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Clarence Ray Nagin Jr. (born June 11, 1956 in New Orleans) is the Mayor of New Orleans, Louisiana. He was elected in May 2002, succeeding Marc Morial. Nagin gained international prominence in 2005 as the mayor of New Orleans during and immediately following Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the city.

Biography

Before his election, Nagin was a member of the Republican Party and had little political experience; he was a vice president and general manager at Cox Communications, a cable communications company and subsidiary of Cox Enterprises. Nagin did give donations periodically to candidates, namely President George W. Bush and former Republican U.S. Representative Billy Tauzin in 1999 and 2000, as well as to Democratic U.S. Senators John Breaux and J. Bennett Johnston earlier in the decade.

Days before filing for the New Orleans Mayoral race in February 2002, Nagin switched his party registration to the Democratic Party, presumably in order to improve his chances of winning the race in heavily Democratic New Orleans. Shortly before the primary election, an endorsement praising Nagin as a reformer by Gambit Magazine gave him crucial momentum that would carry through for the primary election and runoff. In the first round of the crowded mayoral election in February 2002, Nagin received first place with 29% of the vote, against such opponents as Police Chief Richard Pennington, State Senator Paulette Irons, City Councilman Troy Carter and others. In the runoff with Pennington in May 2002, Nagin won with 59% of the vote. His campaign was largely self-financed.

Shortly after taking office, Nagin launched an anti-corruption campaign within city government, which included crackdowns on the city's Taxicab Bureau and Utilities Department. Nagin also made a controversial endorsement of current Republican U.S. Representative Bobby Jindal in the 2003 Louisiana Gubernatorial Runoff over current Democratic Governor Kathleen Blanco, and only reluctantly endorsed U.S. Senator John Kerry in the 2004 Presidential race.

Nagin received a B.S. degree in accounting from Tuskegee University in 1978 and an M.B.A. degree from Tulane University in 1994. He and his wife, Seletha Smith Nagin, have three children: Jeremy, Jarin, and Tianna.

Hurricane Katrina

On Friday August 26, the National Hurricane Center predicted for the first time that Katrina would become a Category 4 storm, and thus exceed the design limits of the New Orleans levees .

On Saturday August 27, Nagin issued a voluntary evacuation request late in the day. He was hesitant to order a mandatory evacuation because of concerns about the city's liability for closing hotels and other businesses.

On Sunday August 28, Katrina became a Category 4 hurricane . New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin declared a mandatory evacuation of the city, and opened the Superdome to those who couldn't leave the city. State Governor controlled National Guard troops were stationed inside the Superdome to screen refugees for weapons , yet the situation within the Superdome was very difficult for evacuees and city government could not cope with the problems.

Katrina shifted eastward approximately 15 miles from its expected landfall point, which was to be a direct hit on the city of New Orleans, only a couple of hours prior to making landfall, minimizing the anticipated wind damage to the city. The resultant floods arrived many hours after the worst of the hurricane had passed, breeching and undercutting the levees in numerous locations and quickly inundating a wide area of New Orleans. An estimated 90,000 were still in the city when the hurricane made landfall on August 29, causing severe damage to most of New Orleans.

On September 1, 2005, Nagin expressed his frustration, anger and fury at the response of other government officials and the lack of aid to the city of New Orleans in an emotional interview on radio station WWL:

I don't want to see anybody do anymore goddamn press conferences. Put a moratorium on press conferences. Don't do another press conference until the resources are in this city. And then come down to this city and stand with us when there are military trucks and troops that we can't even count.

Don't tell me 40,000 people are coming here. They're not here. It's too doggone late. Now get off your asses and do something, and let's fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country.

The mayor also stated, "The convention center is unsanitary and unsafe, and we are running out of supplies for the 15,000 to 20,000 people."

In several television interviews, FEMA director Michael D. Brown claimed he had only officially learned about the Convention Center situation on Friday, September 2, 2005.

On September 3, 2005, President Bush issued a statement saying that " has created tremendous problems that have strained state and local capabilities. The result is that many of our citizens simply are not getting the help they need, especially in New Orleans. And that is unacceptable." .

External links

• The City of New Orleans
• Campaign contributions made by Ray Nagin
• Mayor to feds: 'Get off your asses', CNN transcript and the audio of WWL-AM radio interview.
• Profile on CityMayors.com
• Southeast Louisiana Evacuation Plan Supplement

• 1956 births
• New Orleanians
• African American politicians
• Mayors of New Orleans