Voting For Mayor

Battered and critically wounded New Orleans is having elections again. The city suspended all elections after hurricane Katrina, largely because there were few people left to vote and finding them to send absentee ballots was a huge chore that might result in a series of contested elections.- on the grounds that displaced citizens were not notified and/or given the right to vote. By now more than 6 months after the storm elections have been rescheduled and candidates have filed to run. Oh, how they have . Almost every race in the city has a multitude of prospects (in some cases the office seekers seem more like "suspects). But the grand race of all of them is for mayor of New Orleans. The incumbent, Ray Nagin, hugely popular before the storm, had 23 challengers for his office.
This indicates that Nagin is vulnerable and that his post Katrina gaffes made many file to oppose him. It costs only $750 to file for candidacy in the race for mayor of New Orleans, so you can guess what the quality of 23 who did file.
It is not a sterling group. For example there is Manny "Chevrolet" Bruno who says he represents no party and has no real platform of issues; Ron Forman, whose only experience had s not been in politics, but as the director of the local zoo; and Kimberly Williams Butler, the current clerk of court here who has been in hiding after a court in New Orleans issued an arrest warrant for Butler because she refused to turn over court records or follow the legal mandates of her position as clerk of court.
We like to be amused in New Orleans about our politics, and this group of mayoral candidates, though larger in number, appears to have the usual list of crazies. Haha On hearing that the very odd Butler had come out of hiding from the court to file to run for mayor, one long-time community leader said, "They better have the local nut house have her committed. In this city she just might win." And he was serious about his remark!
Along with the many candidates and large number of characters who seem to be in the race only because they made a bar room bet that they would enter, is another oddity attributable to Hurricane Katrina. Eight of the candidates listed addresses outside of New Orleans, something that would have made them ineligible in ordinary times but which is now legal provided the candidate still maintained his or her pre Katrina voting registration in the city. Two of them do not even live in the state anymore, one in Georgia and the other in Kentucky about 1000 kilometers away.
And as many as half the expected voters do not even live in the state anymore. They are exiled by the storm and will be given absentee ballots (They reside now in every state except Hawaii) to use to vote. Well, in a perverted sort of way this is all good to see. When things are crazy in New Orleans, it usually means the city is "normal".
Maybe this race is the beginning of the return to the old quirky city we residents loved so much.