Southwesterly Currents
By Charlie Cook
© NationalJournal.com
Tuesday, November 18, 2003
NEW ORLEANS -- In each of this year's four gubernatorial
elections, it is interesting to note the "in" party
was thrown out and the "out" party voted into power.
At the same time, it would be a mistake to put too much emphasis
on this point. In truth, each of these races was an individual
event with dramatically different circumstances.
In Louisiana, Kathleen Blanco's (D) upset principally resulted
from Bobby Jindal's (R) refusal to counterattack after a
withering assault of television ads against him over the
final 10 days of the race.
In California, the widespread anger at former Democratic
Gov. Gray Davis was unlike anything seen anywhere else in
America. Anyone who has been governor for three or more years
is very likely to have lousy approval numbers, but hundreds
of news stories over the years addressing Davis' hardball
fundraising and raw ambition hurt him badly when the state's
finances went into the toilet and the ungovernable forces
of the state, such as spending initiatives, reached critical
mass. As a result, actor Arnold Schwarzenegger was sworn
in Monday as the state's 38th governor while standing on
the steps of the state Capitol and quoting the late President
Kennedy before a huge worldwide television audience.
In Mississippi, Republican Haley Barbour won a hard-fought
challenge to Democratic Gov. Ronnie Musgrove. Barbour captured
77 percent of the white vote, which makes up 65 percent of
the state's electorate. Musgrove won 94 percent of the African-American
vote, which represents 33 percent of the state's voters.
The split made racial voting patterns paramount. Data of
this kind reinforce the difficulty the Democratic Party faces
in the South and explain why, aside from perhaps Arkansas
and Louisiana, the region is now out of reach for Democratic
presidential candidates in all but the most extreme cases.
Although Kentucky has been trending out of the Democratic
column for some time, the Democrats' 32-year dominance of
the governor's office and scandals surrounding the Democratic
incumbent, Paul Patton, created a situation that probably
no Democrat could have overcome.
In Louisiana, the conventional wisdom among politicos is
Democratic Lt. Gov. Kathleen Blanco's upset, 52 percent to
48 percent win over Republican policy wunderkind Bobby Jindal
principally resulted from Jindal's refusal to counterattack
after a withering assault of television ads against him over
the final 10 days of the race. The ads charged as secretary
of the state Department of Health and Hospitals, Jindal had
ruthlessly cut costs and hurt patient care, particularly
for the poor.
As late as the middle of last week, tracking polls showed
Jindal with a high-single-digit lead, but Wednesday night
Jindal began to drop in a pattern that continued to Election
Day. Democratic strategists, who doubted their chances two
weeks ago, were thinking by Saturday afternoon they just
might pull it off. Democrats say the Blanco ads started late
because the campaign hadn't really gotten its act together
earlier. But the late assault, and Jindal's hesitancy to
respond, resulted in an "inadvertent" trap for
him; by the time the Jindal campaign saw the mistake, it
was too late. Longtime Republicans in the state tend to agree
with that account.
Jindal campaign advisers say the health care ads did not
hurt him in the suburbs around the state, noting he got
the vote he needed out of the suburbs. "We got creamed
in the rural areas," according to one Jindal strategist.
Blanco won 52 out of the state's 64 parishes, although
the actual vote margin was quite close. An analysis of
the election results by GCR & Associates for the New
Orleans Times-Picayune shows Blanco got 40 percent of the
white vote, unusually high for a Democratic candidate,
while Jindal got 9 percent of the African-American vote,
almost double the norm.
"
We worried from the start that many of the undecideds might
not actually be undecided," said the Jindal strategist,
leading me to believe Jindal's ethnicity hurt him in rural
areas but was not a problem in the more populous suburbs.
While Jindal is the first Indian-American to seek a governorship
-- and very few people of East-Asian descent live in the
state -- most believed his ethnicity was not a real problem.
To the extent Indian-Americans have any stereotype at all,
it is largely positive.
One decision that is not second-guessed much was Republicans'
determination not to have President Bush campaign for Jindal.
Bush's overall numbers in the state are fine, but the Democratic
Party was not particularly unified behind Blanco, and minority
turnout was not expected to be -- and was not -- particularly
high. A Bush visit probably would have energized the Democratic
base in a way it otherwise was not in this race.
Other longtime Louisiana Republicans suggest, though, that
their experience in the state dictates, "What you
see is what you get" for GOP candidates there. That
is, undecided voters always break Democratic in the state,
and any Republican needs to surpass 50 percent going into
Election Day. |
