Nagin watch

It looks like Mayor Ray “chocolate New Orleans” Nagin, with a little help from some Houston NAACP folks and other local black community ‘leaders’, is fanning the racial flames regarding New Orleans’ upcoming April 22nd election:

New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin on Saturday asked black community leaders here in Houston to help evacuees vote absentee or in person in the city’s April 22 primary election.

[...]

Most of the Houston leaders in attendance were supportive of Nagin, murmuring “amen” and clapping as he bemoaned complicated election procedures that he implied were racially motivated.

“This process that’s before us is one that I’m getting more uncomfortable with every day. This is not about Ray Nagin,” he told the group. “There is potential for major changes in the political structure.”

‘Few of them look like us’

Nagin noted that 23 candidates entered the mayoral fray before the registration deadline last week.

“Very few of them look like us,” he told the almost totally black crowd of about 200 persons who attended the meeting at the NAACP Family & Technology Center on Fannin.

Claude Foster, regional director of the Southwestern Region VI NAACP, said they have asked U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to intervene in the state of Louisiana decision to hold the primary election as scheduled.

NAACP officials favor postponing the election until the fall, when more evacuees have returned to their homes or have had time to learn about election procedures.

“We do not approve of the election plan state officials have put in place,” said Foster.

“If it requires us to take legal action, we will fight this.”

U.S. Rep. Al Green, D-Houston, a longtime NAACP leader, also said the election process was too convoluted and also implied there were sinister political motivations. behind it.

“We cannot allow this kind of political behavior to circumvent the rights of folks to vote,” said Green, whose hometown is New Orleans.

Once, just once, I’d like any of the folks who’ve implied and/or said that the reason the federal response to Katrina was so ’slow’ was because federal officials saw a bunch of stranded black New Orleans citizens at the Superdome, and who are now implying and/or saying that sinister people who “don’t look like us” (read: black) are trying to sneak in and grab New Orleans like a thief in the night in the upcoming elections – would either back up their words with facts or shut up.

Hat tip: Mark Noonan at Blogs For Bush

(Cross-posted at California Conservative)

Related Toldjah So posts:

• Mayor Nagin may not get his “chocolate city” wish
• Great suggestion for a new Ben and Jerry’s flavor: New Orlean’s Chocolate Chip Mardi Gras
• Nagin revises “chocolate city” comment
• N.O. Mayor Ray Nagin wants a “chocolate” New Orleans
• Race-baiting Democrats and the media’s complicity
• “We’ve gone from fire hoses to levees.”
• Media pushes “white guilt” angle
• Exploiting the Katrina tragedy
• The race card is officially on the table