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American Morning
Looking at Ray Nagin's Background; Teen Driver Safety; Boston Life Support Struggle
Aired January 18, 2006 - 08:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Boy, he's no Rudy Giuliani, that's for sure, right? New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin still wiping some chocolate off his face. Nagin apologized for those off-the-wall remarks about race, God and New Orleans.
AMERICAN MORNING's Alina Cho, here now, spent some time with the mayor over these past months as she's been in New Orleans and has kind of -- a little bio on him. I think it's a good time to do that, isn't?
ALINA CHO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, did a lot of reading on him yesterday and found out some very interesting stuff. You know, Miles, anyone who knows Ray Nagin or has even met him will tell you he's incredibly engaging. Even his political opponents admit in person he couldn't be more charming.
But when you're trying to run a city like New Orleans post- Katrina, Nagin is quickly learning that sometimes charming isn't enough. Every move he makes is watched now, every step, even every misstep.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHO (voice-over): By now, he's a famous face.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How you doing, Ray?
CHO: Ray Nagin, mayor of New Orleans; charismatic, controversial and never at a loss for words.
MAYOR RAY NAGIN, NEW ORLEANS: I am just a little old man from New Orleans.
CHO: Most Americans remember him for what he did in the days after Katrina. Angry and tired, Nagin took to the air waves and blasted the federal government for what he called a slow response.
NAGIN: I keep hearing that it's coming. This is coming, that is coming. And my answer to that today is B.S., where is the beef?
CHO: On Monday, he dropped another bombshell, as he tried to encourage blacks to return to New Orleans. NAGIN: This city will be chocolate at the end of the day. This city will be a majority African-American city. It's the way God wants it to be.
CHO: The mayor later apologized and said he never meant to offend anyone.
NAGIN: This whole thing about chocolate was a bad analogy, a bad acronym that I used. I shouldn't have used it. And I should have used something else.
CHO: Political pollster Silas Lee says Nagin's free-spirited nature is at once his biggest asset and his greatest liability.
SILAS LEE, POLLSTER: He is not always cautious of the fact that he must be very measured in what he says, where he says it and what audience he is saying it to.
CHO: Nagin is a political newcomer. The 49-year-old husband and father of three is a New Orleans native. His mother ran the lunch counter at K-Mart. His father held several jobs, including mechanic and city hall janitor. Before running for mayor in 2002, Nagin was a cable executive.
When he decided to enter politics, he ran as a pro-business outsider who would end corruption and crime. He won, elected in part by an overwhelming majority of the white vote.
LEE: It just so happened that the political stars fell in line with his candidacy in the sense that the mood of the electorate was that they wanted change.
CHO: With his latest comments, it remains to be seen whether the same white majority that helped to elect him will vote for him again.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHO: It certainly will be a race to watch. Now, the mayoral election, all elections, in fact, were postponed because of Katrina, but voters will now get to go to the polls in April. The governor will announce a date sometime in the next couple of weeks, Miles. And it certainly will be interesting to see whether he'll be able to get the support to have another term.
M. O'BRIEN: Yes, it will be interesting to see who votes with this diaspora out there.
CHO: That's right.
M. O'BRIEN: But let's talk about his political background. There's a lot of talk before he ran for mayor he was a registered Republican.
CHO: That's right. He was. In fact, he was a supporter, a contributor of George W. Bush. Then in 2002, just before he announced his candidacy, he switched parties. Now he's a Democrat. In political ads even, they called him Ray Reagan. So interesting little point.
M. O'BRIEN: What do you think his chances are, politically? Is he politically dead? That would be our perception from the outside.
CHO: Well, it's hard to say. I mean, no public polls to speak of. A lot of private polls, I'm sure. But the field will be crowded, as you might imagine, because some people see him as a little bit vulnerable right now. A lot of people are interested in throwing their hat in the ring. Only two declared candidates, but more than a dozen potential candidates. Certainly will be a crowded field and certainly this race will be watched in New Orleans and throughout the country.
M. O'BRIEN: What a difficult job they all want to try out for. I'll tell you, that's -- I don't know if any one person can handle what needs to be done there in New Orleans right now.
CHO: Tall order.
M. O'BRIEN: Alina Cho, our Alina Cho, thank you very much. We like to claim you.
CHO: I like that.
M. O'BRIEN: Soledad?
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, I second that. We claim you.
Let's talk about a new study. Kind of disturbing details from this study. Teenage drivers might actually be more dangerous than anybody previously thought. The new report from AAA says that the drivers themselves aren't always the most at risk.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
S. O'BRIEN (voice-over): It's an all-too-familiar scene in communities all across the country. Twisted metal, broken glass and often broken lives.
Sixteen-year-old Alicia Betancourt was getting ice cream in Silver Spring, Maryland, in late 2004 when this crash happened. But the young aspiring artist wasn't behind the wheel. Alicia was riding with another 16-year-old who police say was speeding and lost control. He survived, Alicia did not.
Car wrecks are the leading cause of death among teenagers and AAA finds some 3,000 people each year of all ages die because of teenage drivers. Most of the time, almost two-thirds of the time, in fact, those killed are not the teenage driver, but their passengers or people in other vehicles.
Those statistics hit home for those grieving like Alicia Betancourt's father.
ARTURO BETANCOURT, ALICIA'S FATHER: I'm angry at the driver. He was doing something for which he was not prepared. And the fact that my daughter is dead as a result of his negligence.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
S. O'BRIEN: Negligence and lack of maturity have been blamed for the large number of accidents that are caused by teenage drivers. How big of a problem is it?
Joining us this morning from Washington, D.C. is Robert Darbelnet. He is the president and CEO of AAA.
It's nice to see you, sir. Thanks for talking with us.
ROBERT DARBELNET, PRESIDENT AND CEO, AAA: Good morning, Soledad.
S. O'BRIEN: Were you shocked, as we sort of were when we first saw these statistics from this study that really teenage drivers kill themselves a big percentage of the time, but even more often, they actually kill people who are on the street, in their vehicle, in the other vehicle?
DARBELNET: Indeed. It was a bit of a surprise. And as you pointed out, about two-thirds of the victims are not teen drivers, but other individuals, either passengers or other motorists or even pedestrians or cyclists. So it was a bit of a surprise.
S. O'BRIEN: So why is that the case? I mean, why -- is it just because they're young and inexperienced? Is that the primary reason, do you think?
DARBELNET: Well, teen drivers are more likely to be involved in a fatal crash, in part because they are young and inexperienced, in part because they probably don't have the same sense of risk that older drivers might have. And they may also be more susceptible to distractions. Where we have noted that when there are other teens are riding with them, the likelihood of a fatal crash increases substantially.
S. O'BRIEN: Substantially. Do you know by what number?
DARBELNET: Well, it will probably double if there is one other teen passenger and if there are two or more teen passengers riding with a teen driver, it may increase five-fold.
S. O'BRIEN: Really? That's just shocking numbers. Now, already, as we've talked about, insurance rates way high for teenage drivers. What else do you think needs to be done?
DARBELNET: Well, there are really two things that we need to focus on. One is better graduated driver licensing laws. Graduated driver licensing laws give young drivers gradual access to full driving rights as they gradually acquire experience.
And a good graduated driver licensing law includes restrictions on the number of passengers that a teen can drive when they're just learning. It also includes restrictions on the hours at which a teen driver can use the vehicle. We know that the likelihood of a crash is twice as great at night as it is in the day, so restricting nighttime driving is part of the solution.
And then ensuring that there is parental supervision in the first hours of driving, perhaps the first 50 hours of driving, is another key component. All that, again, relates to good graduated driver licensing laws, which is part of the solution.
S. O'BRIEN: And how about other parts of the solution? Maybe legally speaking?
DARBELNET: Well, another part of the solution actually isn't so much a legal implication, it's a parental involvement. Parents have a big role to play in this, first in terms of setting the proper example. If as a parent when you drive your kids you speed, odds are your children will speed when they get behind the wheel. If you tailgate, they probably will, too. If you talk on your cell phone, they will probably mimic that behavior. So setting the right example is very important.
But if you live in one of the states where the graduated driver licensing law doesn't quite cover the elements that need to be included, then as a parent, you need to step in and set additional rules of your own. If you live in a state, for example, where there is no restriction on nighttime driving you, as a parent, need to set those rules within your own home.
S. O'BRIEN: The number of people killed by teenage drivers is actually decreasing over the last number of years. Why is that?
DARBELNET: Well, there's been a slight decrease and we're very pleased with that. We think it's in part because of the adoption of these graduated driver licensing laws. Over the last eight years, we worked very hard to get every state in the union to adopt one of these laws. And they are all now in place.
The remaining challenge is to make them uniformly good, and we're going to be focused on improving those laws where they are falling short of our objectives. But we think part of the improvement comes from the very fact that these laws have been instituted.
S. O'BRIEN: I'm sure the study will give some of your efforts some real teeth, as well.
Robert Darbelnet is the president and the CEO of AAA. Thanks for talking with us this morning. Those numbers really just so shocking.
DARBELNET: It was a pleasure.
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S. O'BRIEN: Ahead this morning, an update on that custody battle over that little girl who is severely brain-damaged. Her father -- or stepfather, rather, is accused of nearly beating her to death. He wanted custody so doctors wouldn't take her off life support. Well, now the court's weighed in. We'll tell you what the court said, up next on AMERICAN MORNING.
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S. O'BRIEN: Story out of Massachusetts now. A man has lost his fight to keep the stepdaughter that he's accused of abusing on life support. It is a legal decision that could result in a murder charge.
CNN's Dan Lothian has details for us this morning.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAN LOTHIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Eleven-year-old Haleigh Poutre is in what doctors call a permanent vegetative state, a shadow of her former self.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She was so full of life before and loved people.
LOTHIAN: But everything changed last September when authorities say Haleigh's adoptive mother and stepfather abused her, allegedly kicking and beating her with a baseball bat and causing a clot in the brain.
Her birth mother wants the suffering to end.
ALLISON SUDYKA EVERETT, HALEIGH'S MOTHER: I don't want to see her suffer anymore. And she -- this is no life. I mean, there's things keeping her alive. What kind of a life is that?
LOTHIAN (on camera): The Massachusetts Department of Social Services, which has legal custody of the child, agrees. But in its effort to have her removed from life support, the agency met legal resistance from Haleigh's stepfather, Jason Strickland, who could be charged with murder if she dies.
What makes this case even more complicated is that the birth mother and the adoptive mother are sisters.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This case involves the tragic plight of an 11-year-old child.
LOTHIAN (voice over): Strickland's lawyers had argued before the state's highest court for parental rights and a say in her medical care. But that argument was rejected. Life support can now be removed.
EVERETT: It's a bittersweet feeling knowing that she won't have to suffer anymore. But at the same time it's the loss of a child.
LOTHIAN: Strickland's lawyer said he's deeply disappointed and maintains his client was never motivated by the prospect of a murder charge.
As for Haleigh's adoptive mother, Holly Strickland, she was also charged in the beating but was found dead in this home, along with her own grandmother, not long after the 11-year-old was hospitalized. It's being investigated as a murder-suicide.
Haleigh remains in a Massachusetts hospital attached to a ventilator and feeding tube. DSS says it will consult with her doctors, but no decision yet on when life support will be removed.
The young girl's birth mother remains haunted by the day she gave up her daughter to her sister seven years ago.
EVERETT: I'm sorry.
LOTHIAN: Dan Lothian, CNN, Boston.
EVERETT: I'm just so sorry.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
S. O'BRIEN: The stepfather remains free on bail. He's awaiting trial on assault charges. His lawyers say they haven't decided whether they're going to take any further legal action -- Miles.
M. O'BRIEN: Top stories trade ahead, including a developing story out of Britain. A London newspaper reporting what may have been a plot to kidnap Prime Minister Tony Blair's son, or was it just a little bit of idle talk that got out of hand? We'll get to the bottom of it, ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.
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S. O'BRIEN: Good morning. I'm Soledad O'Brien.
Time may be running out for an American journalist who's been taken hostage in Iraq. An ultimatum, a looming deadline. We're going to take you live to Baghdad for the very latest on this developing story.
And was it a plot or was it a prank? Was Tony Blair's son really in danger of being kidnapped? We're live in London this morning.
M. O'BRIEN: Good morning, I'm Miles O'Brien. My bad. Mayor Ray Nagin says he misspoke, but can he get past those chocolate city comments?
And is your breakfast making you moody, a little cranky? We'll have the dish on that, ahead on this AMERICAN MORNING.
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