Newell invited WWL-TV Political Analyst Clancy Dubos onto the show Friday morning to discuss the potential makeup of the next New Orleans City Council, Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s strong polling as she launches her re-election bid and more.
“It's been pretty quiet,” Newell began. “This pandemic has kind of eliminated so many of the traditional things that we see in politics, and has changed the way that we conduct a lot of our campaigns thus far... your thoughts?”
“As you know, a recent poll showed the mayor at 62% popularity,” Dubos said. “I think that is rooted in two things. The pandemic had a profound impact on local politics. It affected turnout. It affected how people campaign, because you couldn't have rallies. People couldn't go door to door. It was difficult to have fundraisers. It changed everything top to bottom. It didn't change the need of candidates to get their messages out, but it drastically impacted how they do it, and their ability to do it effectively. It probably helped those with good name recognition because people tend to gravitate toward what is familiar, and so it tended to help incumbents or people with well-known names. We're coming out of that now, but we're not completely out of it.”
“I think there's going to be a big difference between the Mayor's race and the City Council races in New Orleans,” Dubos continued. “Qualifying is next week, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. And at 4:30 PM Friday afternoon, we'll know who's in and who's out. But it looks like the Mayor just wrote my column... I think she's going to coast back in office because if she were going to have a major opponent, I think we'd have known about it by now. She's going to have some opposition, but it's not going to be names that are household names.”
“They're saying it could be two or three,” Newell said. “I would agree with you, it's a little late to put it together. It's kind of hard to raise money in this climate as well, right?”
“A lot of businesses are hurting,” Dubos said. “They're having difficulty hiring. I was talking to a businessman this morning who lives in Jefferson, but most of his business is in Orleans. He said he can't get enough workers, he said ‘I'm in the kitchen. I'm doing this, I'm doing that.’ But he says it's good because we have a lot of business, but everybody's working two or three jobs. I think that's going to loosen up next month for a lot of reasons. Right now, it's a different kind of struggle than it was during the pandemic, but it's still a struggle.”
“I was a little surprised as to the popularity of the mayor,” Newell said. “I understand the breadth and depth of the issue of the pandemic, but I also understand a lot of the components of governance. There was a declared emergency, so that's about as close to a queen as it gets, where you don't really have to collaborate with much of anyone else. You just singularly can make a decision and move in a direction and not worry much about what anyone else thinks, says, or otherwise. That is not necessarily credible leadership. I know she wants to articulate it in that fashion and describe it as such, but those of us who have spent a lot of time in our lives studying the principles of leadership know the difference.”
“I have two thoughts about why her popularity is so high,” Dubos said. “When Dutch Morial was mayor, his popularity in the Black community was sky high and it was unshakeable. And the reason I think is pretty obvious one, he was a good mayor, but he was the first African-American mayor. And he was, I used to tell him, more than a mayor. He is a symbol, he's an icon. And that puts him on a plane that no other politician in that era could stand on. Cantrell has something similar to that. She's the first female mayor of our city. And I have found this is anecdotal, but the polls bear it out. Her level of support among women voters in New Orleans is deep and wide. Now she was in the low seventies, about six months ago and now she's at 62, but the drop-off is mostly among white women. 62% is still a very enviable number. I promise you Joe Biden or Donald Trump would have given anything to be at 62%.
Hear the entire interview in the audio player below.
