Sheriff's race aside, NO elections disappoint

Admittedly an extremely low bar to hurdle in terms of quality of governance, New Orleans possibly will be slightly better off after 2025 elections.

Maybe barely, by default, for the city’s head honcho. The dingbat Democrat LaToya Cantrell, under indictment, will give way to Democrat Councilor Helena Moreno, whose policy preferences are a mixture of anodyne appeals to better procedural execution of service delivery and wackiness by its nature that will overwhelm the former. For example, she’s all in on forcing more expensive renewable power onto Orleanians and talks of government pumping more regulation into housing provision, as if that already hasn’t left the city with a significant affordable housing shortage. It’s an agenda designed to drive even more people away and to put more into poverty, but at least the hope is she won’t be corrupt.

The incoming City Council may offer more hope. All the incumbents able to run won, and even the least awful of those who have served, District A Democrat Joe Giarusso, will be replaced by one of two of his former staffers who promise to be about as obnoxious in policy, although one, Democrat Aimee McCarron, in those terms might be a slight upgrade. And replacing Moreno for one of the two at-large posts, Democrat state Rep. Matthew Willard represents more of the same policy rubbish.

But another upgrade possibility looms in District E, where Democrat former Councilor Cyndi Nguyen looks to reclaim the post, leading Democrat state Rep. Jason Hughes into a runoff. That’s only because one will replace Democrat Councilor Oliver Thomas who ran unsuccessfully for mayor, he being once convicted for political corruption but despite that who defeated Nguyen last election.

Yet these at best marginal gains become magnified because of the overwhelming defeat of the stridently policy-stupid Democrat Sheriff Susan Hutson, who managed during the campaign to add a contempt of court conviction to her portfolio of mistakes. She only ended up third and was blown out of office by Democrat Michelle Woodfork, who had served as interim police chief for several months in recent years. Undoubtedly Woodfork will bring far more competence and professionalism to a job that went totally woke over the past four years, returning inmates to their status as jailed as opposed to Hutson’s preferred term of “residents.”

However, take away Woodfork’s replacing of Hutson and there’s little hope to come out of this round of elections in New Orleans that beneficial change will happen. With the articulated policy preferences of the new mayor and Council, look for the city to continue to lose population and to fall further behind other more opportunity-driven and less government-stifled cities.