Race takes lead role in New Orleans contest

From NYTimes.com

Less than a month before the primary, the race for mayor here is a struggle over who will bring the soaring murder rate down, who will attract badly needed new businesses and who will guide the city in its still dauntingly long road to recovery. But it is also about something else.

"It's always about race," said Lambert C. Boissiere Jr., a former state senator and currently the city constable. "I don't know why we dance around it."

The balance of power between blacks and whites in New Orleans has been an issue for decades, a back-and-forth that has only intensified since Hurricane Katrina, now that every election is a referendum on the future of the city. But a recent decision by a black candidate to drop out of the 2010 mayor's race has made the possibility of a white man in the city's most powerful office startlingly real...

Continued at NYTimes.com