Mayor of New Orleans from 1994-2002 , Marc is the son of the city's first African-American mayor, Earnest N. "Dutch" Morial. Since he left office federal investigators have been digging into a number of transactions that took place during his term involving relatives and close associates.

His uncle Glenn Haydel was caught in a scheme to defraud the RTA of $500,000. Glenn's wife pleaded guilty in another plan to defraud the public school system. Kerry DeCay the city's property manager and a group of private contractors pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy in a plan to skim more than $1 million from city energy efficiency contracts involving Johnson Controls. Morial has not been implicated but people are wondering whether the guilty pleas will lead any further.

U.S. Attorney Jim Letten is at the center of the investigations and hopes the pleas send a message about dishonest government.

The obvious message is loud and clear. This government was not to be trusted. That's why we replaced them with Nagin in 2002 (term limits didn't hurt, either). Whether any government can be trusted to honestly manage money obtained from citizens is also embedded in the message.