If you listen to the recall organizers, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell is about to lose her job. The No LaToya recall campaign was launched in August 2022. The group met the February 22 deadline that required them to hand in around 50,000 signatures. They say they exceeded that number.
The campaign’s chairman, Belden Baptiste and Eileen Carter, vice chair, say they are ready to take back their city.
“Right now our mayor doesn’t love New Orleans so the citizens and the residents stood up,” Eileen Carter, vice chair of the No LaToya recall campaign, told Fox News. “We’re taking our city back, and we’re gonna save New Orleans.”
“Mayor LaToya, it ain’t that we hate you,” Baptiste told Fox News. “You didn’t do your job, and you’re about to be fired.”
The mayor has been in one controversy after another in recent months. City residents blame her for the rise in crime. New Orleans reached a new high (low) in crime rankings as the city became known as having the highest per capita murder rate in the country. She threatened to cancel Mardi Gras and had to immediately walk that nonsense back.
The city is operating much like a Third World country. Mayor Cantrell was involved in controversies over her travel expenses because she demands to fly first class on the taxpayers’ dime. An investigation has been opened into a non-profit Cantrell founded. The hits just keep coming. The mayor frequently uses a city-owned apartment in the French Quarter instead of her own home just a short distance away. The New Orleans Police Department is losing officers to early retirement or they are just quitting rather than continuing to remain on the force. Morale is very low.
A fish rots from the head down and New Orleans residents hold the mayor responsible for the mess their city is in. Carter worked in the mayor’s social media department for three years. She says that Cantrell has “quiet quit” during her second term in office. She said the mayor used to have regular meetings with department heads, for example, but hasn’t had any of those meetings on her calendar for over a year.
“It’s like a tale of two mayors,” Carter said. “I don’t think she’s making very good judgment decisions for the city at all, to the point of arrogance.”
The mayor has been behaving badly in public. On February 19, during a Mardi Gras parade, she was caught flipping off parade participants. The mayor’s communications director, Gregory Joseph, said that gesture was intended to be playful. Uh-huh. Carter thinks otherwise. “Putting your middle finger to residents isn’t necessarily going to get you cheers during a recall election.
Besides all the unfilled potholes on city streets and buildings with broken windows, the issue of crime is at the top of the list for those supporting the mayor’s recall.
Meanwhile, Carter said the city has many problems, including the crime surge that briefly made the city the nation’s murder capital for most homicides per capita before being unseated by Jackson, Mississippi, at the end of 2022.
“We’re like Gotham down here,” Carter said. “It’s sad to say, but that’s kind of what people are calling us, and we’re calling ourselves that.”
New Orleans recorded 266 homicides in 2022 — a 116% increase from 2019, according to the New Orleans City Council crime database. Carjackings rose by 165% in the two-year period.
“People are fearful,” Carter said. “This administration hasn’t risen to the occasion that we need right now. Quality of life standards are just diminishing.”
Some residents were too fearful of retaliation from the mayor to sign the recall petition.
But Carter told Fox News retaliation has already happened, accusing the mayor’s office of blocking the recall campaign’s ability to host an event at a local restaurant. The restaurant owner said he received a call from his landlord telling him to cancel the event, which he did, but was then slapped with a restraining order that claimed he violated his lease the next day.
And, there was this.
The https://t.co/4W0bj7ZUHH van that delivered the signed petitions to recall Mayor LaToya Cantrell literally just got a parking ticket while stopped in front of City Hall. ? Chris Granger #NewOrleans #politics #louisiana @NoLaToyaRecall pic.twitter.com/6tjibe4ARW
— Chris Granger (@chris_granger) February 22, 2023
Corruption running rampant in New Orleans politics is nothing new. It will be interesting to continue to follow this story to see how far the recall effort ends up going.
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