A HOUSE sits at a precarious angle on top of a squashed car, an electric iron dangling from a roof beam, while the pathetic detritus of someone’s life is half-spilled on to the street below.

Neither candidate in today’s run-off for Mayor of New Orleans canvassed this house in Deslonde Street or any others in the blocks around it in the Lower Ninth ward.

Almost nine months after Hurricane Katrina turned the city upside down and inside out, huge sections remain empty and uninhabitable.

More than half of the preKatrina population of 460,000 are somewhere else and only a fraction of these overwhelmingly black evacuees are voting.

In primary elections last month, turnout fell by 40 per cent in the Lower Ninth ward. It is one of the poorer parts of New Orleans, built below sea level, which were hit first and worst by the hurricane on August 29. But in better-off white areas, such as the French Quarter and the Garden District, left largely untouched by Katrina, voter participation increased. No one is sure of the exact figures but the racial mix, once two-thirds black, is now much more even.

Ray Nagin, the black incumbent mayor, has said famously that God wants New Orleans to be a “chocolate city” once more. He has suggested that whites, locally and nationally, are trying to wrest back control so that they can return the city to the “good old boy system”.

His challenger, Mitch Landrieu, has raised six times more cash and is part of a white Louisiana political dynasty. His father, Moon, was the last white mayor of New Orleans when he left office in 1978. His sister, Mary, is a US senator.

But it is unfair to portray this as a simple race battle. Mr Landrieu is a liberal Democrat and his father was a civil rights pioneer in the party. In the primary, his support was drawn from both communities, securing 24 per cent of the black vote and 30 per cent of whites.

Mr Nagin’s position is also more subtle than it might seem. When he was first elected mayor in 1992, the former cable company executive secured overwhelming backing from whites and the business community. But then came Katrina and national fame as the mayor trying to grapple with disaster with an emotional response characterised in one interview when he shouted: “It’s too doggone late! Now get off your asses and do something!” The chaos and the perceived failure to cope with the aftermath has lost Mr Nagin the confidence of white voters, only 6 per cent backed him last month.

By securing the vast bulk of the black vote, he still out-polled Mr Landrieu by 39 to 28 per cent in the primary. But he knows that to remain in office he must win a sizeable chunk of the 60 per cent of white voters who backed neither him nor his rival in April.

Mr Nagin has this week belatedly been pitching once more for right-wing voters. But such a message jars with his erratic, laid-back New Orleans style.

Mr Landrieu’s campaign is all about cold eyes, lap-top computers and being professional to the point of being uptight. “The difference between us is who has the ability to get the job done,” he said.

Neither side is predicting the result. This is, after all, a city where houses sit on top of cars.

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