(Originally published in The Daily Caller.)
In the wake of Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot coming in an embarrassing third place in her re-election bid, it looks like another Democrat mayor may lose her office because she is endangering her constituents.
Public safety was a major issue in the Chicago mayoral primary, and UK Daily Mail noted, “Throughout her term, [Lightfoot] has been criticized for her soft-on-crime approach, which has led to massive increases in violence in the city, which is up 52 percent from last year and more than 100 percent from 2021.”
New Orleans is looking at some similarly bad numbers, and citizens have launched a recall campaign to have Democratic New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell removed from office because of the city’s record-high murder rate and other local issues.
Local residents launched the effort to recall Cantrell last August. Near the end of February 2023, they submitted the collected signatures to the Orleans Parish Registrar of Voters. The office has 20 working days from Feb. 22 to verify the signatures. There needs to be 20 percent of registered voters who signed the petition, which is around 50,000 signatures. However the recall organizers are currently suing the Registrar of Voters for allegedly failing to perform its mandatory annual purging of inactive voters from voter rolls. This is keeping the number of verified signatures needed higher than it may need to be.
Like Chicago, the leading concern for New Orleans citizens is crime. “Given recent events — a frightening surge in crime, road work that seems forever stalled, spotty basic services and a series of controversies surrounding Cantrell herself — New Orleans voters deserve a healthy debate about the city’s current and future leadership,” the petition website notes.
The city now holds the title of “murder capital of the United States” for the first half of 2022, according to WDSU. Even Cantrell noted in a memo violent crime was the leading cause of death for local children in 2022.
Cantrell has been accused of illegally spending $50,000 of taxpayer money on a promotional mailer about her accomplishments.
“By most accounts, the petition has already garnered more signatures than the number of votes Cantrell received in her 2021 reelection campaign,” according to the petition website. “We’re disappointed that the mayor has responded to the effort with defiance over contrition or humility. That’s not a wise strategy for her, and not a healthy one for New Orleans.”
As residents wait for the certification of the petition and signatures, it should be obvious to Cantrell that her constituents are not happy and her lax approach to getting crime in her city under control is not working.
New Orleans is a heavily Democratic city. Most of the names on that petition are not going to be Republicans. These are Democrats who are fed up with Democrat policies because they are having to live under them. They can see how it makes their lives more miserable and less safe.
“It’s a shame that the mayor has dismissed the recall drive as a purely partisan (or racist, or misogynist) undertaking,” according to the petition website. “Multiple polls show that a large majority of New Orleans voters are unhappy with the state of things.”
If Democrats want to remain in power in these cities, they are going to have to do something they have been avoiding doing … their jobs.
Michael A. Letts is the CEO and Founder of In-VestUSA, a national grassroots non-profit organization helping hundreds of communities provide thousands of bulletproof vests for their police forces through educational, public relations, sponsorship, and fundraising programs.
