Mintz, Morial Face Runoff in New Orleans Mayoral Race : Politics: Name-calling, fraud charges and an 11th-hour indictment of a campaign aide spiced up the bayou battle among the 10 candidates.

Attorney Donald Mintz and state Sen. Marc Morial will meet in a runoff next month after they received the most votes Saturday in the city’s bitterly contested mayoral race.

With all precincts reporting, Mintz, who finished a close second in the 1990 mayoral election, received 37% of the votes cast. Morial, the son of the city’s first black mayor, Ernest (Dutch) Morial, was second with 32%. Eight other candidates were running far behind.

The winner of the March 5 runoff will replace Mayor Sidney Barthelemy, who was barred from seeking a third four-year term. A runoff will be necessary because no candidate received more than 50% of the vote.

The election followed a campaign characterized by charges of fraud and name-calling that seemed extreme even in a city known for its hard-boiled politics.

In the waning days of the campaign, several candidates joined with the local district attorney’s office in asking for an investigation of thousands of pieces of campaign literature filled with racist, anti-gay and anti-Semitic language.

State Rep. Mitch Landrieu, a mayoral candidate and the son of former New Orleans Mayor Maurice (Moon) Landrieu, had attacked the pamphlets as “hateful and mean-spirited.” Landrieu finished third in Saturday’s voting.

Mintz, who is white, on Friday dismissed a top aide who was indicted for distributing anonymous, and therefore illegal, campaign literature.

The indictment did not specify which flyer the aide allegedly distributed. Under Louisiana law, it is a misdemeanor to fail to identify the source of campaign material.

Until the campaign literature controversy erupted, the mayoral race centered on what to do about the city’s deadly pace of violence--which resulted in 389 murders last year, a 36% increase from the previous year--and how to invigorate a stagnant economy.

The candidates varied little in their philosophical approach to government or in their proposed solutions to the city’s crime problems. All promised to beef up the police force and push for tougher sentencing for repeat felons.

On the economy, the candidates had long ago abandoned debating the merits of the soon-to-open Grand Palais casino--which promoters say will provide up to 20,000 jobs--in favor of promising to wisely spend the more than $10 million in rent the facility is expected to generate each year.

In addition, the city will benefit from added tax revenues because of the casino.

Although the size of the election field and the amount of money spent on radio and TV advertising exceeded levels spent in recent campaigns, analysts said the battle may have ultimately boiled down to name recognition and the personality of the candidates.

“Only Mintz and Morial have run citywide races before, so they are the best known and organized,” said John Grimm, president of a local polling company.

The race was an open primary, meaning that members of any party could run. But eight of the 10 candidates ran as Democrats and the other two as independents.

The city has a 62% black electorate. Seven candidates were black.