New Orleans election campaign courts evacuees

By Erwin Seba

HOUSTON (Reuters) – New Orleans city election campaigns are
being waged where the voters are — in cities like Baton Rouge,
Houston, Dallas and Austin, where many residents ended up after
being scattered by Hurricane Katrina.

Mayoral candidates including incumbent Ray Nagin and chief
rival Democratic Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu have flown and driven
to meet with evacuees still living outside their devastated
city, which exceed the number of people who have returned.

The campaign revolves a controversial rebuilding plan
supported by Nagin that accepts a population less than half of
the 500,000 who lived in New Orleans before Katrina struck
August 29.

About 180,000 people were estimated to have returned the
city by January, according to city emergency officials. The
Federal Emergency Management Agency counts 106,000 New Orleans
residents living in Baton Rouge and 69,000 in Houston. More
than 100,000 others are scattered around the country.

In Houston, using FEMA lists, volunteers carrying
clipboards are knocking on doors in large apartment complexes
on the southwest side of the city that Houston Police Chief
Harold Hurtt has identified as hotbeds of criminal activity.

The volunteers, sponsored by local and national
non-partisan political organizations, have signed evacuees up
for absentee ballots or bus rides to satellite polling stations
Louisiana officials plan to place in Lake Charles, Louisiana,
three hours east of Houston.

“This is a hard piece of organizing,” said activist
Michelle Paul.

But the voter registration and education campaign may
determine the outcome of the April election in which 24
candidates are running for mayor in addition to about seven
candidates for each of seven city council seats.

The rebuilding plan is seen as the key to which ethnic
groups will decide the future of New Orleans.

On Friday, a University of Maryland sociologist who has
studied African-American population trends said New Orleans may
have a majority white population for years to come.

The 2000 U.S. Census showed blacks made up two-thirds of
the city’s population.

“We cannot imagine a majority-black city for a long time to
come, barring some miraculous turnaround,” William Falk said at
New Orleans sociology conference, according the New Orleans
Times-Picayune.