Article: Hot Air in the Big Easy; The mayor's racial comments mar his re-election bid.(Mayor Ray Nagin, New Orleans, Louisiana)

Byline: Arian Campo-Flores

Peggy Wilson couldn't believe what she was hearing on the radio. Addressing a crowd on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Mayor Ray Nagin was claiming that God wanted New Orleans to remain majority black. "This city will be chocolate at the end of the day," he said. "I don't care what people are saying Uptown," referring to a mostly white area of New Orleans. Nagin also suggested that God unleashed last year's hurricanes because he was "mad at America"--and particularly at the black community, for failing to take better care of itself. "I was shocked," recalls Wilson. A Republican who once headed the city council, she was already planning to ...

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