news + vIeWS state lawmakers back home in droves — and when it comes to garnering the national spotlight. Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil disaster proved that point. “There’s no denying that the New Orleans City Council stage is a very big stage,” Buisson says. If there’s a common thread among legislators who look to City Hall for professional advancement, it’s that most of them come from the House of Representatives, says state Sen. Karen Carter Peterson. “You don’t see it much in the Senate because there are larger districts there. The Council districts, especially the at-large seats, offer larger populations,” she says. Peterson, who also chairs the Louisiana Democratic Party, adds that while the jobs overlap on certain levels, they’re ultimately as different as
night and day. “It’s still a legislative role on the City Council. You’re still going to be doing the same kind of work on some levels,” she says. “But it’s a very different role. The issues are very different. You’re dealing with zoning and sewers and utilities and a wide variety of things [on the council].” Mundane municipal issues aren’t likely to dissuade lawmakers from chasing their dreams at City Hall, says Dr. Silas Lee, a Democratic consultant with offices in New Orleans and Washington, D.C. Consider that a long line of mayors also got their starts in the state legislature. They include, in chronological order, Mayors Chep Morrison, Moon Landrieu, Dutch Morial, Sidney Barthelemy, Marc Morial and Mitch Landrieu — six of the city’s last eight mayors.
“The legislature is a good place to cut your teeth and prepare yourself for New Orleans politics,” Lee says. “But they quickly realize that the City Council and City Hall offer more opportunities to achieve visibility and to grab hold of power.” Once the special elections are decided this fall — qualifying starts next Wednesday, Aug. 15 — we’ll see if the pattern holds. No matter what happens in November, qualifying for the regularly scheduled citywide elections (set for March 2014) will come just 13 months later, in December 2013, and another cycle of crossovers will inevitably begin. “I don’t think that’s going to end anytime soon,” Lee says. Nor, apparently, do a number of state lawmakers.
enue directly from gambling, a payday loan business, pornography or abortion,” and agree to the chamber’s mission statement: “To promote free enterprise, individual rights, limited government, traditional family values, character, education, patriotism, national defense and high ethical standards for business.” By contrast, the Baton Rouge Chamber of Commerce’s entire mission statement is “to lead economic development in the nine-parish Baton Rouge metropolitan area,” while the North Baton Rouge chamber has rebranded itself the Baton Rouge Black Chamber of Commerce. It supports African-American-owned businesses. As for Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day, Jenkins took advance lunch orders personally by phone (his voice mailbox was full when Gambit called him), and he had tables set up in the parking lot of the east Baton Rouge restaurant, where chamber members handed out pre-boxed lunches for $6 apiece. Jenkins did not return Gambit’s email for comment, but judging from media reports, the day was a success for Chick-Fil-A franchises around the country and in Baton Rouge, where the chicken restaurants saw jammed drive-through lanes and long lines of customers inside. — KevIN ALLMAN
sworn in and then during the trial defendants pleaded guilty. Bowman added that Criminal Court judges also calculate the number of jury trials in their respective sections from the time jurors are sworn in. “We’re using the same definition of ‘jury trial’ as the judges,” Bowman told Gambit. According to Bowman, the DA’s office took 126 defendants to trial in the first half of 2012. Of those cases, 117 reached final resolutions. Juries returned guilty verdicts or defendants pleaded guilty in 94 of those cases, and in 23 cases the defendants were found not guilty — a conviction rate of 80.3 percent. There were seven hung juries and two additional mistrials declared by judges, which are not counted in calculating the DA’s conviction rate, Bowman said. He added that all defendants will be tried again in the cases that ended in mistrials. “I would have no problem counting [mistrials] as a loss if we never elected to retry the person, which we never do,” Bowman said. He added that many defendants, wary of a second trial, will opt to take a guilty plea. While he had not seen the numbers and could not independently verify them, Metropolitan Crime Commission (MCC) president Rafael Goyeneche said that 80 percent “is a significant improvement for what has historically been the conviction rate for jury trials in Orleans Parish.” Goyeneche pointed to a 2004 MCC study showing that between 1999 and 2003, Orleans Parish juries convicted defendants only 56 percent of the time. The DA’s overall conviction rate for cases closed in the first half of 2012, including felony guilty pleas, state misdemeanor guilty pleas and judge trials, is more than 90 percent, Cannizzaro told the council members. — CHARLeS MALDONADO
scuttlebutt Quote of the week
“Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for president. One hopes it is the same half.” — Gore Vidal, the novelist and essayist who died July 31 at 86. Among Vidal’s bestknown books were Julian, Burr and Myra Breckinridge. Regarding presidential elections, Vidal also said, “Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically by definition be disqualified from ever doing so.”
Gambit > bestofneworleans.com > auGust 7 > 2012
Games of chicken
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WOODY JENKINS AND CHICK-FIL-A Dan Cathy, president of the fast-food chain ChickFil-A, made news last month when he told the Baptist Press that the company was “guilty as charge” when it came to supporting “the Biblical definition of the family unit” — in other words, it opposed same-sex marriage legislation. Some Democratic mayors, including Chicago’s Rahm Emanuel and Boston’s Thomas Menino, issued statements they would oppose the chicken chain’s expansion in their cities. The legal justification behind such a move wasn’t spelled out, though the mayors got the press they no doubt sought. Meanwhile, Fox News personality and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee launched a “ChickFil-A Appreciation Day” set for Aug. 1, which was supported by family-values types including Fox News personality and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Family Research Council head Tony Perkins, former Pennsylvania Gov. Rick Santorum — and the newly formed east Baton Rouge Chamber of Commerce. A civic business council taking a stance on a divisive social issue? It makes sense when you find out that the chamber’s chairman is Woody Jenkins, publisher/editor of several small newspapers in suburban Baton Rouge and a former member of the Louisiana House of Representatives for nearly three decades. In the House, Jenkins’ voting record was lauded by both the Christian Coalition and Focus on the Family. A Republican, Jenkins ran for U.S. Senate in 1996 when J. Bennett Johnston retired; he narrowly lost the runoff to Mary Landrieu, who remains in the Senate. Applicants to the east Baton Rouge Chamber (which was founded in May) must sign an affidavit promising their business “does not derive its rev-
cases closed DA CLAIMS 80 PERCENT CONVICTION RATE In testimony before a City Council committee meeting last week, Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro said his office won convictions in 80 percent of jury trials closed in 2012. Cannizzaro said that number was “unheard of” in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court. According to DA spokesman Christopher Bowman, who spoke to Gambit after the August 1 joint Budget/Criminal Justice Committee meeting, all of those convictions stemmed from felony arrests, because almost all misdemeanors are tried before judges. “Probably … 99 percent of jury trials are felonies,” Bowman said. Bowman said the DA’s office calculates its jury trial conviction rate based on the number of defendants, not number of trials, because sometimes several defendants are tried together. Bowman said the conviction stats also include cases in which jurors were
trouble the water (board) INSPECTOR GENERAL, SEWERAGE BOARD WRANGLE New Orleans Inspector General Ed Quatrevaux called the Sewerage & Water Board (S&WB) “the most likely of the City’s component entities to engage in fraud, waste, and abuse” in a July 31 letter to Mayor Mitch Landrieu. Quatrevaux concluded that the S&WB shouldn’t be trusted to manage proceeds of