Posted on 12/09/2002 1:29:20 PM PST by TaRaRaBoomDeAyGoreLostToday!
NEW ORLEANS -- The Republican playbook for deposing Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana was fine-tuned in Washington and battle-tested with glorious results elsewhere in the South: Recruit a plausible challenger. Unleash attack ads skewering the Democrat on taxes and abortion. And for the grand finale, bring in President Bush to campaign at the Republican candidate's side.
But something went wrong in the Bayou State. Landrieu, who just a week ago seemed to fit the GOP blueprint's definition of a vulnerable incumbent, held off the challenge and won a convincing victory in a runoff election Saturday. She beat the Republican, elections commissioner Suzanne Haik Terrell, 52 percent to 48 percent.
Today, as Republicans licked their wounds, Democrats crowed at what amounted to one of their few bright spots in an otherwise disastrous political year. Some dubbed the winner -- whose triumph Saturday dwarfed her 5,788-vote margin of victory in 1996 -- "Landslide Landrieu."
Democratic operatives and political analysts said the Republicans were guilty of political hubris, believing in their own invincibility and therefore overplaying their hand by relying too heavily on negative advertising, and counting too much on Bush's electoral magic.
Bush's eleventh-hour visit, and the relentless barrage of advertising attacks on Landrieu, may even have backfired, analysts said, and were probably factors in generating a higher turnout in the core Democratic base of African Americans.
"The president's visit energized the conservative base, but it also energized the Democratic base," said Marc Morial, the Democratic former mayor of New Orleans.
At a morning news conference today in downtown New Orleans, Landrieu stressed the role of blacks in her victory. Standing beside U.S. Rep. William J. Jefferson, a New Orleans Democrat who is perhaps Louisiana's most influential black politician, Landrieu declared, "The soul of our party is the African American community, and they stood up.''
Analysts also credited Landrieu with running a more nimble campaign, one that took advantage of Louisiana's demographic and political peculiarities -- it is poorer, more progressive, more Catholic and more African American than some other Southern states. She benefited enormously by her close alliance with Sen. John Breaux, the state's hugely popular senior Democratic senator, who accompanied her in many campaign appearances throughout the month-long runoff. The Democrats' "Breaux factor" may partly have offset the Republicans' "Bush factor," some analysts said.
But Landrieu also took other lessons from the Republican victories on Nov. 5. Chief among them was the importance of devising some message, strategy or issue that would offset the president's formidable personal popularity with a local issue that played to the Democrats' advantage. In Landrieu's case, the issue was sugar.
The day after Bush's campaign visit to the state last Tuesday, Landrieu's campaign began airing an ad charging that the White House had struck a "secret deal" to double Mexican sugar imports to the United States. The imports would hurt Louisiana's 27,000 sugar farmers and the state's $1.7 billion sugar industry.
The ad hung on a slender thread of evidence: a single, unsourced article in the Mexican newspaper Reforma. The White House denied the existence of any such "deal" to flood the United States with cheap Mexican sugar. Nonetheless, the point seemed to hit home, dovetailing with Landrieu's message that she would put "Louisiana first" while Terrell -- by now appearing in television ads side by side with the president -- would be a rubber stamp for the administration who would disregard the state's interests.
"The momentum definitely shifted when we came out with the sugar issue," said Mitch Landrieu, a Democratic member of the state's House of Representatives who served as a key unofficial campaign operative for his older sister Mary. "It played directly into our theme and proved our point that a senator's supposed to be for Louisiana first and Suzie [Terrell] and George Bush are linked at the hip."
The sugar ad was critical in reassembling the Democratic coalition in Louisiana of working-class whites, especially farmers, and urban blacks, about 90 percent of whom are believed to support Landrieu. And it played on the populist traditions of a poor, small state whose more indigent residents have traditionally seen Washington and big business as hostile forces.
"It reinforced a suspicion in Louisiana that we're going to get it in the neck," said John Maginnis, a political analyst in Baton Rouge, La., and the publisher of a political newsletter. "It used an economic issue to reconnect rural whites and blacks."
Meanwhile, the Landrieu campaign's all-out push to maximize black turnout got an unexpected -- and unintended -- assist from the Republicans. The more the Republicans flooded the airwaves with ads attacking Landrieu as a liberal, the more it galvanized black support for her, and reinforced their resolve to vote, analysts said.
"It just got out of control," said Silas Lee, a sociologist at Xavier University in New Orleans. "African American voters wanted a more positive message."
In addition, workers in the Landrieu campaign cited what appeared to be unusually aggressive Republican efforts to dampen black turnout. They produced a flyer they said had been distributed in black public housing complexes in New Orleans, apparently designed to mislead black voters.
The flyer reads, in part: "Vote!!! Bad Weather? No problem!!! If the weather is uncomfortable on election day (Saturday December 7th) Remember you can wait and cast your ballot on Tuesday December 10th."
With two Democratic U.S. senators, both of them Catholics, the state remains what it has always been: a Deep South anomaly. The ethnic and religious mix is different here. And as Louisiana slips in national economic indicators, its poverty may be influencing voting behavior.
During the campaign, Landrieu shied away from direct attacks on the Bush administration, fearing the personal popularity of a president whose approval rating in Louisiana stands above 70 percent. At one point, she even touted her record of having voted with the White House three-quarters of the time.
But today, emboldened by victory, she dropped her reticence. "People in Louisiana have maybe had it harder than most. They can recognize injustice," she said. "Because we are a poor state, people really do depend on the government. They are very disappointed at what they are seeing coming out of the White House, and they just expressed that anger."
© Copyright 2002 Capitol Hill Blue
Wake up!
I'm sure we'll find a way to shoot ourselves in the foot and most likely blow it off while we are at it. Any group that can make up 10-15 or 20% of the voting group will always be a player, imo.
Granted, it may not have affected 95%+ of the people's votes, but in a close race like this one, it can make a huge difference.
On what basis would you say "a few thousand people made their decision based on O'Neill's leaving the cabinet"?
I would say that I'd be SHOCKED if ONE SINGLE PERSON either changed their vote, or stayed at home on this basis. It's just a non sequitur.
Voters don't care about the policy-wonk inside-the-beltway stuff that "The Capital Gang" and the Sunday face-time shows yammer on incessantly about.
In fact, that's why those kinds of shows have such low ratings in the first place.
As I mentioned, I wasn't even aware that O'Neill had made any sorts of statements at all, and I consider myself pretty aware for the most part.
I know we want to dissect things like this, and I think we NEED to, to understand what happened. But this needs to be eliminated from your list.
FWIW, on another thread they're talking about Rush Limbaugh's reporting (apparently a story from the Times-Picayune) on a LITERALLY last-minute GOTV campaign in Orleans Parish, spurred by a phone call to a party boss from Bill Clinton.
That, too, is hogwash. You don't get out the vote four hours into an election day, moving from near-nonparticipation to enough votes to swing a victory.
This is just US doing what WE have been claiming the Dems did after Nov. 5: Denying that we got licked, and seeking to truly understand why.
As I said, some of your other points bear repeating, just not this one.
I'll bet O'Neill's resignation didn't turn three votes in the whole state.
It isn't THE factor, nor even the most important. If you wish to say it had NO effect, go ahead. I am not going to get in a huge argument over this.
Regarding Rush's comments, I think he overstates Brazile's knock and drag impact. It might have helped a little, but the basic resaon Terrell lost is that she was a weaker candidate, the Sugar issue wasn't refuted properly, Landrieu's "poor me" strategy, poor GOTV on our part, and weak support from state office-holders, like Foster.
I think we need to look at why we lost and pay attention as we move towards 2004. I don't think Rove is sitting around blaming it on fraud or Brazile's success in the black community.
That was tried when I first got on here, but I've been around for a while now. I've got a thick skin, and I stay away from personal invective, even when provoked.
What I find interesting is that FR is billed as a Conservative web site, but often many people on here support Republican positions (such as the grossly-misnamed Patriot Act) even when the intention is to limit personal freedom or to increase the role of the Federal government.
This is not to say that everyone on here is a unqualified supporter of such things. But many are. Seems more partisan than conservative to me, at times.
After the election, I read that one reason that the Democrats lost some key races was because the black vote, being uninspired and thinking they were being taken for granted, stayed home more than usual and the Dems thus didn't get their usual high numbers there. I don't know if that analysis has held up, though.
Yeah, you do, since in fact I have no idea what those exhibits are.
Besides, I'm old enough to remember the election of 1960. When Republicans were asked why they didn't protest the results in Illinois, they answered that if the Dems had had to give back Illinois, they might have been forced to give back California. No political party has a lock on corruption in the United States.
My exhibit A in that assertion is my own state of residence, Illinois. This is actually basically a moderately conservative state, usually with a split between the parties in the Senate, statewide officials that are predominantly Republican, and at least one house of the State legislature that's Republican. Yet in this year of Republican triumph, the Democrats virtually swept the statewide offices, including capturing the Governor's seat for the first time in 26 years. Oh, my goodness! The Illinois Reflublicans lost all these elections! Did the Democrats steal the elections through chicanery and deceit?
No, the Illinois Reflublicans lost it because of corruption that's both wide and deep. The outgoing GOP Governor was perceived to have presided during his previous office as Secretary of State over an office that required it's employees to make substantial political contributions to the GOP and to the SoS in order to keep their jobs. It's been proved in court that in order to make those contributions, SoS employees sold truck drivers' licences to rais the necessary money. It's been proved in court that George Ryan's closest advisors knew about it. It's widely believed that George Ryan himself will be indicted once he leaves office. It's widely believed that when the whole thing started to brew up when George Ryan was running for Governor, the then-State's Attorney Ryan (no relation) helped cover up the nature and extent of the situation until George Ryan was safely elected; the same State's Attorney Ryan who was the GOP's candidate for Governor in this election.
Perhaps the GOP could have overcome this with a well-run campaign. But the Illinois Reflublicans were without a State Party Chairman for a full month because the chairman, also the Illinois House Speaker and Majority Leader, had to resign his chairmanship because he had been caught using state employees in his own office on state time and the state dime to run political campaigns.
O.K., so it's a ways from Illinois to Louisiana. And the Illinois Democrats' time will surely come, or at least that of the Cook County and Chicago Democrats. But from Illinois, the presumption that all Republicans are saints and all Democrats are corrupt thieves looks ridiculous.
And Nixon did not, according to his biographers, hesitate to call for a recount because he would have to "give something back," but because he a) did not think down the line they could prove enough, and b) he honestly didn't want to put the country through it. Ambrose, especially, noticed a change in Nixon after 1960 to a more distrustful, suspicious guy.
But come on: surely you remember in 2000 the Dem judge keeping the inner city polls open two hours longer to give Carnahan the victory? And surely you must at least SUSPECT that Thune was cheated by fraudulent votes on Indian reservations---especially since the SD papers were already alerted to that fraud before the election? And the "timely" withdrawal of the Torch and the subsequent "flexible" interpretation of the NJ laws by the NJSC is on the up and up?
No, I think recently Dems have become the masters at corruption and crime. But if you've read any of my posts, I'm the FIRST one to blame the candidates themselves, and their campaigns, for a loss. This is true of simon, of Forrester, of Terrell, and of Schundler. Still, we would be fools not to recognize criminal activity when it stares us in the face.
I didn't follow that election at the time. And there are legitimate reasons to keep polls open past the usual closing time. Election judges get "lost" and don't open the polls on time, voting equipment is lost/missing/malfunctional, etc. I don't know what the grounds were given for keeping those polls open.
And surely you must at least SUSPECT that Thune was cheated by fraudulent votes on Indian reservations---especially since the SD papers were already alerted to that fraud before the election?
That one has been sounding quite suspect. One would think an investigation of some kind would be forthcoming. Hm. If I'm a voter in an election and someone has fraudlently voted, or otherwise interefered with the electoral process, haven't my civil rights been violated? Seems to me any voter in the state could file suit....And the "timely" withdrawal of the Torch and the subsequent "flexible" interpretation of the NJ laws by the NJSC is on the up and up?
From a moral viewpoint I think that allowing Torcelli's late withdrawal is wrong, but from a legal viewpoint it seems to me that the NJ Democrats took advantage of a loophole in a poorly written law. At least that's the NJSC's story, and they're sticking to it. The Federal SC let them get away with it, so I figure there's some validity to it. Unfortunately.
The fact that no private citizen has filed suit in SD is certainly not evidence of legality---rather, a sign that average people don't want to go toe to toe with the Democratic Party.
The St. Louis thing was quashed by a higher court as soon as the papers could be filed. It was NOT on the up and up, but cost Aschcroft votes.
Going further back, while historians are divided over whether or not Nixon might have triumphed with a recount in Ill. and Texas, they are NOT divided over whether or not there was massive fraud in those two states. In Houston, the dead voted for LBJ. Many times. Each.
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