LA-Gov: The day before the election

Well, the sun is out after a couple of days of nasty monsoon-style afternoon/evening thunderstorms here in New Orleans. It looks like the good weather will continue at least into tomorrow. On the up side, this means my mandatory attendance at tonight's performance of the Brother Martin High School Band at Tad Gormley Stadium will be dry. (Oh, there's a sporting event being held in conjunction with this band performance. Before and after the music, the Brother Martin football team plays the team from Jesuit High School). The downside to nice weather this weekend is that clear skies usually means higher voter turnout.

There are several major factors affecting voter turnout tomorrow:

Weather: It's going to be a gorgeous day in metro New Orleans, and that will bring the Republicans out to vote in East Jefferson.

Hunting Season: Tomorrow (20-Oct) is opening day of hunting season. Hey, they don't call Louisiana "Sportman's Paradise" for nothing. This is a very simple equation: a lot of hardcore gun guys aren't going to vote. They're packing up today to go to their camps tonight so they can get up early and do what they enjoy. Odds are, a lot of them won't be home by the time the polls close at 8pm.

LSU vs. Auburn: The reason we have elections on Saturdays in Louisiana is to allow working folks to have a better chance to get to the polls than on a workday. Sometimes, however, this creates interesting conflicts. LSU plays Auburn in football tomorrow. The game is at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge. At a meeting I attended Tuesday night, one guy said, "yeah, there will be 92,000 people in that stadium." Another guy added, "and there will be another 100,000 tailgating in the parking lot!" OK, the 100K outside is a bit of an exaggaration, but there will be that many people in the stadium and a buttload of people outside. There will be people in bars and pubs across the state. A lot of people have all-day festivities at their houses for a big game.

The game and the hunters are a huge concern for Piyush "Bobby" Jindal (R-Kenner), the endorsed Republican candidate in the race. Since incumbent governor Kathy Blanco decided not to stand for re-election, the conventional wisdom has been that Jindal had a very good shot of winning tomorrow's open primary with 50.1% of the vote, bypassing a runoff next month. The hunters and LSU fans are thinking, "oh, Bobby's got it made, I don't have to go vote. He's gonna win outright, or for sure get in the runoff." The problem is that a runoff scares the bejeebus out of Piyush's people, to the point where the campaign put out a massive GOTV push two weeks ago, to get people to do "early voting." Jindal was supposed to have the runoff against Democrat Blanco in the bag four years ago, and Blanco pulled it out in the last week. The under-the-radar racial vote is a major concern for the Republicans. More on the racial factors in a moment.

"The Black Vote:" The racial factors in a Louisiana election used to be easy to sort out. Before the storm, there were two big concentrations of black voting strength, New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The storm has wiped out the voting strength of blacks in Orleans Parish. Many thousands of New Orleanians are still living in the area, in Jefferson, St. Charles, and St. Tammany parishes. The catch is that, while they live in the burbs, their "domiciles" are in Orleans Parish. They'll have to drive anywhere from 10-50 miles to get to a polling place. Tradtional neighborhood polling places in Da Ninth, Gentilly, and Lakeview have vanished, replaced by consolidated polling places for entire wards. The confusion and inconvenience will do more to supress black turnout than any stunt ever attempted by the LA Republican Party. Polls show Jindal actually making gains in black vote over his numbers from four years ago, but polls call people where they are now; they don't factor in whether or not they'll drive back into the city to vote.

The lack of a race on the ballot that will rouse the interest of New Orleanians also plays into what may be low black turnout. The biggest item on the ballot other than statewide races for Orleans Parish is the race to replace former At-Large City Councilman Olvier Thomas (D-Markey Marc). Thomas, you may remember, is the idiot who took bribes from Morial-connected businessmen, negotiatied a plea deal with the DoJ, and is now off to Club Fed. The candidates to replace this fool are the usual suspects, a couple of district councilmen and some other community leaders. There are no personalities in this race that will electrify any part of the community. The individual candidates will do what they can to get out their people, but there's nothing about this race that's excited the community as a whole.

The mess that is polling places in Orleans Parish will also contribute to lower white turnout as well as black. It's important to remember that homeowners in the Lakeview neighborhood of the city were overwhelmingly white Republicans. Lakeview homes got an average of 10' of water in the storm, and the majority of the neighborhood isn't back home.

The Under-The-Radar Vote: This is a very serious problem for Jindal. Many of the folks that vote Republican in Louisiana just don't like black people. Jindal is Indian-American. While he's not African-American, he is still Not White. The phenomenom of under-the-radar racism goes back to the 1991 race between Edwin Edwards (D-Club Fed) and David Duke (R-Sturm Abteilung). From a 1991 NYT article:

Public opinion polls, in which statisticians have tried to adjust for the reluctance of voters to state their preference for Mr. Duke, show Mr. Edwards in the lead. But almost no analysts are willing to make a prediction about the race because of the difficulty of gauging Mr. Duke's support and because of the mixed emotions expressed by many voters Mr. Edwards needs.

I submit that those same voters haven't left the state. This time, their reluctance to state their true feelings is not because they don't want to be associated with a Grand Wizard of the KKK, but because they don't want to admit they won't vote for a candidate who is Not White. This is why Jindal's campaign in the north focuses so much on religion--he can't change the color of his skin, but he spends a lot of time talking about his Christianity and faith, hoping to make a distinction between the godless Democrat (Campbell), the city slicker (Boasso, even though he's from Da Parish), and the Greek guy (Georges). Still, he may be Christian, but it's a tough sell for a guy who is Not White to convince people who were willing to vote for a Klansmen they should vote for him. Given this reverse race card, along with Vitty-cent's sexual indiscretions and hypocrisy, the upstate "values" crackers may just stay home and watch LSU-Auburn on the boobtoob.

The Candidates: There are four first-tier candidates in the LA-Gov race.

Walter Boasso (D-Chalmette) - A businessman and State Senator from storm-ravaged St. Bernard Parish, Boasso led the effort to reform the way Louisiana manages flood control. His work on reforming the political infrastructure of flood control in the state have produced mixed results, but he has molded himself as a reformer. Boasso was elected to the State Senate as a Republican, but switched to Democrat to run for governor. Some say Boasso wanted the GOP endorsement, and switched when it was clear that the powers-that-be on the dark side went with Jindal. Boasso has certainly embrased his "inner Democrat," however, running some very sweet attack ads, giving Jindal ownership of his Personal Lord and Savior, George W. Bush. The memory hook for the commercials is, "Bobby Jindal - Big Brain. No Heart." That wraps up commercials attacking Jindal for his atrocious record as head of the state's health and hospitals department, as well as his congressional voting record (97% with Bush-Delay). The Republicans decry the use of attack ads, but we all know how powerful they can be. Boasso's total lack of credibility in the progressive sphere is his downfall, though.

Foster Campbell (D-Elm Grove) - Campbell is the favorite of most progressive Democrats. He's from Boissier Parish, which is up in the northwest corner of the state, next to Shreveport. A lifelong Dem, Campbell is a good-ol-boy who is on the state's Public Service Commission. Campbell's visibility in the southern part of the state has improved, but not his credibility. His commercials, showing him hanging out with northern LA farmers, riding his horse, etc., do nothing to inspire city folks. The Louisiana Public Service Commission has a reputation as essentially a do-nothing body. They're best known for refusing almost every rate request put to them by a utility doing business in the state. This puts them in good stead with the voters, but it punts the true decision-making to the courts, when the utilities sue. The actual rate hikes are then worked out in back-room settlement conferences, avoiding sunshine laws. The net result is that most voters don't think of PSC commissioners as leaders.

Campbell's also been a big disappointment as a Democrat. He's letting Boasso do the heavy lifting against Jindal. One can make an argument that letting the guy who is polling lower be the pit bull, but Campbell is the candidate with the backing of the progressives in the party. Progressives on various dem blogs and mailing lists attack Boassao as a Dem-of-convenience, but he's acting more like a Dem than the good-ol-boy they're endorsing.

John Georges (I-Metairie) - I don't know exactly why Georges is in the race and spending the kind of money he is. Like Boasso, Georges was Republican before failing to get the party's endorsement. A businessman, his company, Imperial Trading, is one of the biggest cigarette distributors in the metro area. He is also one of the owners of a large distributor of video poker machines in the state. (In Louisiana, the distributor puts the machines in the restaurant or bar. Players pump $$$ into them, then the state takes 25% of the gross. The distributor and establishment split the rest, usually 50-50.) Jindal is spending a good bit of money (commercials during the evening news and prime time) to paint Georges as corrupt and sinful. Georges is the guy Jindal's trying to beat, because he's the biggest threat to Jindal not getting 50.1% of the vote tomorrow. The fear is that Georges will siphon off vote from East Jefferson. Georges is a Metairie homeboy--Imperial Trading has been around for generations, he's a community leader, and well-respected. Jindal is still viewed by many as a carpetbagger in Jefferson Parish. Sure, the suburbanites love him as a Congresscritter running against token Dem opposition, but now he's running against a guy they see in church, at the playground, etc. Georges is Greek Orthodox, and that community sticks together. He's more attractive to Catholics than Jindal, even though Jindal's ostensibly Roman Catholic, because Piyush has essentially forsaken mainstream Catholicism for the political expedient of evangelical Christianity. He runs a local business, as opposed to being a professional politician. Georges is the scariest candidate in the race as far as Jindal's folks are concerned. Jindal's responses to Boasso's attack ads are to decry the tactic. Piyush's people save the real venom for Georges.

Piyush "Bobby" Jindal (R-Kenner) - The frontrunner. The "anointed one." Congresscritter from LA-01. When Blanco decided not to stand for re-election, the Dems had a helluva time trying to find someone to run against him. The weakness of Campbell and the opportunism of Boasso is testament to this. The Jindal campaign's drive to win this outright tomorrow is serious, and justified. The things that can go wrong for Jindal in a runoff are serious concerns for his backers. Republicans see Jindal as a chance to re-capture the Governor's mansion. The big business and medical establishment money is behind him. Jindal's not without baggage, though. His voting record is totally with Bush and the K Street Republican establishment. His stance on "values" issues is severely tainted by his support of brothel-boy David Vitter. This morning's headline in Da Paper is about Vitty-cent restructuring a $100K earmark destined for a pro-creationism education foundation tied to Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council. This creates a problem for Jindal, because it reminds the "values voters" that Republican politicians are really just scum that use them when convenient.

It's a pretty melodramatic statement, but Bobby Jindal currently represents everything that is wrong, immoral, and downright evil about the state of Louisiana. And it's damned likely he'll be our next governor.

My prediction: Jindal-Georges in the runoff. Outside chance Campbell beats out Georges. If Campbell gets in the runoff, he's our next governor. As much as he disappoints me, Campbell's got my vote.

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