Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco listens to President Bush during a post-Katrina news conference on Sept. 12, 2005. (Photo by David Grunfeld)
Posted on 01/03/2008 8:37:04 AM PST by Incorrigible
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco listens to President Bush during a post-Katrina news conference on Sept. 12, 2005. (Photo by David Grunfeld) |
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BATON ROUGE, La. — Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, who saw Louisiana through two monster hurricanes in 2005 only to see her own political career take a hit in their aftermath, turns the Governor's Mansion over to Republican successor Bobby Jindal on Jan. 14, but she says she will not fade away nor go very far.
The Democratic governor, whose four-year tenure will always be bound to the state's darkest hours of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and their recovery, says she is not looking to run for office any time soon, but says her political obituary should not be written, either.
"Nor any other obituary for that matter," joked Blanco, who is moving back to Lafayette. "I need a breather from elected politics. I am not going to get into the political arena in the short term. I will let the long term take care of itself."
Blanco, the 50th individual to occupy the governor's office since Louisiana became a state in 1812 and its first female chief executive, has been a political fixture in Louisiana since 1984 when she was elected to the state House, the Public Service Commission and lieutenant governor before becoming governor in 2004.
The outgoing governor, worn down by the aftermath of Katrina and Rita and the criticism on the pace of recovery, said she is writing a book to capture the highlights of journals she has kept over the years, predating her life as a public official.
"It is not a Katrina book, it is not a Rita book," she said, although incidents and anecdotes from the back-to-back storms will be a part of the book.
And she said she is "working on some initiatives" including "projects involving young people ... and working to change the emergency response laws" that hurt Louisiana and other states in the hurricanes' aftermath. Blanco was not more specific.
The governor, dogged initially by low poll numbers and the deer-in-the-headlights image portrayed in the media after killer Katrina, announced in March she would not seek a second term as recovery efforts dragged. Her poll numbers have improved since then as the recovery operation gained some traction in recent months.
Blanco said that she decided not to seek another term because she and her family were drained from the long hours of Katrina and what she called an ongoing effort by the national and state Republicans to make her look bad for political purposes. "My decision was the right decision," Blanco said. "We need a decompression period."
Blanco said that she was "never stunned" at the magnitude of the storms and still bristles at her portrayal in the media and by political opponents as a tentative, inept chief of state in the days after Katrina. She said she was decisive, stood up for the state against a White House that wanted her to surrender control of the National Guard to President Bush, and did what was needed in the face of a natural disaster no one could anticipate.
"We had political opposition undermining whatever was going on," Blanco said. She said there was no script to follow in evacuating 1.3 million residents from coastal parishes as Katrina approached, or in dealing with the pervasive destruction of the New Orleans area, and later southwest Louisiana.
"I have gotten past that," she said when asked if she still feels victimized by the White House and GOP Congress at the time the storm hit. "I have gotten past all of that. It is OK."
Blanco said that her decision not to seek a second term "was critical to my successes in the Legislature" in an election year.
"That was a bitter pill for her to not run again," said Pearson Cross, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette, Blanco's alma mater.
Cross called Katrina "an accident that undid a fairly productive term as governor. Had Katrina and Rita not happened, Kathleen Blanco would probably be getting ready to be inaugurated for a second term and Bobby Jindal would have his sights set on Mary Landrieu's (U.S.) Senate seat."
Some of those 2007 legislative wins against vocal GOP opposition included passage of a second pay raise for teachers in three years, bringing them to the Southern average; allocating more than $700 million to education programs, including full financing for college needs; increasing the state budget for road construction and repairs by at least $500 million in four years; passing a $100 million incentive program to coax insurance companies to write additional policies in the state; and signing a measure repealing cockfighting, a practice popular in her Acadiana base and other rural areas of the state.
The turnaround was striking from the 2006 pre-Christmas session, which ended two days early when GOP lawmakers and some Democrats refused to raise a budget cap to spend more than $800 million in surplus revenue. Instead Blanco settled for a $239 million tax credit program for homeowners assessed a fee by the state-run insurer of last resort, and a $300 million incentive package to lure a German steel mill to the state. The ThyssenKrupp facility instead went to Alabama.
In the wake of the two storms, Blanco had success in passing a statewide building code. After nine trips to lobby the White House and Congress, she got more than $13.5 billion in federal block grant money for housing, businesses and other needs after battling with a GOP-controlled Congress and White House for much of the time.
Xavier University political scientist-sociologist Silas Lee said Blanco was elected on a promise to open Louisiana for business, the "anti-Mike Foster," a reference to her gubernatorial predecessor who did not like to travel to court industry. Blanco traveled to the Middle East, Japan, China, Taiwan, Spain, Cuba, Mexico, England and other nations hunting industry with some success.
Blanco said that her efforts have resulted in the creation of 28,000 new jobs with an additional 13,000 to come and industrial investments of more than $18 billion.
"Her legacy is going to be defined by the storms and her response to them," said Barry Erwin, president of the Council for a Better Louisiana, an independent government watchdog group. "People will judge her by that. It is the 800-pound gorilla. You can't get by it."
Erwin said to Blanco's credit, she kept the educational priorities initiated by Foster in place and expanded them. "She didn't zigzag off in a different direction," Erwin said.
Jim Brandt, president of the Public Affairs Research Council, another nonpartisan government watchdog organization, said that although Blanco will be tied to the hurricanes, she should "be recognized for her integrity ... and giving it her all."
On the issues that his group focuses on, such as ethics, health care, economic development and education, Brandt said her shining moment came in expanding prekindergarten programs to give 4-year-olds a better chance in school, pushing an agenda that brought teacher pay to the Southern regional average with accountability standards, redesigning high school course loads and requirements, and fully financing higher education based on a formula devised years ago.
"One of the things she will not get credit for is supporting the state takeover of failing schools," which was given impetus by the storms, Brandt said. One of her biggest failures, Brandt said, was "not being able to get a handle on work-force needs" of the state although she lured jobs to Louisiana. And, except for the former film director pleading guilty to taking bribes from a movie producer to get a large tax credit and her deputy chief of staff being accused — but never charged — with sexual harassment, her administration was scandal-free, Brandt said.
"The obvious response is to say that history will not treat Blanco kindly, and that she will forever be linked with Hurricanes Katrina and Rita — perhaps even more importantly — to the frustrations of the recovery process," said Kirby Goidel, a professor of mass communications and political science at Louisiana State University. "In the long run Blanco will also emerge as a sympathetic figure: not only does she confront the largest natural disaster in American history but she also becomes a convenient scapegoat of the incompetence of the federal response."
Blanco said she thinks "the recovery is a powerful story" although slow to unfold. "The recovery is going to take 10 to 15 years before citizens feel critical mass. ... It takes time to rebuild a community."
She said public officials may have been overly optimistic about the length of the recovery. Besides better financing of education from prekindergarten through college, Blanco said her legacy "will be the foundation we left for future governors from the storm, from the battles I fought in Washington with recalcitrant people" including a $2 billion surplus for the Jindal administration to spend and more than $13.5 billion in recovery dollars from the federal government.
"If we are looking long-term, I think people will look back in awe at what was able to be accomplished," she said. "Nothing comes simply packaged."
Blanco said that one of her biggest shortcomings during the political maelstrom in the days after Katrina was not getting the state's story out better.
"We should have told our story more powerfully," Blanco said. "I have yet to find my voice" in telling the state's story.
Blanco, a devout Roman Catholic, said despite it all, she felt that she "was chosen to be here at this time. Only God knows why. ... It has been an honor and a privilege being governor."
(Ed Anderson is a staff writer for The Times-Picayune of New Orleans. He can be contacted at eanderson(at)timespicayune.com.)
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the face of a natural disaster no one could anticipate.
Say whaa?
She said there was no script to follow in evacuating 1.3 million residents from coastal parishes as Katrina approached
There was no evacuation plan? That's a lie!
Blanco, a devout Roman Catholic
Religion, the last refuge for this scoundrel
And all her "accomplishments" could only be applauded by socialists.
In democrat circles, she’ll now be considered Presidential material with such a failed tenure as Governor.
LOL - Blanco’s last gasp, before Bobby J. gets in there and shows everyone what an incompetent idiot she was.....
Cue the picture of the submerged buses.
And Mobile flooded, too.
By the state and city **leaders** there had anticipated such a catastrophe, written evacuation plans in advance, educated their citizens, posted evac-route highway signs, and followed their own plan.
In short, Mobile survived the harsher storm essentially unscathed because the city was educated and well led.
No, the biggest shortcoming was Blanco putting her hatred of Bush in front of doing what was best for the people of her state. Partisan politics had no place in that situation.
Evacuation plan A:
The fact is during Katrina, Blank-Oh was getting her marching orders from DNC Headquarters.
I didn’t need Blanco or Nagin to tell me to evacuate or to evacuate me like a helpless child.
I just saw the path of the Hurricane on the internet and made a quick plan, packed my stuff and drove out of the city of New Orleans. Why would I need government to do anything for me?
The Vietnamese community in New Orleans East also rebuilt their homes and businesses a few months after the Hurricane with no government help. They are Republicans too.
Liberals in New Orleans are still begging for more goernment handouts.
No script? No script? Kathleen, you and Ray Nagin and the others live down there. Most of you were born and raised down there. You know the area. You know how a major storm affects it. You have, or you ought to have had, the best idea of how to react to it. If you people didn’t have a plan ready, who the hell, exactly, did you think would?
God, you’re an idiot.
If you believe the former, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I am willing to sell you...cheap!
buh bye
Katrina was not the worst natural disaster in U.S. history. The Galveston hurricane in 1900 killed 6000, IIRC.
Good riddance
Verrazano Narrows Bridge?
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