Word: nagin
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Nagin dismisses the criticism as the dying gasps of New Orleans' Old Guard. "We've moved away from the corrupt politics of the past," he told TIME recently. "I think those who are bashing me and questioning my leadership skills are usually unhappy with the new way of doing things." Nagin has been doing things differently for quite some time. Raised poor in New Orleans, he attended Alabama's Tuskegee University on a baseball scholarship, earned an M.B.A. from Tulane University and worked his way up the ranks to vice president at cable giant Cox Communications by turning around...
Long before Hurrican Katrina exposed the racial and economic canyons of New Orleans for all the nation to see, Mayor Ray Nagin swept into office with high hopes of bridging those gaps. So how is it that now, in the wake of Katrina's devastation and dislocation, the Big Easy seems more polarized than ever about Nagin himself? To his fervent supporters, New Orleans' up-by-his-bootstraps millionaire turned city-hall reformer is just the right man for the job of rebuilding New Orleans, "the only guy who can assure accountability and transparency," says Tim Williamson, head...
...many critics, however, Nagin, 49, is a mercurial political neophyte incapable of creating the consensus building necessary for such a giant undertaking. He seemed distracted and impatient last week at the first public meeting of his Bring New Orleans Back Commission. Just days earlier, without consulting the commission, he had announced a controversial proposal to allow casino gambling in several large downtown hotels--only to see the idea panned by everyone from Louisiana Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco to chambermaids. And his opponents certainly haven't forgotten his performance in the first, darkest days after Katrina, when Nagin admonished sluggish federal...
...floodwater were finally being pumped out of New Orleans, the rising tide of debate over the city's upright but erratic mayor showed no signs of abating. "We shouldn't have to choose between corruption and incompetence on something this important," says veteran political consultant C.B. Forgotston, once a Nagin backer. "If Nagin remains in charge, the city simply will never get rebuilt." The debate over his performance is hardly academic. In February, Nagin faces a re-election contest that will help determine the trajectory of New Orleans' revival. If Nagin can't convince enough of his displaced supporters that...
...accused of deserting their posts and looting Cadillacs during Katrina, but now two officers stand accused of beating a retired African-American schoolteacher who they claim was drunk and resisting arrest (he denies it) in the reopened French Quarter--a brutal attack that was caught on video and left Nagin's welcome mat looking all the more tattered. The officers have pleaded not guilty to charges of battery. Nagin has promised that new acting police superintendent Warren Riley will "handle it very seriously," but Riley's record is checkered with suspensions, one involving his alleged failure to act promptly enough...