Clancy DuBos: New Orleans City Council races will be the ones to watch this fall
As candidates prepare to qualify next week for mayor, City Council and a handful of parochial offices, the hottest races on the Oct. 9 ballot will be those for council seats. Barring a last-minute surprise, Mayor LaToya Cantrell should coast to re-election. The same cannot be said for some council members.
Let’s start with the easy ones: At-Large Councilmember Helena Moreno and District A Councilmember Joe Giarrusso will likely be re-elected. On the eve of qualifying, neither had drawn announced opponents with significant financial or grassroots backing.
The other at-large race features three well-known candidates leading what could become a crowded field — District D Councilmember Jared Brossett, who is term limited; District C Councilmember Kristin Gisleson Palmer, who’s not term limited but wants to move up to the at-large post; and former state Sen. JP Morrell, who has had his eye on this seat since term limits forced him out of the Senate two years ago.
In the other district council races, two incumbents will face stiff competition for re-election and two seats will have no incumbents running.
District B, which includes Central City, Gert Town, the Garden District, a piece of Mid-City, and the Warehouse District, could be the most interesting council race. This district is the home turf of BOLD, the Black political organization that incudes council incumbent Jay Banks and state Sen. Karen Carter Peterson. Banks won a squeaker four years ago, when the district was almost evenly split between Black and white voters. Today, it’s more than 47% white, less than 43% Black, and the rest “other.”
Several candidates, some of them likely to be well funded, are lining up to run against Banks. They include real estate broker Roz Thibodeaux, former Loyola University executive chief of staff Lesli Harris, Southeast Louisiana Legal Services attorney Rella Zapletal, and former First City Court Clerk Timothy David Ray, who ran third for this seat four years ago. Banks, Harris and Ray are Black; Thibodeaux and Zapletal are white.
District C, which includes Algiers, the French Quarter, Treme, Bywater and the Marigny, will also see a hotly contested race and probably a large field. Among those said to be running are attorneys Stephanie Bridges and Freddie King III, Treme businessman Alonzo Knox, French Quarter LGBTQ activist Frank Perez, cosmetologist Vincent Milligan, and City Hall staffer Stephen Mosgrove.
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