Why I Wasn't With Mary

When people ask why I refused to vote to re-elect Sen. Mary Landrieu and supported her GOP opponent, Rep. Bill Cassidy, I point to a meeting I attended in 2006 with her and a recently elected senator from Illinois, where she promised to provide resources for recovering minority and small businesses.

This promise was delivered in the form of  a $1 Billion in special GO Zone New Markets Tax Credits that were supposed to be used to finance business and real estate investment opportunities in "severely  distressed" neighborhoods like parts of the Ninth and Seventh Wards, but were primarily used to finance her brother's Broadway South fantasies (maybe he thought he'd get a chance to use his undergraduate drama training), "mixed-use" downtown buildings offering high-rent apartments that 80+% of the city's residents can't afford or hotels offering wages so low that most employees have to work two jobs just to afford rent in those STILL underserved neighborhoods. 

This was was delivered in the form of BILLIONS of dollars of Disaster Recovery Community Block Grant funds she lobbied for that were supposed to create thousands of "quality" construction and permanent jobs for local residents, along with sustainable business opportunities for local disadvantaged businesses, but came with a waiver of the local hiring and prevailing wage provisions typical for such funds, allowing contractors to hire out-state and even undocumented foreign workers, leaving blacks even more under- & unemployed than they were before Katrina.

On the other hand, made an effort to research and meet Bill Cassidy, and wound up impressed by his work creating community clinics, his commitment to providing educational opportunities and resources for children with learning challenges, and his belief in empowering people to help themselves through entrepreneurship versus empowering established businesses to maintain the economic status quo—it should be noted that the Small Business & Entrepreneurship gave him a 100% rating on supporting favorable legislation, while Mary Landrieu only received a 58% rating.

While Cassidy may not deliver anything to help the people Mary promised to help during that meeting, I already know that Mary hasn't done it so I'm willing to take my chances on someone else and vote against him, if he fails to deliver over the next six  years.