Other than the stir he caused with the release this summer of his Katrina memoir — and an occasionally provocative posting to Twitter – Ray Nagin has kept a pretty low public profile in New Orleans since leaving the mayor’s office in May 2010. So it was a bit of a surprise when he turned up Wednesday to play the role of statesman in the latest Uptown kerfuffle, this one over a yard sign depicting President Obama in diapers (and a couple other similarly themed posters).
WBOK-AM highlighted the signs on a morning talk show, calling them racist and organizing a protest that drew dozens of people to the Calhoun Street home where the signs were displayed, according to WWL-TV.
The former mayor was in that number, although he was more peacemaker than protester, according to Timothy Reily, who put up the signs. Reily, who noted he was an early supporter of Nagin during his first campaign for mayor — campaign finance reports show he gave Nagin $1,000 in January 2002 — invited the former mayor to come inside his house. The two men had a 30-minute discussion that Reily described as “congenial.”
“He was here for quite a while,” Reily said. “We had some casual conversation about politics. He said he wanted me to take the sign down because he felt it was disrespectful to the office of the president. But he didn’t demand it.”
(Nagin did not respond to a request for an interview, though he did issue a haiku-like tweet about his intercession, saying in part: “Owner and I met. Tensions high. Sign may come down. Has others. Explosive!”)