Mayor LaToya Cantrell faces dilemma in NOPD chief selection | Local Politics

Surrounded by personal controversies and struggling with a dismal approval rating spurred by rising crime, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell has a big decision ahead of her that could define her final three years in office.

Cantrell must select a successor to retiring Police Superintendent Shaun Ferguson, who said Tuesday he will step down later this month. In doing so, she can either go it alone or seek the approval of a hostile City Council and the public, which voted last month to let the council confirm mayoral nominees.

That rule goes into effect Jan. 1, which means Cantrell could buck voters and the council, if she chooses, by selecting someone sooner. Since Ferguson’s announcement, civic leaders — including the influential Police & Justice Foundation — and a majority of the City Council have urged Cantrell to launch a national search and honor the confirmation process.

The mayor has yet to reveal how she will make her pick, but some sources say she has already settled on Jonette Williams, a quick-rising NOPD assistant superintendent who would become the city’s first female chief.

On Friday, Cantrell issued a letter to council members inviting them to meet to discuss their “ideas and suggestions” on the next superintendent but stopped short of promising a formal search or council confirmation.

Whoever Cantrell picks has enormous implications for whether she can turn around a second term that’s in deep trouble, said Ron Faucheux, a pollster and political analyst. It will also determine whether the new chief — the highest-profile and most politically sensitive of her appointments — takes office under a cloud or with the full support of the council. 

“The mayor is under threat of a recall, she has very bumpy relations with the City Council, and if she would pick a popular police chief who would immediately take steps to improve law enforcement in the city, that could affect her politics tremendously,” Faucheux said.

A ‘drip, drip, drip’ of bad news

When Cantrell picked Ferguson in January 2019, there were murmurs that she’d allowed popular former Superintendent Michael Harrison to leave for Baltimore and that she’d made the decision behind closed doors.

But the critiques were muted. At the time, Cantrell was months into her first term, riding high on a convincing election victory as the city’s first female mayor.

This time around, Cantrell’s political standing is greatly eroded. Just a year into her second term, she’s beset by questions around her handling of the city’s grim spike in murder and other violent crimes.

Since the start of this summer, controversies about her personal use of the perks of office have surfaced over and over.

First, it was revealed that she used taxpayer money for first and business-class upgrades on pricey overseas flights. That issue dogged Cantrell for months until she paid the city back nearly $29,000.

“It could have been a two-day story, and by prolonging it and saying you’re not going to repay it for various reasons, and ultimately repaying it, that prolonged the focus, and one issue led to another issue,” said Silas Lee, a pollster and political consultant.

Subsequently, a poll conducted by the University of New Orleans Survey Research Center found that only 31% of voters approved of Cantrell’s performance.

More recently, there have been questions about whether the mayor is using the city-owned apartment in the Upper Pontalba as her personal pied-a-terre in the French Quarter. Then came the news that federal investigators were probing clothing purchases for the mayor made by her stylist at an upscale boutique.

Those kinds of revelations have “rippling effects” on a mayor’s ability to lead, said Karen Carvin Shachat, a political consultant who was involved in Cantrell’s first run for mayor but not her second.

“It’s just not good. I think that it seems like it’s just been a drip, drip, drip of more news breaking, and none of it has really been in her favor, other than a visit from the president of France,” Shachat said.

Cantrell has been dismissive about the various controversies, defending her right to use the Upper Pontalba apartment how she sees fit and rejecting a question about the federal probe as “crazy.”

In her “State of the City” address on Wednesday, Cantrell sought to refocus the discussion on her administration’s anti-crime programs.

She noted that next year’s budget, which sailed through the City Council, dedicates $32.5 million to her proposed solutions for improving recruiting and retention at the NOPD.

While acknowledging that her second term has been replete with political battles thus far, Cantrell suggested that she was willing to lay down arms if her opponents were as well.

“I’m tired of fighting,” said Cantrell. “Right now, we’re ready to build.”

Cantrell made only a brief mention of the various controversies swirling about her and gave no hint at all as to how she will replace Ferguson.

The Mayor’s Office didn’t respond to questions about the selection process.

Advice and consent

The timing of Ferguson’s resignation allows Cantrell, if she wants, to decide her next chief without consulting anyone.

Last month, voters overwhelmingly approved a City Charter amendment proposed by at-large Council member JP Morrell, which requires major department heads like the NOPD chief to appear before the council and receive an up or down vote.

While Cantrell vehemently opposed the amendment as a personal attack, Morrell cast it as a good government proposal that wasn’t about Cantrell at all. Still, in a statement this week, he described the vacancy at NOPD as a test for Cantrell.

Morrell said there should be a transparent, national search process culminating in City Council confirmation. If that doesn’t happen, he promised to convene an emergency meeting of the council’s government affairs committee to review the qualifications of the mayor’s selection.

“Should that individual not meet the necessary qualifications to lead the department, the City Council shall act accordingly,” Morrell said.

Under a rarely used provision of the City Charter, the council has the right to remove the mayor’s political appointees from office “for lack of qualifications,” after a process similar to impeachment in the U.S. Congress.

Other council members haven’t issued warnings so direct. But all of them have called for a thorough selection process involving public input.

Even District D Council member Eugene Green, often a Cantrell ally who voted against putting the charter change on the ballot, said the mayor should respect the process.

“The mayor needs to wait and recognize that the voters did make an informed decision,” Green told WVUE-TV this week. “The bottom line is that the voters did vote on something that needs to be taken into account.”

‘We are struggling right now’

The NOLA Coalition, a group of business and civic leaders that made a splash this summer with an anti-crime platform that was largely adopted in the 2023 budget, issued a statement this week urging Cantrell to launch a national search. So did the Police and Justice Foundation, which hired the former top-ranking NYPD officer who’s serving as a consulting chief at NOPD, Fausto Pichardo.

Such search processes typically take months, which would draw the timeline out past the period in which Cantrell can make her decision without council confirmation.

Some of the people who sided with Cantrell against the charter change aren’t so sure she should wait.

Rev. Willie Calhoun, a neighborhood leader in the Lower 9th Ward, said he doesn’t thinks the city needs to scout the nation for its next chief.

“I don’t think we need to go out of this city to find somebody to lead this department. I think we have a lot of capable and able-bodied men and women that can lead this department,” said Calhoun.

Another neighborhood leader, Gretchen Bradford of the Pontchartrain Park Neighborhood Association, said she didn’t have strong feelings about how Cantrell picks the next chief. But whoever that choice is better be up to snuff, Bradford said.

“If the person hasn’t been fully vetted and it’s a rushed decision, I don’t think it’s a good idea, because we are struggling right now with crime,” she said.

Faucheux, the consultant and pollster, said he saw an opportunity for the mayor to mend fences with the council while restoring faith in her leadership.

“There’s no reason why it has to be a backroom thing,” said Faucheux. “I think it’s in her interest to be transparent, to be open, to talk about how to do it, to do it in a very common sense way, and to work with people.”