Until his indictment in 2013, he was perhaps best known for a widely heard radio interview in which he angrily, and sometimes profanely, asked for stepped-up federal response in the days after levee breaches flooded most of the city during Katrina.
He also drew notoriety for impolitic remarks, such as the racially charged “New Orleans will be chocolate again” and his comment that a growing violent crime problem “keeps the New Orleans brand out there.”
Elected in 2002 with strong support from the business community and white voters, Nagin won re-election in 2006 with a campaign that sometimes played on fears among black voters that they were being left out of the city’s spotty recovery. He was limited by law to two consecutive terms but a third term would have been unlikely, giving plunging approval ratings and the stricken city’s continued recovery struggles. He was succeeded in 2010 by Mitch Landrieu.