Marc Morial was a terrible mayor of New Orleans whose awful effect on the city doesn’t get the opprobrium it deserves because of the parade of horrible successors – Ray Nagin, Mitch Landrieu, LaToya Cantrell – who followed. But Morial was a pal of the criminal class, an enemy of business and a net negative in running off productive citizens. He left New Orleans worse off than he found it.
After his political career ended – Morial’s name comes up here and there, or at least it used to, for various statewide offices, but he never put himself out there as a candidate beyond the boundaries of Orleans Parish, as the result would have been obvious – Morial ended up as the president of the Urban League, a far-left organization whose activities are a mishmash of “civil rights” advocacy, terrible leftist policy and half-assed community organizing.
Morial’s Urban League is less relevant than it’s ever been, but he still hangs around because he has no other way to stay relevant and nobody at the Urban League cares enough to get rid of him.
Last year the Urban League partnered with WWL-TV and The Advocate to sponsor a gubernatorial debate. On the advice of the Louisiana GOP, Jeff Landry, the runaway favorite in that election who ultimately topped 50 percent in the primary, skipped it. That decision clearly didn’t hurt Landry; nobody gave a damn about the Urban League’s efforts to participate in Louisiana’s gubernatorial race.
But it’s clear that snub gave Morial a case of the screaming reds, and Landry’s efforts as governor to whittle away at the influence and power of New Orleans’ political machine – an example being the deployment of the State Police’s Troop NOLA to bolster law enforcement in the city separate from the hamstrung New Orleans Police Department – has him spitting mad at the governor.
Which is why we got this late last week…
Shoring up policies that promote diversity, equity and inclusion and destroying a proposed conservative guidebook that seeks to dismantle long-fought-for civil rights in America are just two of the challenges National Urban League President Marc H. Morial set forth Thursday to the group’s allies.
Morial, who opened the group’s annual conference earlier this week in his hometown of New Orleans where he also served as mayor, urged attendees to take a stand and send a message to those “who are plotting, those who are conspiring, those who are working morning, noon and night to dismantle progress.”
Morial also discussed controversial policies pushed and put in place by Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry
“Here in Louisiana, there’s a right-wing, extremist governor who seems determined to compete with (Gov. Greg) Abbott in Texas and (Gov. Ron) DeSantis in Florida in a race to the bottom when it comes to civil and human rights,” Morial said.
In six months, Landry has repealed successful criminal justice reform, signed a “barbaric” law allowing the surgical castration of certain sex offenders, deprived law enforcement of a vital tool by wiping out concealed carry permits, making it easier for violent and unstable people to carry guns and he’s forcing a religious agenda in the classrooms which now are required to display the 10 Commandments, Morial said.
“Put the 10 Commandments up in your house. Put the Constitution up in our classrooms,” he said amid applause.
“We reject this direction in this state,” Morial said. “We reject it based on history and principle. This is a multiracial and multicultural state with an incredible background and tapestry of people from many parts of the world. When it is united, it is strong. When it is divided, it can not stand. So we say to the governor today, and I have never met the governor, I challenge you sir to be a governor for all. I challenge you to be a governor for everyone in this state, not just for some.”
The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are both recommended in Louisiana’s classrooms. And it’s pretty well understood by everybody but Marc Morial that the Decalogue has value not just as a “religious agenda” but as the basis of all law in Western civilization.
As for this stupid “governor for all” thing he’s pushing, Landry’s agenda of fighting crime, defending Second Amendment rights, pushing school choice and attempting to shrink government, if perhaps not as quickly as some of us would like, is a pretty popular agenda.
Marc Morial’s definition of “all” essentially means “all of the constituency groups who don’t laugh at the Urban League.” It’s not a broad definition. He’s essentially demanding Landry bend the knee to the Left, which is a waste of Morial’s time.
Then he doubled down on DEI, something the Hard Left seems to be doing all across the country in one of the dumbest political decisions we’ve ever seen. People absolutely hate the concept of DEI, just as they hated the concept of affirmative action before it, and yet the Marc Morials of the world seem insistent on forcing it front and center…
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“You know, when you hear someone say that’s a DEI hire, I want you to say ’Yes. They are determined, energetic and intelligent,’ ” Morial said. “We’re not going to walk back from the term. We’re going to embrace the term for what it means.”
Morial thanked the urban league’s board of directors for stepping up after “the U.S. Supreme Court struck a blow for affirmative action and the subsequent insanity and madness of the attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion.”
“They made a commitment that their companies would not retreat, they would not backtrack,” he said. “They would continue to stand up for DEI because it’s what’s best for America.”
Morial chided companies that he said bowed to bullying by right-wing extremists and abandoned DEI policies.
“We are offended by fearful and intimidated companies like John Deere and Tractor Supply who have abandoned their fiduciary duty to their stakeholders and their duty to their customers, who represent every community in America,” he said.
Morial called on Deere & Co CEO John C. May and Tractor Supply President and CEO Hal Lawton to reinstate their DEI programs, noting that their retreat was objectively bad for business.
“We know that DEI policies help companies become more profitable, more innovative, and more resilient,” Morial said. “Whatever short-term political goodwill these companies have bought with this irresponsible decision will come at far too high a price for their employees, their customers, and their shareholders.”
It’s a categorical lie that DEI helps a business’ bottom line, and Morial knows it. He’s there to promote an agenda, though, the facts be damned. The good news is that they’ll drown with that electoral anchor around their necks, and the Left now has someone who was an expressed DEI hire as Joe Biden’s Vice President at the top of their ticket.
And the funny thing is it’s somehow offensive to call Kamala Harris a DEI hire when Biden specifically said he was only naming a blaxck woman as his VP. If DEI is a good thing, why is anyone offended that DEI hires are called DEI hires?
If you’re Jeff Landry, you probably aren’t upset that Marc Morial castigated you in the same breath he touted DEI as “what’s best for America.”
In fact, while it’s impossible to be “governor for all,” in Morial’s words, the easiest way to be “governor for most,” which is what you really want, is to do all the things that will infuriate and demoralize Marc Morial.
And if that gets you rent-free space in Morial’s head, which you apparently already have if you’re Landry, so be it.
Either way, nobody really cares what Marc Morial says. He’s just noisy. There is no insight or intelligence in anything he says, and everybody knows that.
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