Tuesday, November 20, 2007

New Orleans City Council white majority in over 20 years

If anyone needed proof as to the demographic changes that have taken place in New Orleans since the destruction the city faced from Hurricane Katrina, this news blurb from the New York Times, Whites Take a Majority on New Orleans’s Council grabs your attention with the headline and then provides the information:
Since the mid-1980s, black politicians have held virtually all of the reins of power in a city where interest groups are sharply factionalized along racial lines and blacks were once two-thirds of the population. Saturday’s vote indicated a transition is in the making, perhaps similar to the one that occurred at the end of the segregation era here.

White candidates made other gains on Saturday, taking two New Orleans seats in the Louisiana Legislature long held by blacks, and a state court judgeship that had also been occupied by a black judge.

Voting was largely along racial lines. The apparently greater number of votes cast by whites — 29,700, compared with 22,900 black votes, according to an analysis by Mr. Rigamer — makes uncertain widely quoted estimates that blacks, despite a disproportionate population loss, are still substantially in the majority here.

The elections also call into question if the number of those who have moved back into New Orleans is accurate, given only 52,614 voted compared to double that amount in the Mayoral election where people traveled to be able to vote.

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