Just over a week ago, Political Analyst Clancy Dubos authored an opinion piece where he said that Mayor Cantrell is facing four crises all at once, and there could be more to come. He joined Newell’s program Monday morning to discuss.“I had to chuckle when I read that headline,” Newell began. “You said there could be more to come and here it is! It seems as though the Mayor is in a little bit of a political death spiral. There are just so many issues coming at her from so many different fronts. When you evaluate some of the manner in which these things are being handled - seems like there’s a lot of fumbling going on.”“You framed it correctly,” Dubos said. “I don’t know if it’s a political death spiral, but it’s a spiral all right and there’s some fumbling going on. I agree with you totally - it’s not so much what she’s doing as much as how she is doing it. I always compare politics to figure skating - you get technical merit and you get style points. She’s really fumbling on style right now, and there are technical issues as well. It’s important in politics not only to be right, but to look right as well. Citizens form impressions based on what they see and hear, and how you react to things and present to voters matters a great deal.”“There’s been a lot of discussion about transparency, both during her campaign and during her time as Mayor,” Newell continued. “But when we think about how little information has been released about the breadth and depth of the cyberattack… it’s really been the council that has been bringing background information to the fore.”“Mayors don’t like criticism,” Dubos pointed out. “You and I have known a bunch, and I haven’t seen one that took criticism really gracefully. The one criticism that is consistent with Mayor Cantrell is that this has been almost an opaque administration compared to others. She might talk a lot about transparency, but it has not been easy to get things from this administration.”“I was surprised to see her make what I think are strategic missteps on her part,” Newell said. “When you think about the Lakeview crime summit with a thousand residents talking about things impacting this city… she’s not there, but she promises she’ll send someone and that ends up being the police. When you talk about the priorities of the administration, the supervisors in the police department can't articulate that!”
“When times are tough, people want to see their leaders,” Dubos replied. “Go back to the days after HUrricane Betsy. Lyndon Johnson came down to the Lower Ninth Ward where they didn’t even have power. He put a flashlight on and walked into a room full of people and said ‘I’m your president and I’m here.’ That’s what people want to see, they want the mayor to just show up. They know the mayor and the council aren’t miracle workers but they want to see them there, that let’s people know that their elected officials show up. When they don't, people feel like they’ve been blown off, and that’s the worst message to send to a constituency.”
“I used the word ‘death spiral’ because I was looking at her statement in the aftermath of her tax liability problem and she starts to talk about an amnesty program she set up for people struggling to pay fines and fees to the city, as though to virtue signal what the IRS and others ought to be doing in her case. It seemed like a desperate attempt to explain that away… where do we go from here? It seems there’s been a number of lines drawn in the sand and I believe she’s boxed herself in. Unless there’s some reconciliation in a big way, she’s created a lot of adversaries in a short period of time.”