New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin is playing the race card in his bid for re-election, reminding black audiences that his white opponents “don’t look like us.”

Appearing Saturday before the NAACP’s Family & Technology Center in Houston, Nagin noted that 23 candidates had entered the mayoral fray before the registration deadline last week.

“Very few of them look like us,” he told the audience of about 200, whom the Houston Chronicle described as “almost totally black.”

Nagin was in Houston to encourage displaced Katrina evacuees to cast their absentee ballots for him.

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