Mitch Landrieu thought he knew the problems that awaited him when he was elected mayor of New Orleans in a landslide last February. There was the spotty, prolonged recovery from Hurricane Katrina, which exacerbated long-standing problems of blight and crumbling infrastructure; a $60 million budget deficit; a police department awash in scandal; and an explosion of violent crime. Then came the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, which threatened to spoil the great brackish lake north of the city; the rise in the budget deficit to $80 million; and revelations of mismanagement in the obscure city agency that operated the city’s rail lines. Just last month, a breakdown at a water purification plant forced a two-day boil water advisory for about 300,000 people. Though Landrieu is a veteran of Louisiana politics, as well as being the son of a former mayor and brother of a U.S. senator, he confesses he was taken aback at times after taking office in May. “What surprised me was the deepness of the dysfunction in city government and how large the deficit really was,” Landrieu says.
He has tackled the job of leading the Crescent City with a mix of optimism and realism. In speeches and interviews, he often seizes on the New Orleans Saints’ Super Bowl victory—the day after he was elected—as a symbol of what can be accomplished. But he is unflinching in assessments of the city’s problems, laid out in a speech he titled “Eyes Wide Open.” So far, the public appears to be on his side: a University of New Orleans poll taken in mid-November gave Landrieu a 75% approval rating, even though he’d recently called for substantial property tax and fee increases.
