MAYOR BIG SLEAZY
Corrupt boss added to Katrina woe A decade later, New Orleans’ Nagin is in prison
IT HAS OFTEN BEEN SAID that what happened to New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina was a man-made disaster.
A new book identifies former Mayor Ray Nagin as one of those men.
“Katrina: After the Flood” is as harrowing as it is riveting in recounting the tale of a city too broken to fight off its predatory would-be saviors.
Gary Rivlin, formerly a New York Times reporter sent to cover the catastrophe 10 years ago, delivers a balanced and comprehensive chronicle of all those who did wrong by post-Katrina New Orleans.
Self-professed messiah Nagin was front and center in August 2005 when the hurricane pounded the Crescent City. As the floodwaters receded, corruption began seeping in.
In 2001, everyone who knew the then-45-year-old cable executive laughed out loud when he announced an unexpected run for mayor.
He won by cozying up to the old-money white guard, N’awlins royalty, while spurning any association with black political groups.
His kingmaker was Jimmy Reiss, the wealthy descendant of an old New Orleans family.
Nagin cut an impressive swath as mayor — muscled, bald and polished. He would “Ray-Ray” folks, strolling through tense situations with a line of ready patter and a practiced swagger.
But he was so aggressively ineffectual that even primary patron Reiss was ready to dump him. Then the hurricane hit, and Nagin went off the deep end.
President George W. Bush, whose failure to respond to the disaster incited a backlash, was finally blowing into town five days after Katrina. He needed the mayor to be his friend, or at least appear friendly.
Nagin enjoyed a long shower on Air Force One before showing up at the conference table wild-eyed and trembling.
Still, Bush got the picture he needed, his arm slung around Nagin’s shoulder. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
It lasted even as Nagin got flirty with Louis Farrakhan.
Ten days after the flood, with New Orleans still under water, the mayor persuaded a utility company CEO to whisk the Nagins off to Dallas in a private jet.
Many wealthy New Orleans residents retreated there after the storm.
Nagin was fresh from an appearance on “Oprah,” where he spewed phony hysteria about Superdome atrocities. It was the beginning of a disastrous media tour.
In the Dallas airport on the return trip, he squeezed in a lovely chat with Farrakhan. The Nation of Islam leader floated the possibility that the levees had been bombed.
Rather than loudly say no, Nagin fudged things a bit. He then hurried home to have dinner with Bush. The mayor was on a roll. Nagin was living his very particular — some would say peculiar — dream. Shortly after Katrina hit, Nagin feverishly told an aide that he finally knew God’s plan for him: to “rebuild a new New Orleans.”
In 2006, facing a reelection campaign, Nagin sought divine intervention. He opened his remarks at a Martin Luther King Day celebration, declaring that he spoke just that morning with the slain civil rights leader.
While the great Rev. King didn’t come right out and say it, it seemed he wanted
Nagin reelected. Nagin then boldly declared it was time to rebuild “a chocolate New Orleans.”
The crowd didn’t go wild, but the media did. The story made national news. Soon there were T-shirts depicting Nagin as Willy Wonka and New Orleans as the chocolate factory, “now with 50% more nuts!”
Perhaps the city wasn’t entirely blameless in all that came next. Even as the blue bloods from Uptown abandoned Nagin, New Orleans reelected him.
Flash-forward to the first anniversary. The Lower Ninth, a predominantly poor and black ward, appeared just as forlorn as it did immediately after Katrina.
Nagin bizarrely defended the lack of progress by invoking Manhattan after 9/11.
“You guys in New York can’t get a hole in the ground fixed, and it’s five years later,” he shouted at CBS’ Byron Pitts.
The remark didn’t play well in front of the nation. But Nagin really had a thing about New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (right) and the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.
“We needed a Giuliani, but that wasn’t Ray,” one Nagin pal told the author. “He had to live with that each day, and it took its toll.”
Nagin had a freebie copy of Giuliani’s “Leadership,” but everyone doubted he had ever cracked the cover. He pointed out, though, that the mayor of New York got to sleep in his own bed each night and only a small corner of his city had been destroyed. Nagin took to traveling — a lot. He was gone so much, that one paper ran a Nagin parody of “Where’s Waldo?” A radio talk guy took to
calling him “Ray Nay-gone.”
By the third Katrina anniversary, a bunker mentality ruled. For one thing, the city agency charged with tearing down damaged buildings had been raided by the FBI. The Nagin appointee who headed it, and several of her employees, landed in jail.
It was merely the first of the corruption cases that would tear through City Hall.
Nagin’s wife, Seletha, and daughter, Tianna, were tucked away in a Dallas townhouse. But his sons, Jeremy and Jarin, had founded a home-improvement company.
Nagin was the major investor — and quite the booster.
He let companies like Home Depot know the city could be quite accommodating if business was sent the way of the family-owned Stone Age LLC.
It was only as a servant of the people that he turned lackadaisical. By contrast, Nagin was quite pushy when it came to personal gain.
This was a man who — just two months after the disaster — strong-armed a technology CEO into flying the Nagins first-class to Jamaica.
One there, they were the guests of another city contractor who would wind up behind bars.
Nagin was a contagion. It seemed everyone he touched broke out in handcuffs.
By 2008, when he was actually in New Orleans, it was only to say or do something horribly inappropriate. At the convention center, he joked in a speech that the real solution to the homeless encampments would be “some bus tickets . . . one way.”
In 2013, Nagin became the first New Orleans mayor indicted for crimes committed in office. The one thing people used to be able to say about Nagin was, “At least he’s honest.”
Now, he was facing 21 charges of corruption.
On the day in 2014 when Nagin was called to testify, he strolled into the courthouse, fully expecting to “Ray-Ray” his way out of the mess. He even encouraged the prosecutor to bring it on.
“I can deal with it,” the former mayor said. “We’re friends.” Not so much, really. Under tough questioning, Nagin snapped, blaming his staff for the crimes he had committed. He was busy saving the city. How could he be expected to play accountant, too?
At his sentencing, the judge brushed aside Seletha’s pleas that they had lost their Dallas home and were living on food stamps.
Nagin was ordered to pay more than $500,000 in fines and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Even then, the man was all bluster.
“Some of the stances I took after Katrina didn’t sit well with some very powerful people,” declared Nagin. “So now I’m paying the price for that.”
He still is. Ray Nagin went to prison last September.