>Old-Line Families Escape Worst of Flood And Plot the Future
>
>
>By CHRISTOPHER COOPER
>Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
>September 8, 2005; Page A1
>
>NEW ORLEANS -- On a sultry morning earlier this week, Ashton O'Dwyer
>stepped out of his home on this city's grandest street and made a beeline
>for his neighbor's pool. Wearing nothing but a pair of blue swim trunks and

>carrying two milk jugs, he drew enough pool water to flush the toilet in
>his home.
>
>The mostly African-American neighborhoods of New Orleans are largely
>underwater, and the people who lived there have scattered across the
>country. But in many of the predominantly white and more affluent areas,
>streets are dry and passable.
>Gracious homes are mostly intact and powered by generators. Yesterday,
>officials reiterated that all residents must leave New Orleans, but it's
>still unclear how far they will go to enforce the order.
>The green expanse of Audubon Park, in the city's Uptown area, has doubled
>in recent days as a heliport for the city's rich -- and a terminus for the
>small armies of private security guards who have been dispatched to keep
>the homes there safe and habitable. Mr. O'Dwyer has cellphone service and
>ice cubes to cool off his highballs in the evening. By yesterday, the city
>water service even sprang to life, making the daily trips to his neighbor's

>pool unnecessary. A pair of oil-company engineers, dispatched by his
>son-in-law, delivered four cases of water, a box of delicacies including
>herring with mustard sauce and 15 gallons of generator gasoline.
>Despite the disaster that has
>overwhelmed New Orleans, the city's monied, mostly white elite is hanging
>on and maneuvering to play a role in the recovery when the floodwaters of
>Katrina are gone. "New Orleans is ready to be rebuilt. Let's start right
>here," says Mr. O'Dwyer, standing in his expansive kitchen, next to a
>counter covered with a jumble of weaponry and electric wires.
>More than a few people in Uptown, the fashionable district surrounding St.
>Charles Ave., have ancestors who arrived here in the 1700s. High society is

>still dominated by these old-line families, represented today by prominent
>figures such as former New Orleans Board of Trade President Thomas
>Westfeldt; Richard Freeman, scion of the family that long owned the city's
>Coca-Cola bottling plant; and William Boatner Reily, owner of a Louisiana
>coffee company. Their social pecking order is dictated by the mysterious
>hierarchy of "krewes,"
>groups with hereditary membership that participate in the annual carnival
>leading up to Mardi Gras. In recent years, the city's most powerful
>business circles have expanded to include some newcomers and non-whites,
>such as Mayor Ray Nagin, the former Cox Communications executive elected in

>2002.
>
>
>
>A few blocks from Mr. O'Dwyer, in an exclusive gated community known as
>Audubon Place, is the home of James Reiss, descendent of an old-line Uptown

>family. He fled Hurricane Katrina just before the storm and returned soon
>afterward by private helicopter. Mr. Reiss became wealthy as a supplier of
>electronic systems to shipbuilders, and he serves in Mayor Nagin's
>administration as chairman of the city's Regional Transit Authority. When
>New Orleans descended into a spiral of looting and anarchy, Mr. Reiss
>helicoptered in an Israeli security company
>to guard his Audubon Place house and those of his neighbors.
>He says he has been in contact with about 40 other New Orleans business
>leaders since the storm. Tomorrow, he says, he and some of those leaders
>plan to be in Dallas, meeting with Mr. Nagin to begin mapping out a future
>for the city.
>The power elite of New Orleans -- whether they are still in the city or
>have moved temporarily to enclaves such as Destin, Fla., and Vail, Colo. --

>insist the remade city won't simply restore the old order. New Orleans
>before the flood was burdened by a teeming underclass, substandard schools
>and a high crime rate. The city has few corporate headquarters.
>The new city must be something very different, Mr. Reiss says, with better
>services and fewer poor people. "Those who want to see this city rebuilt
>want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically,
>geographically and
>politically," he says. "I'm not just speaking for myself here. The way
>we've been living is not going to happen again, or we're out."
>Not every white business leader or prominent family supports that view.
>Some black leaders and their allies in New Orleans fear that it boils down
>to preventing large numbers of blacks from returning to the city and
>eliminating the African-American voting majority. Rep. William Jefferson, a

>sharecropper's son who was educated at Harvard and is currently serving his

>eighth term in Congress, points out that the evacuees from New Orleans
>already have been spread out across many states far from their old home and

>won't be able to afford to return. "This is an example of poor people
>forced to make choices because they don't have the money to do otherwise,"
>Mr. Jefferson says.
>
>Calvin Fayard, a wealthy white plaintiffs' lawyer who lives near Mr.
>O'Dwyer, says the mass evacuation could turn a Democratic stronghold into a

>Republican one. Mr. Fayard, a prominent Democratic fund-raiser, says
>tampering with the city's demographics means tampering with its unique
>culture and shouldn't be done. "People can't survive a year temporarily --
>they'll go somewhere, get a job and never come back," he says.
>Mr. Reiss acknowledges that shrinking parts of the city occupied by
>hardscrabble neighborhoods would inevitably result in fewer poor and
>African-American residents. But he says the electoral balance of the city
>wouldn't change significantly and that the business elite isn't trying to
>reverse the last 30 years of black political control. "We understand that
>African Americans have had a great deal of influence on the history of New
>Orleans," he says.
>A key question will be the position of Mr. Nagin, who was elected with the
>support of
>the city's business leadership. He couldn't be reached yesterday. Mr. Reiss

>says the mayor suggested the Dallas meeting and will likely attend when he
>goes there to visit his evacuated family
>Black politicians have controlled City Hall here since the late 1970s, but
>the wealthy white families of New Orleans have never been fully eclipsed.
>Stuffing campaign coffers with donations, these families dominate the
>city's professional and executive classes, including the white-shoe law
>firms, engineering offices, and local shipping companies. White voters
>often act as a swing bloc, propelling blacks or Creoles into the city's top

>political jobs. That was the case with Mr. Nagin, who defeated another
>African American to win the mayoral election in 2002.
>Creoles, as many mixed-race residents of New Orleans call themselves,
>dominate the city's white-collar and government ranks and tend to
>ally themselves with white voters on issues such as crime and education,
>while sharing many of the same social concerns as African-American voters.
>Though the flooding took a toll on many Creole neighborhoods, it's likely
>that Creoles will return to the city in fairly large numbers, since many of

>them have the means to do so.
>Copyright 2005, Dow Jones, Inc. All rights reserved.

Posted by Miriam V.