Two Candidates Vying to be the First Female Mayor of New Orleans

The next mayor of New Orleans, Louisiana, will be a black woman. This will be a first for the city in its nearly 300-year history.
The city has not yet elected its new mayor, but both candidates to emerge from the first round of voting on Saturday are black women.
The top two contenders, city Councilwoman, LaToya Cantrell and former Municipal Court Judge, Desiree Charbonnet, will face each other in a runoff election on November 18.
In Saturday’s election, Cantrell collected 39 percent of the vote to Charbonnet’s 30 percent, knocking former Civil District Court Judge, Michael Bagneris, with only 19 percent of the vote.
New Orleans uses a top two “jungle primary” system in which nonpartisan elections proceed to a runoff if no candidate gets over fifty percent on the first ballot.
Cantrell, a community organizer, hindered an effort to demolish her Broadmoor neighborhood after Hurricane Katrina. She is regarded as the more progressive of the two candidates.
Cantrell’s support for a $15 minimum wage and criminal justice reform earned her support of local left-leaning organizations like Step Up Louisiana and national groups like the Working Families Party.
As city councilwoman, Cantrell was successful in her efforts to ban smoking in New Orleans bars, restaurants and casinos.
“LaToya Cantrell ran a campaign focused on making New Orleans a city that truly works for all its communities, not just a wealthy few,” a spokesman for the Working Families Party, Joe Dinkin said in a statement.
“Across the country, voters are rewarding candidates who are running on that kind of transformative progressive message,” Dinkin went on to say.
If elected, Cantrell, 45, would be the city’s first non-native mayor. She grew up in Los Angeles, California, and moved to New Orleans to attend college at Xavier University of Louisiana. She is also officially endorsed by the New Orleans Times-Picayune Newspaper.
Charbonnet, on the other hand, comes from a political family with deep roots in the area and has been in city politics since the late 1990s. This could be her advantage in the primary and general election because of her ties to Congressman Cedric Richmond, as well as a significant source of support from old 7th Ward political interests, including the family of former mayor, Sidney Barthelemy.
The Charbonnet family also operated the Charbonnet Funeral Home in the Treme neighborhood of New Orleans. She is known for her efforts on the bench to steer repeat drug and prostitution offenders to treatment programs instead of jail.
If elected, Charbonnet’s priorities would be public safety, infrastructure, housing and education; whereas Cantrell’s goal as mayor is to build on combined strengths and determination.
Both candidates are running on reducing violent crime due to New Orleans having one of the highest murder rates of any big city in the country and ensuring greater access to affordable housing.
The runoff will be held November 18th.