NEW ORLEANS Voters stream to makeshift polls

The mayoral election is seen as crucial to the future of the damaged city.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- A steady stream of New Orleans voters, some from storm-scarred neighborhoods and others by the busload from evacuee havens across the nation, cast their first ballots since Hurricane Katrina in a crucial election Saturday to decide who will lead the rebuilding of this devastated city.
Incumbent Mayor Ray Nagin predicted he would lead the field, but he faced 21 challengers, including the state's lieutenant governor. If none gets more than 50 percent, a runoff between the top two vote-getters will be held May 20.
Because of the Aug. 29 storm, what ordinarily would be a routine municipal race has become a tricky experiment in modern-day democracy, one that critics say could exclude many blacks who make up most of the storm evacuees.
Of the city's 297,000 registered voters, tens of thousands are spread out across the United States. More than 20,000 cast ballots early by mail, fax or at satellite voting stations around the state, and thousands more made their way to 76 improvised polling stations that opened at daybreak Saturday.
"Let me tell you something. This is an important election," said Gerald Miller, a 61-year-old stroke patient whose daughter was pushing her in a wheelchair. "We're going to straighten this mess out."
Running smoothly
Turnout figures were not expected to be available for hours after the polls closed, but Secretary of State Al Ater said an election that many had predicted would be a logistical nightmare was proceeding smoothly by early evening.
Around the city, a mixture of black and white voters were seen moving steadily in and out of the "super polling places" that stood for the dozens of wrecked schools and churches where residents would ordinarily have voted. In many cases, they were casting ballots in neighborhoods hard-hit by Katrina.
Just steps from the Eleanor McMain School, a polling place in the upper-middle-class Uptown neighborhood, many of the two-story homes bear the marks where floodwaters reached 6 feet or more.
Still, 869 residents from six precincts had cast ballots by 4 p.m. -- slightly more than 40 percent of eligible registered voters.
Thorny issues
The winner of the mayoral and city council races will face a host of politically sticky and racially charged decisions about where and what to rebuild in a city where whole neighborhoods remain uninhabitable.
Four-fifths of the city was flooded, and large parts of New Orleans are still woeful tracts of ruin. Rebuilding plans are being debated.
Nagin said at a precinct in his neighborhood Saturday that, with another hurricane season just weeks away, this is no time for a transition of administrations. "We don't have a year to wait," he said.
The 49-year-old former cable television executive became known in the immediate aftermath of Katrina for sometimes shaky leadership and frequent off-the-cuff remarks, such as when he cursed the sluggish federal response and later suggested that God wanted New Orleans to remain a "chocolate" city. Nagin stood by the comment and later said he was convinced the black vote was "coalescing" around him.
His chief challengers are white -- Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, brother of Sen. Mary Landrieu, and businessman Ron Forman, chief executive of the Audubon Nature Institute, which oversees the city's zoo and aquarium.