Newly Elected Coast Mayors Will Have To Deal With Hurricane Season

Gulfport's New Mayor, George Schloegel

Four years ago the group of mayors elected into office on the Gulf Coast had no idea that Katrina was on its’ way. MPB’s Phoebe Judge reports on how this newly elected batch of mayor’s feels about taking office in the midst of another hurricane season.

It was a celebratory night at George Schloegel’s election party in Gulfport as the republican candidate for mayor took a landslide victory over democrat Clyde Williams. There were many new faces elected last night to mayoral positions on the Gulf Coast. Five of the current Gulf Coast mayors decided not to seek reelection, in towns like Bay St. Louis, Gautier, and Pascagoula. Hurricane Katrina hit just two months after those mayors had taken office and many sight their reason for not running again as a result of hurricane fatigue. But George Schloegel says he isn’t fazed by the threat of another hurricane,

“I’m a native of the Coast, hurricanes are a part of life it’s nature’s way of the pruning trees, and it’s part hurricanes to us are sometimes are good and sometimes are bad, sometimes real bad, hopefully all of them will just be good from now on.”

There were some Coast mayors who lived through Katrina and decided to run again. In one of the Coast’s most closely contested races, Ocean Springs’ Mayor Connie Moran defeated Scott Walker by just 100 votes. Mayor Moran says after the four years of hard work rebuilding, she now gets to see those projects come into fruition,

“It’s been a great challenge, and yes of course there was fatigue, but you know when you’ve got moonscape after Katrina you’ve got to build back and we are building back in ocean springs even more beautiful than before.”

In other races long-term Biloxi Mayor A.J. Holloway easily slid to a 5th term victory with 86% of the vote, and Moss Point elected the first female mayor democrat Aneice Liddell.