After the Floods

Louisiana’s new electoral landscape is still in fluxNearly three years to the day since Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans and a large swath of the Gulf coast, the region waited nervously for Gustav to make landfall and potentially add to the carnage left by Katrina. This time, thankfully, the hurricane swept through without leaving enormous damage in its wake. For an area still struggling to rebuild, it was a rare bit of good news.
Not that there aren’t some signs of recovery already. Most of the city’s revenue-generating tourist attractions are back up and running. The French Quarter, home to the famous Bourbon Street, now teems with tourists and college students dripping with Mardi Gras beads and swilling booze as they stumble along the cobblestone streets. Each night, the reassuring sounds of live jazz and blues fl oat from bars as employees make impassioned entreaties to pedestrians. Still, the legacy of Katrina remains—hollowed out neighborhoods and vanished residents.
In the case of Louisiana, and especially New Orleans, the transformation is not just physical. It’s political as well. From an electoral standpoint, it’s unprecedented: there really has never been a similar example of an area changed virtually overnight because of a natural disaster, producing an exodus of certain demographics, and sending political parties scrambling to reappraise their prospects throughout the state.
The mass displacement from the storms has resulted in a complex realignment of the electorate that is still coming into focus. Two separate political dynamics have emerged at once. First, the exodus of Democratic voters to Texas, Florida and other parts of the country could affect local and statewide races in Louisiana—to the benefit of Republicans. At the same time, many of those who left New Orleans went to other parts of Louisiana, producing new micro-electorates where Democrats have moved into traditionally Republican areas. This has left politicians and political experts uncertain as to which party will have gained more ground once the dust settles.Upside for the GOP
New Orleans has long been the state’s Democratic power base. But now, with pockets of the city still in ruins, its residents account for the majority of those who have either fled Louisiana entirely or relocated to other parts of the state. Sixteen neighborhoods in the New Orleans area are currently below 50 percent of their pre-storm households, and a tour through the lower income, majority black areas like the lower Ninth Ward yields only marginally better visuals than a ghost town might. This is a gruesome spectacle by any objective standard. Many of the empty houses still have the number of bodies discovered in them spray-painted out front from the National Guard’s recovery efforts following the storm. And occasionally you’ll come upon a skeleton of a house with a crude hole in the roof where panicked residents burst through the attic ceiling to avoid drowning.
In all, more than 1,500 people have been confirmed dead in Louisiana as the result of Katrina, with hundreds more still missing. While a drive around the city exposes the staggering breadth of the destruction and punctures the myth of prejudice surrounding it (80 percent of the city was under water, rich and poor neighborhoods alike), it’s clear that lower income residents are at a tremendous disadvantage in terms of recovery and reconstruction. And that means the poor, who are disproportionately Democrats, are the bulk of those who have left the city forever. “If you look at the voter rolls from August 2005 on, there has definitely been a big erosion in voters in Orleans, St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes,” says John Couvillon, a Baton Rouge–based Republican political consultant who specializes in demographics and voter roll statistics.
“I’d predict about 30 percent of voters in those areas just aren’t there anymore.” After the storms hit, many residents moved out of state but remained on the rolls as absentee voters. Now, as they settle into new lives elsewhere, many of those former residents have been reregistering in their new locales. “Those [New Orleans] neighborhoods are losing about 100 to 200 voters a month,” Couvillon says. Republicans’ best bet might be the seat currently held by Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu.
The two-term incumbent has faced the toughest reelection fight of her career, a predicament many credit to an erosion in her New Orleans voter base. National Republicans, bracing for another round of congressional losses, have targeted Landrieu as perhaps the sole Democratic senator in the country who could be knocked off. And a Zogby International poll this summer showed Landrieu losing to her Republican opponent, State Treasurer John Kennedy, by 6 points, whipping the Landrieu people into a frenzy and prompting them to completely dismiss the poll’s credibility. (Most other polling shows the race either very close, or with Landrieu ahead, and most consultants and academics I talked to who are familiar with the power of the Landrieu name, Republican and Democrat, seem to think she will hang on.)
Landrieu’s campaign is banking primarily on the fact that this is a presidential election year, and that having Barack Obama at the top of the ticket could draw out enough black voters to send her back to Washington. Certainly, the national climate works in her favor. “People have made the mistake of comparing African- American turnout this year to 2002 when Sen. Landrieu was last reelected,” says Scott Schneider, Landrieu’s campaign spokesman. “But if you look back at 2004, which was a presidential election year, African-American turnout was significantly higher, and we expect to see huge turnout again this year. So we imagine that even if her percent turnout is lower than before, the actual number of black voters will be higher than it was in 2002.”
But other experts point to the fact that Landrieu’s vulnerability signals what was already becoming a warming trend toward Republicans, facilitated in part by Katrina. “In 2003 this state had six statewide Democrats. Today the state has a Republican governor and has kicked out five of those Democrats,” says Dr. Joshua Stockley, a government professor at Nicholls State University who has written extensively about Katrina’s political impact in Louisiana. “Needless to say, things will be tough for Landrieu with some 50,000 fewer residences receiving mail—maybe 100,000 people—in precincts that have overwhelmingly voted for her in the past.” In 1996, Landrieu won by a mere 6,000 votes, and was reelected in 2002 by 40,000 votes.
In New Orleans itself, the GOP can win by losing if the new demographics lead to Democratic officeholders whose politics are more congenial with the Republican message. For example, Orleans Parish has been trending more conservative since the storms, and there are indications that some local New Orleans–area incumbents, at various levels of government, could be vulnerable to newly emboldened challengers. In certain cases, the loss of more liberal voters has resulted in some conservative candidates who might have felt less confident pre-Katrina.
Melanie Talia, for example, is a local attorney challenging an incumbent Democratic district court judge in New Orleans. “Melanie is running as a Democrat, but she’s been endorsed by the Republicans,” says Aaron Rives, one of her advisers. According to Rives, even though the city’s demographics are becoming more conservative, having a “D” next to your name is still an advantage when running for office here. “If you run as a Republican in Orleans Parish it will make electability diffi cult, because it really seems like you have to run as a Democrat to have a decent shot in local elections,” Rives says. “But, plainly, Melanie is much more conservative than her opponent.”
Rives acknowledges that the post-Katrina electorate is something the campaign is very much aware of, and hopes could work to their benefit. “Look, it’s impossible to know for sure how displacement will impact our race until after the election,” Rives says. “But I do think that the shifting demographics will likely be a factor in this race in the sense that an African-American incumbent like our opponent would have been in a better position to hang on four years ago before the loss of so many black voters.”
And Republicans claim they’re in a strong position to get out the vote statewide because of the foundation laid by Bobby Jindal’s successful run for governor. “There were definitely some challenges that Gov. Jindal’s campaign had to face because of displacement, and there essentially had to be a rebuilding of the voter file,” says Aaron Baer, the spokesman for the Louisiana Republican Party. “And certainly the secretary of state’s office had been working on updating the voting files prior to that election and continues to do so.”Good Omens for Democrats
In the aftermath of the storms, the bulk of hurricane victims who remained in Louisiana relocated to Baton Rouge, the traditionally Republican state capital. The city has grown by about 50,000 people since Katrina struck. In a May special election, that new bloc of voters helped stun Republicans when Democrat Don Cazayoux seized the 6th District U.S. House seat after more than three decades under Republican control.
“There are defi nitely some areas of the state that are seeing Democratic trends partly as a result of displacement,” says Chris Whittington, chairman of the Louisiana Democratic Party. “Taking back the 6th congressional district after 33 years had a lot to do with New Orleans Democrats moving to Baton Rouge and staying there. And you can bet extremely good money that up in the 4th congressional district a Democrat will take that seat back after 20-plus years under the Republicans. So this election cycle we are seeing some positive signs for Democrats.”
The 4th District, based in Shreveport, received some displaced hurricane victims, but it’s unclear exactly how big of a role those new voters will play. The Democrat, local District Attorney Paul Carmouche, is considered very formidable and will face one of three Republicans competing in their Oct. 4 primary. The seat is currently held by Republican Jim McCrery, who is retiring. Last month the nonpartisan Cook Political Report viewed the race as a toss-up. Chris Whittington also says the Democratic registration surge among young voters and African-Americans this year because of Barack Obama’s candidacy is also apparent in Louisiana and could compensate for the loss of Democratic voters. And from a targeting and GOTV perspective, Whittington explains that the Democrats have also employed a host of procedures to reregister displaced voters or court new ones.
“It became clear after the storms that we’d have to not only launch a massive voter registration effort, but also cross-reference the FEMA lists, and national change of address lists,” Whittington says. “And there has also been a big effort to identify chronic voters (those who have voted in four out of the last five elections) in the state. Since January, every night we’ve had about a dozen workers in every major city in the state calling and identifying chronic voters so we know how to reach them around Election Day. So far we’ve registered 70,000 voters.”
At least in New Orleans, African-Americans may have an impetus to vote beyond the Obama candidacy. In the aftermath of Katrina, the city’s residents were furious at the federal government, a rage that was exacerbated by the Crescent City’s mayor, Ray Nagin, who garnered national attention by suggesting racism played a role in slowing down federal aid. Despite the city’s ongoing transformation, Nagin says African-American voters remain a dominant political force here. “The city is still around 60 percent African-American. And while people get tired of hearing about Katrina each year around the anniversary, which may depress voter participation, we expect this year, because of the excitement of the presidential election, to see voter turnout [percentages] return to pre-storm levels,” Nagin says.
To the extent he’s proven right, that could spell good news for Democrats. It would also seem to help Democrats that Louisiana is a Voting Rights Act state, which ensures the 2nd congressional district that includes New Orleans will remain majority minority. But after the 2010 census, the state is certain to lose a congressional seat, and the 2nd District will be drastically altered due to population loss. At this point, it’s not clear what the redrawn district will look like, although Democrats will still likely be in a stronger position because of the black constituency.
There’s also the uncertainty surrounding Democratic Rep. William Jefferson, who has represented the 2nd District since 1991, when he became the state’s fi rst black member of Congress since Reconstruction. Jefferson’s political fate has grown increasingly precarious following serious ethical troubles, including the discovery by investigators of $90,000 in cash inside his freezer. In 2006 Jefferson managed to win reelection despite being under federal investigation, but this year, with a steady decline of his core voters, and now having been formally indicted on 16 counts of corruption-related charges, he seems more vulnerable than ever. Jefferson faces multiple challenges from within his own party in an Oct. 4 primary. Still, race is definitely a key factor in New Orleans politics, and the evolving demography of the city could prove volatile.
There is already evidence that white politicians are more apt to be elected now than they were before the storms. For instance, last year a white candidate named Jackie Clarkson defeated a black candidate for a New Orleans City Council seat, and Jefferson’s leading opponent, Helena Moreno, is counting partially on higher turnout of white residents. Over the next few years the evolution of Louisiana politics will be fascinating to watch, especially at the local level where the ripple effects are most likely to begin. Think back on the conservative movement started by the Republicans in the 1970s. It was built from the bottom-up, with conservatives getting elected to school boards and city councils. Similarly, while national attention will be focused on the coming Senate and congressional races in Louisiana, the greatest impact of the demographic shifts after Katrina could be on a very local scale. Ultimately, they could prove most consequential for the state’s politics.
Whatever unfolds, it’s difficult to imagine any political transformation altering the spirit of a city as unique as New Orleans. After a week of disaster tours and data analysis, I’d almost lost sight of the rare strain of American culture that is woven through the streets of New Orleans. As my cab driver dropped me off at the airport, the life-long resident reminded me in his distinctive Cajun accent to encourage my friends to come here and spend money—a popular refrain among New Orleans residents as soon as they realize you’re a tourist. As he lifted my suitcase from the trunk he surprised me with one of the most emotional displays I’ve seen yet. “This city’s different now, and lots of folks are gone—lots of my friends,” he said. “But the people who are still here love this city more than anything else in the world. Whatever politicians get elected from now on, I hope they feel the same way.” Doug Daniels is staff writer for Politics magazine.