Sunday, May 21, 2006
California YD Goes Home to Vote in New Orleans Race
Brandon Grassaway, who some of you know, joined the California Young Democrats after evacuating from New Orleans with his mother, sisters and other family members during hurricane Katrina's rampage. Since coming to California, Brandon has been very active with young democrats and this week went home to New Orleans to vote in his first election.
Here's what he told me:
yea i voted yesterday, the political atmosphere, which was always pretty sketchy is especially weird now.
everything kind of falls along racial/economic lines for the most part. coming in i was a big landrieu guy but after being here a few days my feelings about the situation really shifted. even though nagin has a credibility issue a change at this point would do more harm than good to the city, landrieu raised over $6 million for his campaign which turned alot people off in the sense that he would have at least those many favors to pay back before he can do any real work in office, thats pretty much how it works out here and with hurricane season being less than a month away that probably would not fare well for the city. also there was a major shift in the city council in terms of who was controling it and another prevailing emotion was if a change was made alot of people would get neglected (i.e. black people) in terms of re-development of housing, contracts, and things of that nature. ray nagin is also acquainted, even if he is'nt liked, with people on the federal level and familliar with what has been going on in that process post katrina and it would be beneficial for the city for him to stay around for that reason alone something that also turned me off was that in a debate when he was asked about a specific issue he responded "i don't know" after nagin called him on it (you can see it on (wdsu.com) which made me lose alot of the confidence i had in him even though i think mitch landrieu is a great guy i think his talents are more suited for the state level, and that the city is not in a position to make whole sale changes at this point when it is still in a state of flux.
Here's what he told me:
yea i voted yesterday, the political atmosphere, which was always pretty sketchy is especially weird now.
everything kind of falls along racial/economic lines for the most part. coming in i was a big landrieu guy but after being here a few days my feelings about the situation really shifted. even though nagin has a credibility issue a change at this point would do more harm than good to the city, landrieu raised over $6 million for his campaign which turned alot people off in the sense that he would have at least those many favors to pay back before he can do any real work in office, thats pretty much how it works out here and with hurricane season being less than a month away that probably would not fare well for the city. also there was a major shift in the city council in terms of who was controling it and another prevailing emotion was if a change was made alot of people would get neglected (i.e. black people) in terms of re-development of housing, contracts, and things of that nature. ray nagin is also acquainted, even if he is'nt liked, with people on the federal level and familliar with what has been going on in that process post katrina and it would be beneficial for the city for him to stay around for that reason alone something that also turned me off was that in a debate when he was asked about a specific issue he responded "i don't know" after nagin called him on it (you can see it on (wdsu.com) which made me lose alot of the confidence i had in him even though i think mitch landrieu is a great guy i think his talents are more suited for the state level, and that the city is not in a position to make whole sale changes at this point when it is still in a state of flux.
