Blanco Wins?!?!?!?
Kathleen Blanco Wins Louisiana Gov. Race
In one word: WOW!
In more ...
Yes, its one win among the last 4 gov races and the only one Dems can savor. But in and of itself, this is big. The race was expected to be close, but Jindal had a consistent lead right up to the end. As for my own private prediction, I suspected the late Blanco surge to be a mirage and that she'd lose by about 10 points.
Imagine my surprise.
Nationally, its a mere face saver for the Dems ... one race won out of the last 4 (MS, CA, & KY all having gone Republican). Nominally, one could argue that Louisiana was the one state where we didn't have any kind of deck stacked against us (CA & KY had scandals among the party in power ... MS is debatable - I would argue that Haley pouring in the cash stacked the deck). But that's hair splitting if one is to hang their hat on that point of merit.
Greater meaning out of the midterm Gov races, overall? Not a lot, really. The slight nod to the GOP had to be expected, so I'd say this is the equivalent to a company matching their earnings expectations.
It does raise the question for the Pres race (assuming that someone like Clark, Edwards, Gephardt, or Lieberman are at the top) ... can Louisiana swing Dem in 2004? I'd still say its tough ... damn tough. Culturally, Bush should be more akin to Louisiana voters. One stop in somewhere like Shreveport or Monroe could be all that it takes.
Comments
I'll quote a longtime Louisiana resident who works for a university that I was talking to about it: "The race is Blanco's to lose."
It looked for a while like she might do just that, but there are a couple of factors that are being missed here. Firstly, Mike Foster got elected for being a hard-hat Republican. Jindal wasn't going to be able to emulate that success and did as well as he did largely due to a couple endorsements and a larger percent of the black vote. In a race between a woman and an Indian in the state that brought us David Duke, I don't think you're going to draw much beyond this odd, odd race.
With Foster excepted, Louisiana is somehow a Democratic state, but voted pretty strongly for Bush and you'd have to explain to me what exactly has changed between Bush winning handily in 2000 and now and I don't see the Democrats saying anything in particular that would change their minds.
Posted by: R. Alex | November 16, 2003 07:50 PM