Wednesday, January 25, 2012
News Sen. Mary Landrieu gets along well with Ga. colleagues
Posted by Scott Henry @ScottTheHenry on Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 6:24 PM
There was a full house today at the annual Buckhead
Actually, the one person not sighted until the event was ending was Mayor Kasim Reed, who was in D.C. last night for the State of the Union address and had another luncheon to attend downtown. In a departure from previous BC luncheons, the guest speaker was not a newly elected local politician — Reed, Gov. Deal, and Fulton Chairman John Eaves have spoken in years past — but rather Mary Landrieu, Louisiana's senior senator. As BC President Sam Massell explained, he was mayor of Atlanta at the same time during the '70s that Landrieu's father, Moon (and you thought Georgia had crazy politician names!) was mayor of N'awlins. The two men became friends and the senator joked that she accepted the invitation — even though the Senate is still in session — because her daddy told her to.
Although Landrieu didn't drop any bombshells, she gave an update on the rebuilding of her hometown since Hurricane Katrina in 2006 and reminded the crowd of some stark statistics: 80 percent of all homes in the city were destroyed, as well as every house and business in the mostly white St. Bernard Parish and mostly black Lower 9th Ward; and 100 of 140 public schools were destroyed. Because New Orleans had one of the worst school systems in the country, with a dropout rate of more than 50 percent, instead of simply rebuilding, the district is overhauling itself by creating an all-charter system.
Finally, Landrieu, a Democrat, gave props to Georgia's two GOP senators, Chambliss and Isakson, saying they're both great to work with. Aww…
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