Drew Brees, Mitch Landrieu, and the Pre-Lenten Gift NOLA Gave Itself

It was a Super Sunday, all right, and the town was jammed with happy fans who rejoined from the Domilise's Po-Boys in Uptown -- the Manning family's favorite restaurant -- to the open-air saloon known as Bourbon Street.

"New Orleans," Saints' owner Tom Benson said simply, "is back."

"Four-and-a-half years ago, the city was under water," Saints quarterback Drew Brees, said, not finishing the thought -- but not needing to: New Orleans is now floating on air. But the gift the football team gave to the city was surpassed a day earlier by the present New Orleans voters gave themselves in the form of a new mayor.

"We've got Mitch Landrieu as mayor, a Super Bowl trophy, and I'm just leaving a Mardi Gras lunch at Antoine's," Clancy DuBos is saying over the phone. "Mardi Gras is almost a dénouement, which is like saying this city is in The Rapture."

DuBos, the co-owner of Gambit Communications, is a well-connected member of a whimsical secret society called FEEDBAG (Friday Evening Ensemble to Develop Background and Gossip), which at the Crescent City Steak House the Friday night before Louisiana's Saturday election days to swap yarns and make political predictions. This year, a dozen members predicted the order of finish in the New Orleans mayoral race, along with the percentage of the winner. All 12 Feedbag members chose Mitch Landrieu as the victor, with Clancy DuBos guessing the highest share of the vote for Landrieu -- 54.6 percent.

In Louisiana politics, 50 percent is a magic number in a primary: If the winner doesn't reach it, it necessitates a runoff with the second place finisher. But Clancy DuBos, who thought he was way out on a limb, wasn't even close: Mitch Landrieu won 66 percent of the vote, a stunning margin that not only foreshadowed the Saints' Super Bowl victory the following day, but which was probably helped by the team's very presence in the big game as well. If Drew Brees' performance was one for the ages, so was Mitch Landrieu's. Brees, voted the Most Valuable Player of the game, completed more passes than any Super Bowl quarterback in history. Mitch Landrieu did him one better.

No non-incumbent has ever avoided a runoff. No mayoral candidate in modern New Orleans history has carried a majority of white and black votes. No white candidate has been elected mayor for 32 years, City Hall being known in some quarters of this majority African-American city as The Franchise. The city's last white mayor, in fact, was Moon Landrieu, the father of Mitch (and of Mitch's sister, U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu).

An outsider might think Mitch Landrieu won simply because of his famous family, New Orleans being a city that is not averse to dynasty. But that would be wrong. This election -- and this Super Bowl -- were not about dynasties. Ask Peyton Manning. Like Mitch Landrieu, Peyton has a famous father (Archie) and a famous sibling (Eli), both of whom were in the family business, which is football. But in New Orleans in 2010, it was all about competence, not bloodlines, in football and in politics. The seeds of that desire were planted four years ago, when a Texas-born quarterback arrived on the scene of a city devastated by Hurricane Katrina -- and when Mitch Landrieu ran for mayor and lost to a man who had already shown he wasn't up to the task.

In 2006, Drew Brees left the San Diego Chargers, a team he had quarterbacked successfully but where the powers-that-be had decided to go with a younger, taller, stronger-armed quarterback. Like post-Katrina New Orleans, Brees was physically wounded -- he'd shredded his throwing shoulder in his last game in a Charger uniform -- and undesired. He'd gravitated toward New Orleans, mostly because the Saints really wanted him. There was something else, too. Drew Brees and his wife, Brittany, felt they were needed in New Orleans, almost as if they had been directed there.

"Coming here was his second chance," New Orleans writer Jason Berry is telling me. "He and his wife arrived in New Orleans and drove the streets that had been devastated by Hurricane Katrina, and felt that this is where they belonged. He used the word, 'calling' to describe it."

I drove those same streets with Jason Berry that same year -- a year after Katrina -- when the devastation on the ground was still distressingly dire. Jason is a friend, and I recall gingerly explaining to him that Katrina fatigue had set in outside Louisiana. And I remember telling him that one of the reasons was the 2006 mayoral election in which the ineffectual Ray Nagin was rewarded for playing the race card with a second term. In Washington, and not only among Republicans, there was a feeling that the federal government couldn't help a city whose voters wouldn't help themselves.

Ray Nagin, who is African-American, had come from the business world, not politics, and in the pre-financial meltdown days of 2002 one still heard candidates routinely gushing how great it would be if government could run like a business. Nagin ran City Hall as neither a business nor a government, and he froze in Katrina's headlights along with the Democratic governor and Republican FEMA head -- yes, the political failures of Katrina were nothing if not bipartisan -- and then demagogued in order to keep his job. And he did so in a comically cheap fashion: God, he proclaimed, wants New Orleans to be "a chocolate city."

This gambit worked. Elected with overwhelming white support -- and minority black support -- in 2002, the racial makeup of Nagin's vote was reversed four years later. In winning re-election, Nagin defeated (among others) Mitch Landrieu, who ran a campaign so uninspired he still had money left over at the end.

But there was a reprise for the souls and saints -- and Saints -- of New Orleans, as for Mitch Landrieu and Drew Brees. Ray Nagin's re-election did not improve his performance, and many of those who voted for him came rather quickly to regret it. "There was a lot of buyers' remorse, particularly in the African-American community," says Rob Couhig, who ran unsuccessfully in 2006 against both Nagin and Landrieu. "People were disappointed in themselves for not selecting Mitch the last time."

Three and a half years later, Mitch Landrieu, whose day job was lieutenant governor but whose heart was in City Hall, announced again. He immediately became the front-runner. More than that, his presence in the race chased off the two other best candidates, education reformer Leslie Jacobs and respected African-American state senator Ed Murray. "Mitch Landrieu became the de facto black candidate," says Couhig. He was also the best-known white candidate. "When Mitch got in the race, it was over then and there."

Perhaps, but as Landrieu had learned four years earlier, being the best qualified candidate and having a golden name didn't assure victory any more than it did for Peyton Manning in the Super Bowl. As the Saints did, Landrieu put together a quality team, leaving little to chance. His campaign trotted out a series of messages with focus groups -- and discovered something quite heartening: The same themes tested well among both whites and blacks; moreover, the messages that worked the best were the ones that actually described Mitch Landrieu. His love of the city, his experience in government, his roots in New Orleans -- all these attributes were embraced across racial lines. The same issues were of paramount priority in both communities, too: jobs, crime, better education, and an honest police force.

And so Landrieu was in a position to do what candidates always prefer: He could run as himself. He could also run as a unifying voice who didn't need to slice and dice the electorate along demographic lines. Along the way, this approach helped unite America's favorite political odd couple: Democrat James Carville, who supported Landrieu early on, and his Republican wife, Mary Matalin, who hosted a Landrieu fundraiser. Landrieu's appeal was captured brilliantly in a pitch produced by Mervin H. Wampold Jr., a Washington-based direct mail specialist with deep roots in Louisiana.

"MITCH LANDRIEU WILL BE A MAYOR FOR ALL OF NEW ORLEANS," blared the mailer, along with an accompanying picture of the 48-year-old Landrieu and an attractive African-American woman named July Reese Morse. She happens to be Landrieu's chief of staff, and her testimonial is below the picture. "As Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landrieu's Chief of Staff, I speak from personal experience when I say Mitch will make things happen for all New Orleans." The piece then hits all the themes from the focus groups, starting with the simplest: that Mitch Landrieu was born and raised in New Orleans and has extensive experience in government.

Such an approach may not fly everywhere, but it's exactly what New Orleans residents craved. "Eight years ago, this city rolled the dice and elected the anti-politician Ray Nagin, because he promised to run New Orleans like a business," says Clancy DuBos. "What we got was something totally dysfunctional that ran like neither a business nor a government. Mitch Landrieu clearly knows how to work with people, put coalitions together, and make government function."

"Mitch Landrieu," added Jason Berry, "ran as a public servant."

To be sure, turnout was low, as noted by Jacques Morial, a well-known political activist and brother of pre-Nagin mayor Marc Morial. And the field was weak, especially once Leslie Jacobs and Ed Murray quit the race. The most prominent African-American still standing was neophyte Troy Henry, who worked for Enron, was said to have had a George W. Bush sticker on his car in 2004, and was not widely known even in the African-American community. "Still," says Jacques Morial, "Mitch ran a masterful campaign."

Then, with two weeks to go in the campaign, an event took place in the Louisiana Superdome -- the palace envisioned and championed by Moon Landrieu and made, for a time, infamous as the hellhole that housed the Katrina survivors. On that day, the New Orleans Saints defeated the Minnesota Vikings in overtime, earning the team its first-ever Super Bowl appearance.

Clancy DuBos predicted publicly that the campaign was effectively over. How was any candidate going to make up ground on Mitch Landrieu when the oxygen was about to be sucked out of every news cycle -- in favor of the Saints? In the end, it was even more than that: the team seemed to aid Landrieu's efforts.

The New Orleans Saints were created in 1967, and from the start, were a strangely unifying force in the city. Strange because, for some many years, they were so bad. Unifying because, well, as the saying goes: There is no black and white in the black and gold. And so, in 2010, did a mayoral candidate running on a theme of unity discover there was a kind of unity wind at his back. And as the entire city was rooting for the Saints, it turned out that some two-thirds of New Orleans residents were also rooting for Mitch Landrieu.

If the election were held today, that number might even be higher: The night of his victory, Landrieu set the tone by calling Troy Henry up to the stage with him. On Tuesday, an estimated 800,000 people turned out for a parade for the Saints. This was the biggest crowd in the history of a city known for its parades.

"I think that Saturday and Sunday are the two best days New Orleans has had since 1815 with Andrew Jackson and the Battle of New Orleans," said James Carville. "No city could have had a worse decade, and no city has a more promising future."