Who will Cedric choose to be the next US Attorney?

 People said he would lose influence after giving up that congressional seat but I don't know about that. 

Though U.S. senators hold an informal veto power over such choices, Louisiana’s two Republican senators, Bill Cassidy and John Kennedy, figure to hold little influence over the choice. Sources say all roads to the post lead through former New Orleans-area Rep. Cedric Richmond, now among President Joe Biden’s closest White House advisors. Richmond did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

Who do we think he might choose?  There's a lot of interesting names here. 

Leading names floated to succeed Strasser include former Orleans Parish Criminal District Judge Keva Landrum, who lost a December runoff for district attorney; former state Sen. Walt Leger; St. John the Baptist Parish District Attorney Bridget Dinvaut; Desiree Charbonnet, the former New Orleans Municipal Court judge and mayoral candidate; and Duane Evans, who served as interim U.S. Attorney in New Orleans after Kenneth Polite left in 2017.

New Orleans City Attorney Sunni LeBoeuf also is thought to be in the early mix, sources said. Other names that may be in play include former federal prosecutor Matt Chester, now a local defense lawyer, and Marquest Meeks, a former federal prosecutor in New Orleans who is now senior counsel for Major League Baseball.

Keva Landrum gets special attention in this article in part because she just lost a run for District Attorney despite having garnered an endorsement from Richmond as well as from Mayor Cantrell and the BOLD organization (which has grown more closely affiliated with the mayor over the course of her term.)  It's not unheard of that a candidate would receive support from both sides of that sometime rivalry but it is interesting that such a candidate would have lost their election. 

Anyway it's not out of bounds to think that Landrum would be in for a consolation prize of some sort (although we would have to consider this post more than just that.)  Still, her current gig seems pretty chill. Are we sure she'd want to give that up?

Assistant U.S. Attorney Dall Kammer and his team will have until March 2 to present their own list of potential witnesses to testify at sentencing, at a date that’s not yet been set.

The U.S. Probation Office has already filed a draft sentencing report. Sentencing guidelines depend on several factors, including the amount of money involved. It’s not unusual for people to write letters to judges vouching for defendants’ character before they are sentenced, but hearing testimony from both sides before sentencing is less common.

Mayfield “will probably want to bring forth people to say he was of good character and maybe this was just a simple mistake,” said WWL-TV Legal Analyst Keva Landrum, a former state criminal court judge and district attorney. “And then the prosecution may want to bring people who they thought would have been their witnesses in the trial to say otherwise.”

On the other hand, that story does point out that she already has eyes on a federal case that could be of significance to several of her political patrons. So maybe she is just the person for the job after all.

Plenty more where that came from

 Somebody wrote that five years ago. Or something to that effect

Again, Irvin Mayfield, himself, isn't the actual problem. He is a symptom of the problem, though.  The problem is the post-Katrina ascendance of neoliberal "volunteer entrepreneurism" in rebuilding the "ultimate libertarian city" prescribed by Glassman. The club members who've worked so hard to bring the Glassman vision to life are hard-pressed to admit it, though.

Instead they're quick to offer up scapegoats from among their own number whenever one of them fails too stupidly or publicly.  Ray Nagin himself is the prime example here. Meffert is another.  Mayfield is only the latest. There will be more eventually.

And when, eventually, there are more, we will wash our hands of those individuals as well and go on pretending everything is fine.

The Mayfield Model

People remember Irivin Mayfield for having "stolen funds from the library."  (When is this trial supposed to happen now, anyway?) And that is basically true but, technically, he stole from the separate non-profit foundation intended to raise money to supplement library projects.  He didn't get his hands on the money that actually buys books and pays librarians and stuff. This wasn't for lack of trying, of course.  

Prior to his time with the foundation, Mayfield was appointed by Ray Nagin to the actual library board which does oversee the dedicated millage that funds library operations. But he didn't last very long there specifically because the law constrained his ability to appropriate that money toward his outlandish schemes and pretend it had anything to do with the library's mission. So he left and joined the non-profit where they let you do exactly that. (That is, unless you are so outlandish and stupidly obvious about it that you get David Hammer's attention. Most of the criminals who operate the local non-profit industrial complex get away with it most of the time.  Mayfield is really only exceptional in that he got nailed for it.) 

Aaanyway, what Montano and LaToya are doing now with this millage "rededication" is they are removing the restrictions that prevented Mayfield's shenanigans from affecting the library budget in favor of "flexibility." They are taking money out of a legally proscribed fund and making it available for the mayor and Peter Bowen to distribute to business and non-profit cronies according to whatever "early childhood" or "economic development" schemes they cook up. In other words, this is a classic privatization grift. They're basically just legalizing the Mayfield model.

Bonus fun fact: LaToya Cantrell launched her campaign for mayor from the NO Jazz Market venue that Irvin built with funds redirected from the library foundation.