Right before we hit the air today, news broke that the effort to recall New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell had failed. Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards' office announced that only about 27,000 names were deemed eligible, while 40,000 were dismissed mostly for reasons classified as "other."
Nobody predicted a disqualification rate for those signatures as high as that. There is great skepticism over so many names being dismissed, and we lamented that the lack of transparency on both sides and the apparent involvement of Mayor Cantrell's city attorney only created more suspicion. But this is New Orleans, what do you expect?
An early call to the show was from this caller, Linda in New Orleans East, who is feeling good after the recall petition failed - she suggests the effort was always about race. I disagreed, but it was an interesting call. And Linda is not the only person we heard from today who is glad the recall failed, and not the only one who suggested it was a racialized issue. I don’t think that’s true, but it would just be one more problem for us to fix!
