Last week Republican Beth Mizell, narrowly-defeated in 2011
against Democrat state Sen. Ben Nevers, announced
she would have another go at that seat. That loss of around 400 votes took many
by surprise, and not just because Nevers in his first try in 2003 had won
without having to contest a runoff (the Republican, who polled only half of
Nevers’ total, withdrew) and followed that up winning reelection unopposed in
2007, but because Democrats are burrowed in like ticks on a neglected dog in
the epicenter of the district, Washington Parish.
Because of that, Mizell will not be
a slam dunk to succeed the term-limited veteran legislator, who also served a
term in the House prior to his Senate election. Almost certain to try to hang
onto the seat for Democrats is Nevers’ successor, now himself term-limited in
the House, state Rep. Harold Ritchie.
Together, the two have served as the recent
backbone of the Washington Parish part of the party; Ritchie’s wife Patsy
serves on its executive committee, and his brother serves on the Bogalusa City
Council, while Nevers’ political ally and confederate in trying to build
a reservoir in the parish while having barely arms-length business
relationships with the effort Charles Mizell (if there’s some kind of
distant relationship between him and Beth Mizell’s late husband’s family, I don’t
know of any, even if both are from Bogalusa), served as Bogalusa mayor.
Yet times are changing, and not in
the direction Democrats would want as Beth Mizell’s showing in 2011 indicated.
While elections last year in the dominant jurisdiction in the parish, Bogalusa,
returned Democrat majorities in both the school board and city council contests
– the city is roughly 50/50 white/black – at-large city councilor Wendy O’Quin-Perrette
led in the mayor’s race after the general election and Charles Mizell conceded.
In 2010, both black candidates for that post got cleared out (disqualification
and withdrawal), allowing the white Democrat to win. But in 2014, the black
Democrat who withdrew stayed in, split the vote, and in all likelihood a
scandal from defrauding
the federal government by Mizell’s son had negative spillover effects to
cause a poor showing for the one-term incumbent. Somewhat significantly, O’Quin-Perrette,
who had previously run as a Democrat, ran as a no-party candidate on this
occasion.
In some ways, Washington Parish
encapsulates the state as it was a decade ago. Its population is two-thirds
white, with most of the remainder black, and that total barely growing, in part
because of the slow loss of population in Bogalusa. Its voter
totals show almost 70 percent white registration, 60 percent Democrat
registration, and of Democrats almost 60 percent white. With a strong Democrat
organization still mostly led by whites, the party continues to monopolize
politics in the area.
But for it the problem is Senate
District 12 looks much more like the state as it is now. Mizell came close
last time because, even as she lost Washington by 1,500 votes, she more
than doubled up on Nevers in the small part of the district in St. Tammany
Parish, winning that by 2,000. A thousand-vote margin in Tangipahoa kept him in
in office, but it is the St. Tammany part that is growing the fastest. And
while Ritchie’s name recognition in Washington will help him there, Mizell will
have more in the other parts of the district from her previous run, negating
the entire name recognition advantage that Nevers had four years ago.
That Democrats’ advantage has
deteriorated should come as no surprise. When Never got first elected, he was considered
a “conservative” Democrat for his views on social issues, and followed that
standard playbook of publicizing those preferences to offset populist economic
views that became increasingly liberal. This session, both Nevers and Ritchie
have championed through bills a ruinous
oil processing tax, with Nevers also stumping for Medicaid expansion and
other tax increases while Ritchie has done the same and been the foremost proponent
of increasing the cigarette tax and unwisely dumping the proceeds into general
government. Through increased channels of communication and a candidate of
Mizell’s quality willing to publicize information about the issue preferences
of Democrats, voters have become increasingly skeptical of white populist
Democrats like Nevers.
That Democrats have managed to hang
on in this backwater also should come as no surprise, given their organizational
strength and historic inertia. Above all else, Nevers won because his
incumbency and partisan ties, with state Democrats pouring in nearly $30,000 to
his campaign, made him a money magnet, and also because of local organization.
Statewide Republicans gave Mizell slightly more, but she didn’t spend much more
than that, and his quarter million bucks in expenditures for 2011 annihilated
her $35,000 or so.
However, with over $71,000 on hand
at the end of 2014, she already has raised more than she did in the 2011 cycle,
and Ritchie, with only about $18,000 banked away, will not have nearly the
incumbency resources to draw upon as did Nevers. Thus, the only way he can best
her is to rev up the Democrat local organization, where numbers in Washington
still favor him.
So there it is. As the organization’s
power has continued to erode, the question is whether it retains strength enough
to resist the larger tides of the obvious partisan shift in Louisiana as a
whole. More specifically, the upcoming election renders a verdict as to whether
Democrats have any hope of operating as a majority party by their ability still
to attract white voters. As such, this serves as metaphor for the entire state.
Hang on here and Republicans cannot be said to have the ability to pursue an
anti-populist, conservative agenda in the state, at least yet. If not (with
expected unanimous GOP wins statewide and with legislative majorities aided by
its win here), the endgame of cultural transformation will commence, shaping
the state’s politics for decades to come.
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