Got some face time on WWL.

http://www.wwltv.com/topstories/stories/wwl061609tpyoungpros.891bd7d8.html

Katie Moore / Eyewitness News

kmoore@wwltv.com

NEW ORLEANS - Less than a year from now, New Orleans will choose a new mayor.

And even though there are still no leading candidates, grass-roots groups are mobilizing to have a louder voice in the election. According to political analysts, a merger of the city's young professional organizations could have a big impact.

In post-Katrina New Orleans, young people are making their mark, and for 33-year-old Blake Haney, that means creating quirky t-shirts that celebrate everything New Orleans.

“There was a lot of apathy and I think when the storm occurred, everybody who moved back, they moved back for a reason. They probably rediscovered a passion for a place, for a neighborhood, for New Orleans,” Haney said.

That pride is what made the t-shirt part of his company take off, and now he's putting it to use on the Internet with a new venture: a web site for anyone connected to New Orleans.

“We wanted to find a partner that we could work with for what we're calling, if I was mayor. People who have profiles on our site can put on their platforms,” Haney said.

They're now partners with seven of the city's young professional organizations to create a voting block of sorts.

Young Leadership Council is taking the lead.

“I think the Obama election and several other recent elections showed that young professionals are really concerned about, if this city and this country and is really gonna belong to us and be about our future, how do we take control of it,” said Young Leadership Council President Nolan Marshall.

The collaborative, called EngageNOLA is meeting weekly to come up with ways to get young people excited and educated about the issues, and in general, about the election, not about any one candidate.

“With those organizations, there's really the bandwidth to reach over 80,000 young professionals who are registered to vote,” Marshall said.

Tulane Political Science Professor Brian Brox helped the school conduct a pre-mayoral election poll this spring and he said young professionals could play a big role.

“If you pull out just the individuals who are 35 and younger, you look at those people, the question asked if you intend to vote in the 2010 mayoral race? 85 percent of that voting group said that they will definitely participate,” Brox said.