New Orleans residents react to LaToya Cantrell indictment | Local Politics

Kevin Green walked his dog near the Lake Pontchartrain shoreline Sunday morning and, like many residents of New Orleans this weekend, thought about the squandered promise of Mayor LaToya Cantrell.

A neighborhood activist turned anti-establishment politician, Cantrell once seemed like a breath of fresh air for New Orleans, said Green, a retired police officer who grew up in Gert Town and the Lower 9th Ward. She was someone who would “speak her mind” about problems in the city whether people wanted to hear it or not.

“I thought she was a really good person at first,” said Green as his dog, Parker, sniffed around. “But with decisions you make, consequences come behind them.”

Two days after a federal grand jury handed up an 18-count indictment against Cantrell and her former bodyguard Jeffrey Vappie, New Orleanians from all parts of the city were left to contemplate her eight years as mayor and the scandal that’s essentially ended her second term.

In interviews around the city this weekend, residents expressed a mix of outrage over the alleged crimes and disappointment with a city government long plagued by mismanagement. Some mocked the mayor and Vappie, others expressed some sympathy for them. There was also skepticism over what some saw as the federal government charging the mayor for little more than engaging in an affair.

Friday’s indictment — a 44-page document accusing Cantrell of carrying on an amorous relationship with Vappie, travelling the world with him on taxpayers’ dime and then conspiring to cover it up — sealed her fall from grace, said Green and others.

‘Sounds lovely’

As they sweated through the midday heat on a stoop in the 7th Ward on Saturday, Jerydean Smith, Kenishia McKee and Shantel Warren processed their disappointment with the city’s political leaders as New Orleanians often do — with a joke.

“I’m trying to go to Paris, that sounds lovely,” said McKee.

“I wish she had told me — we all could have gone on a girls trip,” said Warren.

But the compounding struggles impacting their neighborhood, and politicians’ failure to address them, were really no laughing matter, McKee said.

“With everything going on, she shouldn’t be taking trips to Africa, Paris, none of that,” said McKee. “She’s been living off of us.”

“We’re dealing with poverty, killings, the teenagers were just out here shooting at each other,” said McKee, motioning down the street towards where a triple shooting on Tuesday killed two, including a 17-year-old boy.

The $70,000 that Cantrell and Vappie allegedly spent on meals, alcohol and travel, including visits to Scotland and a Napa Valley, California winery for a wine tasting, could have been used to build a community center, or fix potholes, or provide housing for people experiencing homelessness, said McKee.

“Think about how many beds they could have bought with $70,000,” said McKee, who said she had been homeless on and off for years before moving into an apartment across the street from Smith in April.

Attorneys for Vappie and Cantrell have both declined to comment on the indictment. Michael M. Simpson, the acting U.S. attorney for the New Orleans-based Eastern District of Louisiana, has said the investigation into Cantrell is ongoing.

Warren, who is currently homeless and staying with Smith, said she had high hopes when Cantrell took office that she “was going to be about us, was going to be trying to help us.”

Seeing another New Orleans leader subsumed by scandal had broken their faith in government, Warren and McKee said.

“We can vote all we want, I don’t do that anymore,” said McKee.

“No, you’re not catching me behind the curtain or anything anymore,” said Warren.

A few miles away, under the shade of an oak tree on Magazine Street, Ron Duplessis, an Uptown resident, said that beyond holding Cantrell accountable for alleged “brazen” abuse of her office, he was hopeful that the charges would mark a new, more effective chapter at City Hall.

As he waited for his Dreamsicle sno-ball at Imperial Woodpecker Sno-Balls on Saturday afternoon, Duplessis said he had faith in the City Council to keep the city running as Cantrell presumably takes a lower profile for the remainder of her term.

In fact, Duplessis said a mayor distracted by her criminal case might lower the temperature on a series of ongoing legal battles between her and the council. He believes those fights have distracted the city’s leaders in recent months.

Cantrell has long been known as a fighter, and political and legal experts project she is unlikely to resign as she battles the criminal case.

“I think she’s going to finally just get out of the way,” said Duplessis, who owns a manufacturing company. “[The council] is going to step up and run this city, and it’s going to be a better place for it.”

Skepticism

Other New Orleans residents, though, said they were skeptical of how the indictment would actually benefit city residents.

“To me, it doesn’t matter, because she doesn’t have that long in there,” said Stacey Schexnayder as she bought pineapple flavored shots at a makeshift stand on Claiborne Avenue, on the edge of the 7th Ward neighborhood where she’s lived all her life.

Schexnayder, who operates her own food truck, said that she believed the charges against Cantrell were disproportionately harsh for the alleged crimes at hand.

“Everybody’s sexing in the office,” said Schnexnayder. “What they’re doing to her is crazy … you have a person running this country with worse charges.”

“If you’re going to target them, target them all,” said Schnexnayder, who said she thought that Cantrell had been unfairly targeted because she is Black and a woman.

In a city with a fraught history of public corruption, Green, the retired policeman, said he hopes the indictment will encourage more scrutiny over public officials’ conduct.

“Maybe people will watch the city a lot closer,” he said. “Things might improve.”