New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin won reelection in a narrow victory against Louisiana lieutenant governor Mitch Landrieu.

* New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin won reelection in a narrow victory against Louisiana lieutenant governor Mitch Landrieu. Nagin, who is black, took only 6 percent of the white vote in the election's first round in April, but boosted that share to a lifesaving 20 percent in the runoff, in part because of the endorsement of Republican Rob Couhig, who preferred him, after Couhig's own candidacy fell short, to Landrieu, scion of a liberal Democratic Louisiana dynasty. So much for politics with a small "p." In the larger view, New Orleans residents must face the fact that a man who was so unequal to the challenge of Hurricane Katrina was in the field at all, instead of being headed for an obscure and unregretted retirement. Many showed a deficit of what Alexander Hamilton called "energy in the executive" during and after Katrina; Nagin was first in the line of fire, and his brash showmanship proved to be empty showboating. His resilience is a rebuke to republican government.