Anti-Climax?

I think it says something that a Congressional race this ugly between two reprehensible candidates involving all manner of strange alliances, unorthodox strategy, buffoonish kingmakers, and national press has become such a non-event locally. It says that we're busy with the holidays. It certainly says that we're fatigued by the slow and slowing pace of recovery. But I think mostly it says that we all feel like we've been to this rodeo already.

Last month, when I posted about this race, I tried to demonstrate that Jefferson's campaign was following a strategy brilliantly executed by Ray Nagin in his successful reelection bid earlier this year. Nagin got away with bizarre racially based, emotional appeals to the fears of both black and white voters. Jefferson has built his campaign according to that template.

Shamelessly quoting myself:

Jefferson is also close to pulling off a clever trick similar to Nagin's. On the one hand, by playing the federal investigations of his activities as a federal witch hunt tied to the anti-New Orleans conspiracy, he establishes himself as the "black" candidate. (Both candidates are, in fact African-American.. thus the quotes.) Jefferson has made other inroads in this direction by pandering to local ministers through some uncharacteristic complaints about his opponent's pro-abortion and gay rights stances. Social issues like these have never been part of Jefferson's platform and don't usually figure at all in New Orleans politics.. but it will help get Dollar Bill access to a solid GOTV mechanism in the ministers. The trick comes in where Dollar Bill has also positioned himself as the "white" candidate on the West Bank of Jefferson parish. Folks on that side of the river are still defensive over criticism of the Gretna police who famously forced a crowd of mostly black storm refugees back across the Mississippi River bridge. Carter appeared in Spike Lee's "When the Levees Broke" denouncing the actions of the Gretna police. For these comments she has been taking heat from the powerful Jeff Parish Sheriff and other law enforcement officials who are now supporting Jefferson. Dollar Bill has out-pandered Carter in key portions of both the white and black communities with carefully targeted, implicitly racial appeals. If it works (and such a strategy worked for Nagin) it's both a beautiful and terrible thing to witness.

The campaign has largely followed this script. In my mind, the following are the most significant events that could indicate how the voting will go tomorrow.

• On November 29, the Housing Authority of New Orleans and HUD reluctantly held an obligatory public meeting in regards to their plans to demolish the four largest.. and by most accounts still viable.. public housing complexes in New Orleans. It's an awful plan which most of the tenants rightfully perceive as an attempt to force "undesirables" off of what can be developed as valuable property in a "mixed income" housing development. Predictably the meeting was a raucous affair. New Orleanians tend not to pull verbal (or even actual) punches on such occasions. It was also meaningless. HANO announced today that it was going ahead with the demolitions despite the overwhelming opposition. Sitting in the front row during the public meeting was none other than Congressman William Jefferson, who stood up, received a loud ovation from the crowd and made the following statement.

  "Being poor is not a crime," Jefferson said, quieting the room after he rose from the front row to a splash of cheers and flashbulbs from the press. "These are good, decent people."

  Jefferson's pandering on this issue solidifies his hold on what I've termed the black anti-conspiracy vote. The Times-Pic's Lolis Eric Elie explains Jefferson's appeal this way.
  

  To understand Jefferson's appeal at the hearing, you must first understand the context.
  
  Most of the attendees at the meeting were former residents of New Orleans public housing developments. The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development has barred them from reoccupying their homes without any public discussion of the reasons for their evictions.
  
  Having already decided to tear down several of the public housing complexes, the feds were compelled by the courts to hold public hearings on the future of these developments.
  
  But the feds didn't ask the residents whether they thought the sprawling complexes they had once called home should be torn down. Rather, they merely asked the secondary question of what should be done with the land after the demolition.
  
  The hearing clearly violated the spirit of democracy and transparency.
  
  Sitting in that room, observing the disingenuous way their government treated them, it seemed the crowd concluded the federal government was also being disingenuous in its treatment of Jefferson.

  
  This is important because it explains how Jefferson has managed to insulate himself from corruption charges among a key voting demographic. The T-P asked Jefferson supporters about the "$90,000 question" and turned up some telling evidence that this valid mistrust of the federal government is indeed giving Jefferson traction.
  

  Interviews with Jefferson supporters reveal deep skepticism about the Justice Department's motives and questions about whether it will be able to make a corruption case against him.
  
  Bishop Paul Morton, pastor of Greater St. Stephen Full Gospel Baptist Church, said in service in Atlanta last weekend that if anyone else had been found with $90,000 in his freezer he would have been indicted by now. But the federal government, Morton said, is leaving Jefferson to twist in the wind without the ability to contest the accusations.
  
  G.J. Hodge., who describes herself as a New Orleans senior volunteer for a wide range of community organizations, was helping out Tuesday at Jefferson's campaign headquarters. She said people who wonder about the money in his freezer just don't know that lots of folks keep their cash at home, most traditionally under a mattress, rather than in a bank. And she said the current government investigation wouldn't be the first time the government tried to "pull a person down who has risen to significant influence."

  
  
  Oh and one more thing. At that housing meeting, Karen Carter was nowhere to be found.



• Next we have the curious case of the Jefferson Parish Sherriff Harry Lee and his announcement that, while he does not endorse Jefferson, he wants it known that he has "utter contempt" for Karen Carter and her "fat mouth". I commented to Adrastos the other day, that while Harry Lee is a race-baiting buffoon, he is not stupid nor is he to be taken lightly when he lines up against you in Jefferson Parish. While Carter was absolutely right to say what she said in Spike Lee's film, she has not stood by her statements forcefully enough in the face of this attack. Her only response was to lamely state that she "looks forward to working with Harry Lee in the future" or some such ass kissing bullshit. By attempting to "take the high road" as many equivocating pols of her ilk like to put it, she has ceded the most emotional and motivated sections of the white vote as well as the black vote to Jefferson.

These are the tells that indicate to me that Jefferson can pull this off. Having said that, I will add that I am nowhere near as confident as I was when I called the mayoral race based on a somewhat similar analysis. This is going to be a close race of attrition. Turnout is expected to be at or near 20 percent. In such a situation, the stronger candidate is the one with the most emotional base support and the most effective GOTV organization. I think Jefferson has a big edge in the first category and a slight edge in the second. And it goes without saying that it helps to be the incumbent in any circumstance.

Conventional wisdom states that when asking voters to vote AGAINST an incumbent, it is just as important to give them a reason to vote FOR you. Barring any fireworks in tonight's debate, I don't think Carter has done that. Her.. poorly communicated.. message has mostly been, "Gee that Dollar Bill sure looks corrupt-ish" but Carter is tied to a local political machine family and has not escaped allegations of impropriety herself. The fact that she doesn't present an attractive alternative to corruption in the eyes of most voters seems to have lost her the votes of white conservatives who are rooting for a do-over following a Jefferson victory and subsequent indictment. She will sweep the center-left white yuppie vote.. but that's about all she can count on.. and it wasn't enough to put Mitch Landrieu over the top either.

Finally a word about Mydd.com's role in covering this election. I could be harsher to Tim Tagaris because I think his reporting on the race has been compromised by Mydd's anti-Jefferson agenda. His trip was funded by Mydd and he is charged with demonstrating a return on their investment by drumming up contributions to the Carter campaign. I think that's obvious and I found it off-putting at times during the campaign but it is what it is. As I re-read his posts, however, it is more than clear that Tim has done an excellent job of observing and reporting on the ongoing state of affairs in New Orleans post-Katrina. It is difficult sometimes for those of us who live with it each day to comprehend the degree to which most of the country simply doesn't give enough of a shit to keep paying attention. I hope that Tim's reporting reaches enough politically active readers to keep us on the agenda as a new and hopefully more sympathetic Congress takes over in Washington.