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SUTTON   FRANCIS   EDLEY
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McNIEL   CARRINGTON
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MORIAL: 'I get joy out of getting things accomplished.'

USA mayors pick seasoned battler for leader 

The 550 members of the U.S. Conference of Mayors have elected a battler - Ernest N. Dutch Morial, Democratic mayor of New Orleans - to lead their fight against the $237 billion in budget cuts proposed by the Reagan administration. 
   Morial, 55, took office as president this week and will preside at the conference's winter meeting Thursday through Saturday in Washington. He succeeds Hernan Padilla, who stepped down Monday as mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, after an unsuccessful run for governor last November. 
   Morial won his reputation as fighter stringing together a long list of civil rights "firsts." 
   "I get joy out of getting things accomplished," he said with a Louisiana drawl. 
   He is New Orleans' first black mayor, taking office in 1978 and winning re-election in 1982. Before that, he was Louisiana's first black U.S. attorney, the first black state legislator since Reconstruction and the first black elected to the state's Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. In 1954, he was the first black to graduate from the Louisiana State University School of Law. 
   When Louisiana law prohibited teachers from holding membership in civil rights organizations, he successfully challenged the law. His wife, Sybil, was the plaintiff. 
   "We need that kind of leadership," said Roland Luedtke, the Republican mayor of Lincoln, Neb. 
   With the Reagan cuts threatening aid to cities for community renewal, mass transit, libraries, social services and health care, Morial's fighting spirit will be severely tested. 
   "While we're concerned about the federal deficit, we didn't contribute to it to the extent they're trying to penalize us," he said. 
   Morial was nicknamed "Dutch" as a youngster when he put on a cap and his father said he looked like the boy on the can of Dutch Boy paint. The tag stuck, and now it's part of his legal name. He wears a bejeweled lapel pin that says "Dutch" and often signs official documents "Dutch Morial."
   His popularity in New Orleans is so strong that supporters are now petitioning for a charter change permitting mayors to serve three consecutive terms. 
   Otherwise, Morial will have to retire next year. Morial, a father of five, says he hasn't made any career decisions yet. 

-Richard Benedetto