Word: nagin
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...around the time he endorsed Republican Bobby Jindal over Democrat Blanco in the 2003 race for Governor--a miscalculation that has left a noticeable chill in his relationship with Blanco--New Orleanians began to have second thoughts about Nagin. For all his reforms, residents wondered whether their long-awaited antipolitician could realize critical projects like transforming the city's abysmal schools or breaking its dependence on the low-wage tourism industry. In a city suffering some of the nation's highest poverty and crime rates, African Americans questioned whether their concerns fit on Nagin's pro-business agenda...
...current problems may well be how he communicates--or doesn't. The CEO mayor relies almost exclusively on an ultratight circle of confidants brought in from the halls of business, especially McDonald's franchise baron and fellow millionaire friend David White. State and federal officials say privately that Nagin's insular and politically inexperienced staff has hurt him when it comes to the kind of public relations and coalition building he'll need from here on out. "This administration tends to dismiss too many people, especially career political people," says New Orleans City Council president Oliver Thomas, a possible mayoral...
Certainly in the weeks since Katrina, Nagin could have used some p.r. help, as he has often come across as irritated and defensive. He complained to state legislators that he was "getting more criticism than God knows who," as if "you all think I'm crazy." After encouraging residents to return to New Orleans despite federal warnings that conditions weren't yet safe, Nagin groused that the Katrina recovery director, Coast Guard Vice Admiral Thad Allen, was acting like the "federal mayor of New Orleans." It won't be so easy for the mayor to win back the Big Easy...
...Nagin has to hope those initial measurements can be altered, and he does seem to have regained a bit of the reassuring and charismatic swagger that got him elected. Sporting silky black knit shirts, he often uses streetwise vernacular in his chats with the city's beleaguered residents. Visiting with a group of small-business owners last week, he urged them not to let large outside firms steal all the recovery business up for grabs. "Don't let 'em pull a razoo on you," he said, using the local slang for cheating at marbles. A day after dining on hickory...
...Nagin sometimes comes across as impatient or irascible, or his agenda as hurried or business-centric, his allies say, it's because New Orleans' fiscal problems--which he has said will result in layoffs of possibly 3,000 municipal workers--are so pressing. In a letter to Blanco, Nagin recently laid out his vision for a new, more prosperous New Orleans. It includes creating charter schools, loosening restrictions on the city's ability to levy taxes and passing state-income-tax exemptions for manufacturers who set up plants to process some of the 23 million tons of raw materials--such...