Dirty South Bureau

Tonight the gloves came off at Loyola University, Uptown. The occasion was the third and final mayoral debate in the series, but the top seven candidates (four are included either out of charity or to keep the charade going) have been dragged around the city to various forums and bizarre speaking engagements the point that they are starting to get weary, and snappy, and have started making crude jabs at each other. Perhaps it is because the illusion of real contest is wearing off and the process of election by inheritance is starting to show even to those blinded by the spotlight.

Mitch Landrieu was going to be our next mayor before the ink dried on his signature at the secretary of state’s office. It’s clear- Forman doesn’t have the numbers to push him out of the runoff, and when it comes down to Nagin v. Landrieu, the white voters who supported Foreman will switch to the latter candidate. Nagin doesn’t have enough of the honky vote to win, especially after the “chocolate city” comment, which brought out all the not-so-buried racist apprehension in the privileged classes, who are back home Uptown and Algiers and voting.

And if, by some weird stroke of luck, Foreman can outdistance Nagin, the former will lose because the black vote will go to the white candidate for black New Orleans, Landrieu again. The only really interesting possibility is if Landrieu somehow loses his lead to both Nagin and Foreman, which would only happen in some instance out of a Edwin Edwards speech, like being caught in bed with a live boy or a dead girl, leading to Foreman and Nagin in the runoff and a direct contest along racial lines.

But Landrieu is both too smart and too boring for that, so he’ll be our next mayor.

It was, however, an amusing spectacle. The only other black candidate present, Reverend Tom Watson, tore into Nagin, accusing him of lying and “double-mindedness”. Foreman and Landrieu argued like schoolchildren (”I didn’t say that” “You did” “I didn’t”) and everyone made fun of Peggy Wilson, the republican former City Council member who keeps talking about “welfare queens”, pimps, and a tax-free city. Picking on poor Peggy was easy and cheap but still fun to watch- she makes the rest of us look so sane and progressive.

I have long ago accepted that elections are weird American rituals that have no basis in rational behavior, but why do people like Peggy Wilson run? Are their egos that grandiose? Are they that out of touch with reality to think that they have even a smattering of a chance of winning? What does she get from it? Or the other sixteen candidates who aren’t invited to the debates and won’t even get five percent? Is this Marie Galatas’ (the corrupt preacher who Pres Kabakoff bought off to support the St. Thomas redevelopment) way of denying her own mortality? Of trying to pretend that she matters?

On one hand, I’m glad- if Peggy is spending this much of her and her friend’s time and money running, that means they can’t use them for other purposes, and thus it keeps racist nut-jobs like her busy.

Soon the smoke will clear and the illusion of democracy will have been upheld for four more years, and we can all get back to full-time on our other distractions. And we’ll miss the humor in the social pageantry that is this mayoral race.