In 2004 the naive voting bloc were the Evangelicals. In New Orleans 2006 it's the low income black voters.
But the puppet master behind the whole thing is the same: the National GOP.
Everybody was commenting how boring and gentlemanly the race was going between Nagin and Landrieu for the mayoral race. There wasn't a dimes worth of difference between the two, they both agreed on more than they disagreed. And the undecided factor has been huge 14-18%.
But elections in New Orleans can never be anything but interesting. The story here boils down to one thing: CUTTING LOSSES TO ONE TERM. And the dems need to play close attention to what is going on here in New Orleans to hopefully learn lessons for the mid-terms and beyond.
To borrow from TPM Cafe: the Storyline is this: "Although Republicans despise Ray Nagin, they are trying to get him re-elected in order to weaken the Democratic party in Louisiana. If that involves the death of New Orleans, then so be it."
I had suspected, but was able to confirm that in a nutshell, here is the Republican strategy in New Orleans:
elect Ray Nagin at all costs.
In their opinion, Nagin is the weaker of the two candidates and if they keep him in, they can use him as a punching bag for the mid-terms and then steamroll into power in New Orleans in 2010.
Nagin registered as a democrat to run as Mayor in 2002. Nagin is a Bush man through and through: giving him cash and votes. Nagin's sleepy attendance at the DNC convention in 2004 was window dressing and Mary Landrieu called him on it - although that got little press. He never campaigned for Kerry in New Orleans and pretty much stayed out of it. Even though Nagin stepped in to make major endorsements for everything from Dog catcher to Governor.
Despite all this, New Orleans is a reliable democratic stronghold. Even though Kerry did disastrously in the rest of the state, he won by 100,000 votes in Orleans parish. I worked in the K-E office in 2004 and even though the DNC had cut off our funding in August, we knew we could be helpful still and so local folks (including Bill Jefferson) put up the money to keep our operation going full speed. We were able to get voter turnout in the 70% range - despite blatant voter intimidation, closed polling sites, polling sites without lights, etc. etc. If only Ho-Ho's 50 state strategy had been in fulls wing in the rest of the state....
The mayoral primary continued to prove that. You can't even run a "reformed" republican who tries to squeek by as a newly minted democrat. Ron Forman switched parties to run and lost heavily. Even if you added up the Forman and Couhig votes, it still didn't add up to the Nagin/Landrieu votes.
So here we are now May 2004 in the Mayoral Run off. And the R's lost their chance in the primary. Nagin got 60% of the black vote, all of the low-income black areas.
They have two choices. Go with the guy who has the best interest of the community at heart, who REALLY wants to see us out of this mess and build a vibrant, healthy, strong community. Or go with the guy who's all talk and no action, who's made us a laughing stock with his intemperant remarks, and who the police and firemen CAN'T STAND because he's kept them undersupplied and underpaid.
Does this scenario somehow sound familiar (McCain 2000, Kerry 2004)?
...Now some background on the R Machine in New Orleans
There are two republican organizations in New Orleans - the Orleans Parish Republican Executive Committee and the Greater New Orleans Republicans. The OPREC is the old school R's who sat around having their asses handed to them until the Southern Strategy finally broke through and conservatives started registering as Republicans in the 80's. Although there is still a hangover from that time: the Regular Democratic Club of New Orleans who endorsed Bush in 2000, 2004 and now Nagin.
The OPREC backed Rob Couhig in the primaries. The GNOR backed Forman. The GNOR is the "real" republican machine. The GNOR is made up of republicans from the 7 parishes (counties if you will) surrounding the New Orleans metropolitan area. New Orleans proper as you know, is all within the confines of Orleans parish only. And we are as different from the suburbs as apples are to beef.
The darling of the Republican party in Lousiana, Congressman Bobby Jindal is staying MUM here in the New Orleans mayoral run-off. Much to the consternation of Nagin supporters. And Jindal is staying MUM on purpose.
Nagin endorsed Bobby Jindal when Jindal tried to run for Governor against Blanco. It was billed as a huge coup and Jindal had the big mo. However, Blanco put the attack machine in place in the closing days of the race and Jindal lost by a squeaker.
The OPREC has now endorsed Landrieu. The GNOR is behind Nagin and boy are they. Nagin has no cash, but as soon as that endorsement came through, the mailers started rolling in, the commercials started happening and Jeff Crouere (the local republican pundit blow-hard) started talking about Nagin's "big mo."
What we Landrieu supporters are now fighting against is that The R's would rather see New Orleans regress the next 4 years than to elect a strong candidate like Mitch Landrieu. A) Because he happens to be a TRUE democrat (a Democrat's democrat) and B) Because of the DREADED last name. And God forbid how electing Mitch would affect the US Senate
Electing Mitch would only make Mary stronger (personal note, I don't like Mary - but this isn't about her, it's about my city).
And the horror of horrors: THE DANGER OF TWO TERMS! gasp!
The national R's feel that Nagin is the worse candidate. With Forman out, their eye is now on the mid-term elections for Fall 2006 and 2010.
The "strategic" endorsement of by the Greater New Orleans Republicans (the "real" R party engine in New Orleans) of Nagin is so that they can use him as a punching bag later.
Bob Livingston (yes, THAT Bob Livingston - almost speaker of the house) is funding Nagin. Mike Foster, the former republican governor, is workign furiously behind the scenes.
According to New Orlean's weekly rag, Gambit Weekly (via TPM Cafe), "several sources say former Gov. Mike Foster... has been working behind the scenes to drum up Republican support -- and money -- for Nagin as part of an organized GOP move to weaken the state's Democratic infrastructure, which would help Jindal in his expected bid for governor next year."
That is WHY Jindal is NOT endorsing. He can't endorse and then use Nagin as a punching bag for the next statewide race.
So they are using naive low-income black voters EXACTLY like the corporate faction of the GOP uses the naive rank and file evangelicals to get elected.
Same tactics, different boogie men.
They've been scaring the low-income black voters into believing that the world will end if they don't hang on to this black mayor. Even though Landrieu has a fantastic team of black staff and has an incredible legacy on black issues. Ken Blackwell watchers: Be warned
Yesteday, there was a dust-up, whose only purpose I can surmise is to depress voter turnout. Jay Batt, running for a council seat, had an old endorsement from Mitch and brought it out. Landrieu has declined to endorse down-ticket candidats right now, so he had to retract his endorsement of Batt (no offense though). So mysterisouly, Batt's email server gets hacked and a vicious email goes out to his mailing list calling Mitch to the carpet. Batt's campaign has to scramble and send out another mailer saying they were not the source of said email attack on Mitch.
This whole Batt email thing yesterday, it's classic Rove.
New Orleans Mayoral primer c/o Talking Points Memo:
http://www.tpmcafe.com/...
On the "Oyster" Theory - on using both sides to burn the middle in New Orleans: http://righthandthief.blogspot.com/...