 who turned out, going to the District “B” Councilwoman. However, in that precinct, Badon beat Willard-Lewis, 13 to 10. Nearby precinct 05-01 with an 86 percent white registration, saw Badon beat Willard-Lewis 8 to 2, even as Stacy Head earned 61 out of the 74 voters who went to the polls.

Go across town to precinct 14-20, where the 82 percent of the registered voters are Caucasian. It rendered 184 of its 219 votes on March 24 for Head. But, Badon bested Willard-Lewis 14 to 8. In precinct 17-19, Head got the lion’s share of 99 votes of 122, but Badon won 7 to 3. (87 percent Cau­ca­sian)

Contrast these results to those in white-majority precincts, but areas where the racial balance was lopsided. In 15-18c, with 66 percent Caucasian-majority registration, Head got 108 of the 172 votes, but Willard-Lewis beat Badon 33 to 14. In 15-18E, with 55 percent white registration, Head won 201 of the 326 votes. Willard-Lewis bested Badon 70 to 33.

And with only a few notable exceptions, the larger the African-American registration of the total electorate, the better the vote was for the former state senator over the sitting state representative. In Black-majority precincts (outside of Badon’s State Rep seat) Willard-Lewis tended to win big.

Partially, this is due to the fact that Austin Badon has cut an atypical figure in Baton Rouge. He appeals as much to whites and Republicans as his much of his core middle-class Black constituency in New Orleans East. He authored Orleans Parish’s original voucher legislation, and has championed Gov. Jindal’s proposal to extend eligibility for the program to roughly half of the public school students across Louisiana. He fought against Mitch Landrieu, authoring a House Bill (counter to the mayor’s wishes) that instructed the Louisiana National Guard’s Military Police Unit to deploy to Orleans Parish to augment NOPD. He is a card carrying NRA member, in a Legislative Black Caucus often supportive of gun control.

That is not to say that Badon breaks from his caucus in most ideological matters. In fact, he was the only candidate in the Council At-Large race to call for a commuter tax, a favorite of local progressives since Dutch Morial tried in the early 1980s. And, Badon was one of the legislature’s most outspoken critics of the governor’s attempt to merge SUNO into UNO.

Still, the data suggests that Badon’s grassroots popularity comes as much from Republican whites as Democratic Blacks.

Where that vote goes next Saturday remains to be seen. So far, Badon has been mum on any endorsements.

This article was originally published in the April 16, 2012 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper