|
|
NATIONAL
|
Jefferson's Ever Shrinking Re-election Chances
by Christopher Tidmore
Special to the NNPA from the Louisiana Weekly
NEWS ANALYSIS
NEW ORLEANS (NNPA) -- When well-financed opposition comes from both the left and the right, usually an incumbent Congressman should begin sending out resumes to DC-based lobbying firms. Of course, Bill Jefferson's job prospects might be somewhat limited. Few advocacy retainers come in the form of frozen cash.
Nevertheless, local political groups smell the blood in the ice, err, water, and have fielded candidates to confront the Second District Congressman's re-election bid. The potential match-ups are so strong, that a real possibility exists that Jefferson might not make the runoff.
Part of the Congressman's problem emerges from the obvious Nigeria scandal and its offshoots, i.e. commandeering a military Humvee after Katrina to retrieve ''files'' from his home. The Congressman's main hope for surviving the scandal has rested in the promise that his seniority could be leveraged to provide necessary financial assistance to a district still reeling from Katrina. Yet, time in Congress, as any student of Capitol Hill dynamics will attest, only counts as far as it provides placement on key committees that control the money - or in Jefferson's case, the tax credits that other Congressmen need and will use their clout to obtain.
The decision by the Democratic caucus to remove Jefferson from Ways and Means removed the major justification for his re-election. Even without an indictment, his opponents are expected to argue, Jefferson's usefulness to the citizens of the Second District has come to an end. It is a stand that Derrick Shepherd has already begun to take.
The State Senator from District 3 opened his congressional race on Monday, Aug. 7th, with the words that his money would not come out of a freezer and other comments underlining how the controversy has finished Jefferson. Shepherd said he would stick to the issues, and then added that the major issue was that Bill Jefferson now lacked the influence in the U.S. House of Representatives to get anything done.
However, the real danger that the State Senator poses to the Congressman comes not from his words, but from the way that the Second Congressional District has evolved over the years-growing the influence of African-Americans in Shepherds's native Jefferson Parish.
To maintain its Black Majority, Bill Jefferson's seat has been redrawn twice to include other parts of the metro area, especially African-American sections of East and West Jefferson. Despite the perception that it is a New Orleans district, the suburban voters have grown in power in the Second. Katrina only accelerated a trend already underway.
Prior to the storms, 28 prcent of the population of the total population of Jefferson Parish was African-American, with its sizable concentrations in west bank communities of Marrero and Gretna and east back neighborhoods like South Kenner. These growing Black neighborhoods sit within the 2nd District. In the wake of Katrina, these areas experienced neither overly disruptive flooding nor considerable permanent population dislocation. With much of the Orleans areas of the district depopulated, recent demographic studies point to almost half of the seat's local voters living in the suburbs with little emotional connection to a New Orleans' oriented candidate like the incumbent.
Shepherd has become a power among these voters. His state senate district straddles the parish line. In the last six months, Shepherd has accomplished the political equivalent of a double play, facing down Jefferson Councilman Chris Roberts over the congressional race and playing the key role of pushing James Carter over the top in his recent Orleans Council race. His Senate seat lies almost completely within the Second District, and the voters cast ballots from Shepherd in a competitive election more recently than Jefferson's last scare against Irma Muse Dixon, providing greater name recognition. Well financed and holding political markers in the city and suburbs gives the State Senator the broadest support-and provides the most danger for the Congressman's chances.
To win, Bill Jefferson must garner support within the remaining black voters in the city, particularly on the relatively undamaged West Bank, yet here former Councilman Troy Carter might prove the hindrance. While Carter has kept a low profile since his unsuccessful race for Mayor four and a half years ago, he still maintains a wealth of political contacts and considerable name recognition. He has even registered as Troy ''C'' Carter. He calls the ''C'' a nickname, but it just happens to remind the voters that he used to represent Algiers, the French Quarter, and Treme.
The BOLD organization, the great rivals of Bill Jefferson's political group the Progressive Democrats, has offered its brightest political star to challenge the Congressman as well.
State Rep. Karen Carter (no relation to Troy, but daughter of New Orleans politico Ken Carter) won plaudits most recently for her campaign work on behalf of Mitch Landrieu's bid for Mayor, and has built a wide following of her own among groups as disparate as women's advocacy organizations and business owners. The City's most popular politician Oliver Thomas will reportedly stump and raise money for her. Females voters typically outnumber males in this district, benefiting the State Rep.
That should also prove helpful to a first time candidate with already over six figures in her campaign treasury.
Regina Bartholomew is best known as the lawyer for the School Board, which at first glance might seem a liability. Bartholomew is known as close to many of the Board's reformers including Una Anderson and Jimmy Fahrenholtz, which might give her an outsider glow in a race with so many political insiders. With parents that grew up in the Lafitte Housing Project, she also can portray herself to African-American voters as separate from the Black middle class some of her opponents.
Bartholomew and Karen Carter are both positioned, by virtue of their past political contacts, to contend for the white vote, comprising by some estimates over 40% of the electorate post-Katrina. Jefferson has always reached out to whites in the Second District, proudly boasting that he is the only member of the Congressional Black Caucus to have joined the moderate Democratic Leadership Council. Bill Jefferson has voted on free trade measures and some tax cuts as a way of reaching out to the affluent white business community in his district. The State Rep. and the School Board attorney's moderate politics could prove equally appealing to Caucasian voters-as could the conservative politics of Republican Joe Lavigne.
On the campaign trail for almost a year, Lavigne hopes that the demographic changes in New Orleans have changed the Second District from a solid Democratic seat with a black majority to a swing district. If he can clear the November 7th primary, Lavigne hopes that low turnout for a December runoff could provide a Republican with a decent chance, especially if he faced a discredited Bill Jefferson.
Nevertheless, Lavigne, in all likelihood, robs Jefferson of some white voters that might vote for the status quo of the Congressman's seniority. (Libertarian Gregory W. ''Rhumbline'' Kahn and Democrat ''Vinny'' Mendoza could also appear to a small percentage of these voters.)
With political organizations challenging the Congressman's ''get out the vote'' efforts on the ground in New Orleans, suburban voters motivated for a candidate of their own for the first time, and women and whites distracted away, William Jefferson may have gone in one year from an entrenched incumbent waiting for his chance to chair the most powerful committee in Congress, to a desperate fight just to make a runoff.
In fact, Jefferson's colleagues are already writing his epitaph. In the Republican-leaning Third Congressional District, incumbent Democrat Charlie Melancon locked in a tight re-election fight with GOP State Senator Craig Romero, has told voters that they should cast a ballot for Melancon because he has the ''inside track'' to inherit Jefferson's seat on Ways and Means next year.
|
|
|
|
|
|
