Assessing Equity in Political Representation in New Orleans

Assessing Equity in Political Representation in New Orleans Dr. Mirya R. Holman and Chloe Schwanz

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY As we approach the 300th anniversary of the City of New Orleans, we continue to grapple with central issues of inequity, especially across race and gender lines. Livable wages, job availability, and training are particularly pivotal for Black and female residents, who are more likely to live in poverty, to be among the working poor, and to work in jobs without clear pathways for advancement. One path forward for increasing the standard of living for all New Orleans residents is through local elections. Literature shows that the representation of women and African Americans in local office has the potential to shape policy outcomes. As the proportion of women and African American council members increase, so do the policies that benefit constituents of these groups, increasing equity. This report uses the biographies and backgrounds of our elected officials, past and present, to understand who has access to political power in New Orleans. Since the 1970s until eight years ago, New Orleans has elected mayors who were Black men. Latoya Cantrell shows the rise of women in politics in the postKatrina world alongside the continued importance of Black political leadership. Ten years – and seven elections – out from Katrina, our political landscape is both transformed and the product of years of political traditions. With the election of our first woman mayor, along with a majority women and people of color city council, New Orleans moves into a new era of representation, setting the stage for a future of equity.

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INTRODUCTION Political Representation as a Measure of Equality Women and people of color are generally underrepresented in political office in the United States. For example, women hold less than 20% of congressional seats and 25% of state legislative positions.1 In Louisiana, women hold 15% of state legislative seats.2 Bucking these national trends, the representation of women in political offices in New Orleans has increased substantially since Katrina. New Orleans also exceeds state legislatures and Congress in the racial diversity of its elected officials; while 13% of state legislators and 11% of congressional representatives are Black, New Orleans has reliably elected majority Black city councils.3 Indeed, with a current city council that is majority women and racially diverse, New Orleans is markedly different from many other major cities in the United States.4 Yet, we know little about long term trends in representation across local offices. Further, we do not have an understanding of how race intersects with gender in shaping who runs for office and who wins in New Orleans. This report uses historical and current data on the race and gender of political candidates and elected officials to understand who has access to political power. We use the biographies of candidates and elected officials to discuss pathways to power in New Orleans.

Investigating the levels of representation of women and candidates of color – and their paths to political office – offers opportunities to evaluate equity in our city and how gender and race shape policy making, democratic accountability, and the empowerment of women and people of color.

As we approach the 300th anniversary of the City of New Orleans, the city continues to grapple with central issues of equity, especially across race and gender lines. For example, increasing costs of housing disproportionately affect people of color and women in the city.5 Livable wages, job availability, and training are particularly pivotal for Black and female residents, who are more likely to live in poverty, to be among the working poor, and to work in jobs without clear pathways for advancement.6 These longstanding and substantial issues have remained a challenge, but one possibility for increasing the standard of living for all New Orleans residents is through the election of a female mayor and a city council populated with women and people of color. Further, as New Orleans moves forward with this trend of placing women and people of color in political office, the possibility exists for leadership in the city to more carefully consider the race, gender, and inequality consequences of their policies.7

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WHO HAS HELD OFFICE IN NEW ORLEANS? From the late 1970s up to the election of Mitch Landrieu in 2010, Black mayoral leadership was a characteristic of New Orleans politics. These mayors varied substantially in their leadership styles, policy goals, and the extent to which they represented the black community in New Orleans.8 And, while Mitch Landrieu represents eight years of white mayoral leadership, New Orleans returns to a Black mayor in 2018, but with a very specific and important difference: our new mayor is a Black woman. In many ways, Latoya Cantrell represents both the continuation of long-term patterns of access to political office in New Orleans and more recent changes. In particular, Cantrell shows the rise of women in politics in the post-Katrina New Orleans alongside the continued importance of Black political leadership. Ten years – and seven elections – out from Katrina, our political landscape is both transformed and the product of three hundred years of political traditions.

Given the importance of local political institutions in crafting policy to address the core issues in cities, it is valuable to understand who has access to local political office. There is a connection between descriptive representation, or someone who represents the characteristics of a population, and substantive representation, someone who represents the needs of a population. This connection leads to the conclusion that representatives who share an identifying characteristic (such as gender, race, and class) will act for the interests of that group.9 Indeed, many argue that, “The proficiency of a group to muster resources towards the capture of seats on governing bodies is expected to result in the transformation of public policy.”10 The inclusion of these groups will also change the deliberative process through the inclusion of new perspectives and ideas about policy; for example, “…descriptive representation by gender improves substantive outcomes for women in every polity for which we have a measure11.”

There is a large body of literature that finds that descriptive representation at the local level translates into important policy changes for members of the group represented. For example, women mayors increase women’s municipal employment, while Black mayors increase Black municipal employment.12 Additionally, the representation of women and African Americans in local office change budget decisions. For example, previous work finds that women mayors increase funding for social service programs.13 Research also suggests that women and African Americans on the city council may shape policy, but that their effect may be more pronounced when their proportion of the council increases beyond nominal levels.14 This is to say that as the proportion of women and African American council members increase, so do the policies that benefit constituents of these groups, increasing equity.

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In what follows, we evaluate who has access to political power in New Orleans through an investigation of the race and gender of mayors and city council members. In doing so, we evaluate the degree to which the current political leadership follows traditional patterns of people that have access to political power in the United States. Specifically, we evaluate the education, family connections, and political experience of current leaders, including whether these factors vary by race and gender. We then look at the historical patterns of race and gender representation in the office of mayor and city council. We then examine who runs for local office, followed by who wins when they do run. We conclude with a discussion of how these patterns may affect local equity.

THE CURRENT LANDSCAPE Prior New Orleans political leaders and those who have run for and served as a mayor or on the city council share several commonalities. These common characteristics, such as a law degree, political experience, and having family in politics are typical paths to running for office as well as attaining political office.15 Below we evaluate office holders and the top-two candidates in New Orleans in 2017 who exhibit these common characteristics as well as an important fourth characteristic which is more prevalent among female candidates and political officials: participation in grassroots or community activism.

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Table Note: Data collected by the authors and includes all recently elected political leaders, and the top two vote-getters for the 2017 election for each council seat and the mayoral office. Candidates are listed alphabetically by last name. To understand the professional and political backgrounds of the candidates, we extracted biographical information from the candidates’ own campaign websites, the New Orleans City Council website, Ballotpedia.com, as well as local news sources such as The Advocate and Nola.com.

JD = Juris Doctorate. N.O. = New Orleans. OPSB = Orleans Parish School District

Political officials have typically attained higher education levels than the general population in the United States and are much more likely to hold law degrees.16 This pattern carries through to New Orleans candidates and political officials – more than half of the current leaders and candidates have a Juris Doctor. Of the 2014-2016 councilmembers, 63% have a law degree. This number is slightly lower in the 2017 group of candidates, where 50% of the 2017 top-polling candidates, those represented here, hold a JD. These percentages far exceed the average prevalence of law degrees within the general population in the United States (where approximately 0.4% have a law degree) or in New Orleans (where 1.5% has a law degree). Black and white candidates and elected leaders are equally likely to hold a JD, as are men and women.

Political candidates often have family in politics 17; New Orleans is not immune to these patterns. Three of the eight individuals that held office in 2016 have a family member who has been or currently holds a political office. This is also true of the 2017 candidates who received either the most and second most votes, with 5 of the 16 having a family member in politics. The winners in the 2017 general election are even more likely to have a family connection to politics, with nearly half of those who proceeded to the runoff election having a relative who has held an office.

Black candidates and leaders are more likely to have previous political experience, with 88% of recent Black leaders and candidates having previous experience, compared to 67% of white candidates and leaders. Men and women are equally likely to have previous political experience.

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Common Characteristics for Winning Candidates (law degree, political experience, family in politics) Number of common characteristics 0 1 2 3

Men

Women Black

White

9% 18% 36% 36%

25% 13% 25% 38%

22% 11% 22% 44%

0% 22% 44% 33%

Table note: Data aggregated from Table 1.

If we evaluate these common characteristics in aggregate, some patterns of interest emerge. First, many of the current office holders and other 2017 candidates are lacking one or more common characteristic. Second, women are the most likely to have none of these characteristics. Two of the current leaders (Susan Guidry and LaToya Cantrelll) and one of the 2017 candidates (Cyndi Nguyen) lack all three common characteristics.

As aforementioned, in the characteristic data for several of the candidates is experience in community activism.

Interestingly, the women candidates who lack the three common characteristics all share this pre-political experience. Each of the women have a history of significant community activism thus, community exposure.

This is consistent with the overall patterns in the data presented in Table 2, where women are much more likely (62.5%) to have previous community or grassroots experience than are men (27%). These patterns are consistent with a view of gendered institutionalism, where women are often unable to access positions of power that are associated with traditional pathways to political office. Instead, they turn to grassroots, community based work, often founding or leading non-profits, and volunteering in local organizations as a pathway to political office.18 We found that female candidates in New Orleans have similar backgrounds to many other women who run for office on the federal level, who note that social welfare concerns are a political motivation for running for office.19 In New Orleans, women candidates and elected leaders cite social welfare concerns as political motivation for running for office 81% of the time while male candidates and elected leaders cite social welfare as a motivator only 57% of the time. Generally, evidence suggests that these campaign concerns translate into policy change: when in office, women are generally more likely to work on social welfare issues and fund social welfare programs, especially when there is both a woman mayor and women on the city council.

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HISTORY OF REPRESENTATION IN NEW ORLEANS New Orleans Mayors How does the current mayor and city council as well as candidates for these offices compare, in terms of race and gender, to previous political leaders? We next look at the racial and gender characteristics of the mayors that have held office in New Orleans since 1950. It is worth noting that we could easily look at the racial and gender characteristics of mayors of New Orleans since 1803 (when New Orleans began to independently elect mayors) and they would be identical to those who held office in the 1950s and 1960s – white men with access to political power. Ernest Morial, elected in 1978, was the first Black mayor to serve in New Orleans.20 In 2017, New Orleans elected a woman as mayor for the first time in its 300 year history.

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Table note: Data from http://nutrias.org/~nopl/facts/mayors.htm, race and gender documented by authors.

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New Orleans City Council Data on the race and gender balance of the New Orleans city council for earlier years is less available, so we present the most recent thirty years of city council composition by race and gender. For ease of interpretation, we provide the data by council term. Given that there are occasionally turnovers on the council mid-term, we account for all members who officially served on the council during each term.

We see two central patterns, which are later borne out in additional data: The share of women on the city council has increased over the last thirty years, while the share of Black council members has decreased slightly. Indeed, in every council-cycle since Katrina, women have made up the majority of the city council.

This is significantly different than most other large cities in the United States, where women make up between 25%-30% of city councils.21

Percent of each city council who are women or Black, 1986-2018 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 1990-1994

1994-1998

1998-2002

2002-2006

% women

2006-2010

2010-2014

2014-2018

% Black

Table note: Raw data from Louisiana Secretary of State archives, including run-offs and special elections; percentages calculated by authors.

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Candidates for Political Office in New Orleans Looking first at the number and percentage of candidates for city council and mayor that are Black in New Orleans over the past thirty years, we can observe a high level of volatility, with the share of candidates who are Black ranging from 41% in 2010 to 100% of the three candidates in 2005. At several points, including 1994, 2002, 2005, 2007, and from 2012 onward, the share of Black candidates exceeds sixty percent of all the city council and mayoral candidates in the race.

Number and Percentage of Black and White Candidates for Office, 1986-2017

Table note: Raw data from Louisiana Secretary of State archives, including run-offs and special elections; percentages calculated by authors.

When we look at the number of women as candidates, the share of women candidates has increased over time, but is consistently lower than the share of women in the general population. There is only one election – the 2007 special election for a city council seat – where women made up more than 50% of the candidates in any city council or mayoral election in New Orleans. There are two periods of increase: in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the share of women candidates increased from 14% in 1986 to 35% in 1998; a pattern of increased activism for women in politics in the early 1990s is consistent with national patterns. For example, 1992 is considered by many to be the “Year of the Woman” in U.S. politics, where women dramatically increased in their share of representation in the U.S. Congress and in many state legislatures. In this way, New Orleans’ patterns are consistent with what happened in other places in the country. Indeed, the subsequent plateau and decline in the early 2000s is also consistent with national patterns.

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Number and Percentage of Male and Female Candidates for Office, 1986-2017 90

100%

80

90%

70

80% 70%

60

60%

50

50%

40

40%

30

30%

20

20%

10

10%

0

0% 1986 1990 1994 1998 2000 2002 2005 2006 2007 2010 2012 2014 2017 Number of men

Number of women

Percent women

Table note: Raw data from Louisiana Secretary of State archives, including run-offs and special elections; aggregate numbers and percentages calculated by authors.

When we look at the number of candidates within the intersection of gender and race, several patterns emerge.

First, the majority of black and white candidates are men in almost every single election since 1986, with 2007 (again) as the single exception. Second, the increases in the number of women running for political office – whether the modest increases seen in the early 1990s or the more recent increases – have been from both black and white women running for office in New Orleans. Indeed, while black women made up 25% of black candidates from 1986 to 2005, they have made up 34% of black candidates since. And, while white women were only 19% of candidates prior to Katrina, they have made up 37% of candidates since. As such, both groups have seen large increases in who runs since the storm.

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Number of Candidates by Race and Gender of Candidate Year 1986 1990 1994 1998 2000 2002 2005 2006 2007 2010 2012 2014 2017

BLACK CANDIDATES Women Men 4 17 4 15 9 42 3 8 3 6 6 21 1 2 9 27 6 4 1 6 7 10 7 13 8 23

% women 19% 21% 18% 27% 33% 22% 33% 25% 60% 14% 41% 35% 26%

WHITE CANDIDATES Women Men 1 18 5 14 8 10 4 5 0 7 2 14 0 0 11 33 3 2 2 7 4 4 4 5 3 14

% women 5% 26% 44% 44% 0% 13% 0% 25% 60% 22% 50% 44% 18%

Table note: Raw data from Louisiana Secretary of State archives, including run-offs and special elections; aggregate numbers calculated by authors.

WINNERS OF LOCAL ELECTIONS We next look at the general race and gender of the candidates that won elections in New Orleans from 19862018. We first look at the percentages candidates who are Black and women that won their election from 19862014, then we examine the raw numbers of winners. Two patterns emerge: first, the percentage of women who win has increased fairly steadily from 1986 to 2014, with large increases in the post-Katrina period. At the same time, the percentage of Black candidates who win has decreased, although it started at a high level, with Black leaders representing an average of 83% of winners in the 1980s and 1990s.

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Percentages of Winners of Elections who are Black and Women, 1986-2017 FEMALE WINNERS 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%

BLACK WINNERS 120% 100% 80% 60% 40% 20% 0%

A similar pattern emerges when we look at the number of women and Black candidates that won elections from 1986 to 2014. Here we also present a basic trendline of the number of Black and women candidates who win their elections during the time period. Again, women have substantially increased in their representation since Katrina, moving from an average of 1.17 women elected per election prior to Katrina to 2 women elected per election after Katrina. Black candidates, however, decrease in their numbers: prior to Katrina, an average of 3.3 Black candidates won their election and this number declines to 2 candidates winning per election after Katrina; this may be partially a reflection of the city’s changing demographics post-Katrina, where the Black population diminished from 67% of the population in 2000 to 59% in 2013.22

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Number of Female and Black Winners, 1986-2014 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 1986

1990

1994

1998

2000

2002

2005

2006

2007

2010

2012

Number of female winners

Number of Black winners

Trendline (female winners)

Trendline (Black winners)

2014

2017

Implications for Future Policy and Actions Equity in New Orleans is dependent on the ability of all groups to access political power. The Mayor of New Orleans controls a budget of more than $600 million and manages more than 4,100 full time employees. The city council makes policy decisions on a wide-ranging set of issues from zoning and economic development to addressing social issues like homelessness and hunger. Whose voices are heard – and which political leaders are selected – for these important political positions can have long-term effects on the lives of New Orleanians for years – even decades – to come.

Latoya Cantrell’s election as New Orleans first woman mayor ever in the city’s 300-year history has the potential to shift policy making toward steadfastly addressing the city’s social inequity issues. Her success has also shown that what are typically thought of as common characteristics to attain political office are not the only pathways to political office. Instead, it serves to exhibit what alternative characteristics might be valuable in candidates vying for future political office, particularly candidates whose motivation lies in improving the lives of their constituents. As discussed earlier, when a significant female presence in the city council is paired with a female mayor, social service policy increases.

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CONCLUSION Local positions often serve as a path to higher levels of office, including from city council to mayor.23 Higher levels of office offer greater opportunities to create equity across a population through policy making. Latoya Cantrell’s move from city council to mayor, or Stacy Head’s transition from a district to an at-large position are evidence of this process in New Orleans. As such, understanding who runs for, and wins, local office in New Orleans is very important for working toward equity in prosperity across all groups in a population.

Representation in political office is important in that it offers an array of perspectives to ensure all groups, regardless of race or gender, are valued and utilized to inform policy decisions that could affect current and future generations. As the literature has shown, women are more likely than men to seek political office with improving social services as the primary motivator. And, when elected to office, they are also more likely to draft policies that seek to build equity for disadvantaged groups by addressing social issues through funding programs.24 Latoya Cantrell’s success in her bid for both New Orleans’ first female mayor and first Black female mayor brings to the highest office in the city invaluable perspective for policy decisions. As we move into this new era of representation in New Orleans, the presence of both people of color and women on the council, paired with a female mayor, offer hope for alleviating long standing issues of inequity in our remarkable city.

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NOTES 1

CAWP, “Current Numbers | CAWP,” Current Numbers, 2017, http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/current-numbers.

CAWP, “Louisiana Fact Sheet,” 2017, http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/state_fact_sheets/la; Karl Kurtz, “Who We Elect: The Demographics of State Legislatures,” 2015, http://www.ncsl.org/research/about-state-legislatures/who-we-elect.aspx.

3 Kristen Bialik and Jens Manuel Krogstad, “115th Congress Sets New High for Racial, Ethnic Diversity,” Pew Research Center (blog), January 24, 2017, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/24/115th-congress-sets-new-high-for-racial-ethnicdiversity/.

4 CAWP, “Female Mayors 2014” (Rutgers, N.J: Center for American Women and Politics, Rutgers University, 2014); Seth Motel,“Who Runs for Office? A Profile of the 2%,” Pew Research Center (blog), September 3, 2014, http://www.pewresearch.org/facttank/2014/09/03/who-runs-for-office-a-profile-of-the-2/.

5 Mirya R. Holman and Chloe Schwanz, “The Status of Women in New Orleans since Katrina” (New Orleans, LA: Newcomb College Institute, Tulane University, August 2016), http://www2.tulane.edu/newcomb/upload/8-24-16-Status-of-Women-Report.pdf.

6 The Data Center, “The New Orleans Index at Ten” (New Orleans, LA: The Data Center, n.d.).

7 Mirya R. Holman, “Sex And The City: Female Leaders And Spending On Social Welfare Programs In U.S. Municipalities,” Journal of Urban Affairs 36, no. 4 (2014): 701–15; Mirya R. Holman, “Women in Local Government,” State and Local Government Review OnlineFirst (September 25, 2017), https://doi.org/10.1177/0160323X17732608; Mirya R. Holman, Women in Politics in the American City (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2015).

8 Stefanie Chambers and William Nelson, “Black Mayoral Leadership in New Orleans: Minority Incorporation Revisited,” National Political Science Review 16 (2014): 117–93.

9 Jane Mansbridge, “Rethinking Representation,” American Political Science Review 97, no. 4 (2003): 515–28; Joshua Behr, “Black and Female Municipal Employment: A Substantive Benefit of Minority Political Incorportation?,” Journal of Urban Affairs 22, no.

3 (2000): 243–64; Justin de Benedictis-Kessner and Christopher Warshaw, “Mayoral Partisanship and Municipal Fiscal Policy,” The Journal of Politics 78, no. 4 (August 11, 2016): 1124–38, https://doi.org/10.1086/686308; F.V. Ferreira and G Gyourko, “Does Gender Matter for Political Leadership? The Case of U.S. Mayors.” (The Wharton School University of Pennsylvania, 2011).

10 Ferreira and Gyourko, “Does Gender Matter for Political Leadership? The Case of U.S. Mayors.”

11 Holman, “Women in Local Government.”

12 Grace Hall Saltzstein, “Female Mayors and Women in Municipal Jobs.,” American Journal of Political Science 30, no. 1 (1986): 140–64; Kenneth J. Meier and Kendall D. Funk, “Women and Public Administration in a Comparative Perspective,” Administration & Society, January 28, 2016, https://doi.org/10.1177/0095399715626201; John V. C. Nye, Ilia Rainer, and Thomas Stratmann, “Do Black Mayors Improve Black Relative to White Employment Outcomes? Evidence from Large US Cities,” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 31, no. 2 (May 1, 2015): 383–430.

13 Holman, “Sex And The City: Female Leaders And Spending On Social Welfare Programs In U.S. Municipalities”; Holman, Women in Politics in the American City.

14 Holman, “Sex And The City: Female Leaders And Spending On Social Welfare Programs In U.S. Municipalities”; Peter F. Burns, Electoral Politics Is Not Enough: Racial and Ethnic Minorities and Urban Politics (New York: SUNY Press, 2006).

15 Christopher F. Karpowitz, J. Quin Monson, and Jessica Robinson Preece, “How to Elect More Women: Gender and Candidate Success in a Field Experiment,” American Journal of Political Science, March 1, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12300; Kira Sanbonmatsu and Susan J. Carroll, “Poised to Run: Women’s Pathways to the State Legislatures” (Rutgers, N.J: Center for American Women and Politics, Eagleton Institute of Politics, Rutgers University, 2009); Sanbonmatsu and Carroll.

16 Nicholas Carnes, White-Collar Government: The Hidden Role of Class in Economic Policy Making (University of Chicago Press, 2013).

17 Magda Hinojosa, Selecting Women, Electing Women Political Representation and Candidate Selection in Latin America (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2012); Peter Allen, David Cutts, and Rosie Campbell, “Measuring the Quality of Politicians Elected by Gender Quotas – Are They Any Different?,” Political Studies 64, no. 1 (March 1, 2016): 143–63.

18 Jennifer L. Lawless and Richard L. Fox, It Still Takes A Candidate: Why Women Don’t Run for Office (Cambridge University Press, 2010); Sanbonmatsu and Carroll, “Poised to Run: Women’s Pathways to the State Legislatures.”

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Holman, Women in Politics in the American City; Sue Thomas, “Why Gender Matters: The Perceptions of Women Office-Holders,” Women and Politics 17, no. 1 (1997): 27–53.

20 Peter F. Burns and Matthew O. Thomas, Reforming New Orleans: The Contentious Politics of Change in the Big Easy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015); Peter F. Burns and Matthew O. Thomas, “Governors and the Development Regime in New Orleans,” Urban Affairs Review 39, no. 6 (July 1, 2004): 791–812; Chambers and Nelson, “Black Mayoral Leadership in New Orleans: Minority Incorporation Revisited.”

21 Holman, Women in Politics in the American City; Denise Antolini, “Women in Local Government: An Overview,” in Political Women: Current Roles in State and Local Government (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1984).

22 These numbers should be interpreted with caution, as they do not account for the number of seats up for election in each election.

23 Melody Crowder-Meyer and Benjamin E. Lauderdale, “A Partisan Gap in the Supply of Female Potential Candidates in the United States,” Research & Politics 1, no. 1 (April 1, 2014): 2053168014537230, https://doi.org/10.1177/2053168014537230; Susan J. Carroll and Kira Sanbonmatsu, More Women Can Run: Gender and Pathways to the State Legislatures (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); Darlene Budd, Angelique Myers, and Thomas Longoria, “The Role of a Gendered Policy Agenda in Closing the Mayoral Ambition Gap: The Case of Texas Female City Council Members,” Journal of Research on Women and Gender 6 (2016): 81–93.

24 Meier and Funk, “Women and Public Administration in a Comparative Perspective”; Holman, “Sex And The City: Female Leaders and Spending On Social Welfare Programs In U.S. Municipalities”; Thomas, “Why Gender Matters: The Perceptions of Women Office-Holders.”

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