Lower, but significant, Orleans turnout projected

It’s a good question, what will turnout be in the New Orleans’ municipal elections on Apr. 22? As my political science colleagues rightly point out, good luck on a good guess. But at least let’s try. As a starting point, consider that overall turnout for the primary election in 2002 was about 46 percent, with whites at about 50 percent, blacks at about 45 percent, and other races around 29 percent.

First, it’s unlikely to be where it was in 2002 (which is what might be implied by some pie-in-the-sky estimates). Using data I have much more confidence in – from my recently-presented paper to the Louisiana Political Science Association at its annual meeting – assuming only historical absentee ballot voting rates (using the 2002 proportion of just 1.625 percent of total ballot being absentee) and the most recent weekly statistics for Orleans, produces a rough figure of 58,023 voting (of which 57,095 will enter Orleans voting booths) of 298,091 registered, or a dismal 19.46 percent.

However, consider the rate of requests (from 500-1,000 per day) for absentee ballots, keeping in mind just 2,171 were cast in 2002. It would not be surprising to have 10 times that number eventually come in, given the rate of requests and, ordinarily, almost all would get cast. But this may not be the case in 2006 because of the presence of satellite voting centers; a number of requesters may end up trooping to one of these locations anyway. So let’s assume that ten times the previous figure, or 16.25 percent or 9,278 get cast absentee (in addition to the projected 57,095 on the ground in Orleans).

The real wild card is the presence at the satellite centers. The most sense Democrat Secretary of State Al Ater has made sense during his time in office, where he has appeared to act more partisan than impartial, has come when he argued the amount of money the state has spent on defending the itself over lawsuits incredibly arguing the state hasn’t done enough to create ballot access, “For the money they've spent on legal bills, and made me spend on legal bills, we could have sent a cab after all of them.” No doubt a number of organizations will spend considerable resources to provide transportation to these. With around 150,000 displaced Orleanians out there registered to vote (out of about 275,000 total), let’s be generous and double our assumption here, to say 32.5 percent of on-the-ground turnout will be by satellite locations, or 18,556.

(Note that with these estimates, assuming all absentee ballot come from displaced people, that over 6 percent and over 12 percent of all displaced people would be voting absentee and through satellite centers, respectively. By historical absentee standards, these are rather optimistic.)

That gives a total of 84,929, or a turnout of 28.49 percent. Using historical figures, votes on the ground in Orleans will have blacks just below an absolute majority, but taking the secretary of state’s office’s 70 percent figure of absentee ballot requests coming from blacks and also applying it to satellite voters, blacks will represent about 55 percent of the total voters in this election, as opposed to 61.6 percent of the electorate in 2002. As for the general election four weeks later, totals should be around these, perhaps a little higher.

Were this how the scenarios play out, it hard to argue anything would be unfair about these elections. But if a black candidate doesn’t win by May 20, look for some interest groups to make exactly this claim even if these numbers are realized.

Stuck on stupid XV: LA politicians need to get over it

I had hoped the whining had stopped. Instead, it reached a new crescendo when the federal government announced its latest cost estimates showed rebuilding levees in southeast Louisiana to protect against hurricanes in the top percentile of strength would cost almost triple the original estimate.

Democrat Gov. Kathleen Blanco, who at this time last year didn’t indicate she cared one iota about flood protection, fumed the federal government “cannot ensure even the minimum safety of southeastern Louisiana. This is totally unacceptable.” A “visibly angry” Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu, who in the past steered flood protection money to less vital projects, stormed out of the meeting where the news was being delivered. Democrat Rep. Charlie Melancon said the federal government “really didn’t want to help” and Republican Sen. David Vitter accused Washington of “stonewalling.”

Their rhetoric obscured the bigger picture. Recovery liaison Donald Powell stressed that the additional improvements would be mainly for insurance, not safety reasons – in other words, without them, some areas that otherwise would not have received flooding would one time out of a hundred (and the effects of that flooding could be largely mitigated through other preventive measures). Further, the increased cost reflected the oft-stated desire of Louisiana politicians to build better protection than before, and Powell said recent science had shown older research had underestimated the potential threat – in other words, Louisiana was bring told in order to fulfill its desire, this was the additional money that would have to be taken from the American taxpayer.

Voter access demagoguery displays LA's backwardness

Most Louisianans missed the dramatic transformation that occurred yesterday in a tiny segment of Baton Rouge, a time vortex that flung the state back about 50 years forming in the John Hainkel Committee Room at the Louisiana Capitol, where the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee met to deal with a monstrous problem threatening our democracy.

Leading state luminaries such as Senate President Pro Tem Diana Bajoie, state Sen. Cleo Fields and state Rep. Cedric Richmond delivered powerful oratory, arguing how the Legislature could strike a blow against a massive disenfranchisement of voters and how it could protect liberty and democracy. Alongside them, the beatific Rev. Jesse Jackson added his hosannas, reminding everybody on numerous occasions that “The ‘whereas’ and ‘therefore’ do not correspond.”

What did they aim their righteous indignation against, leading them to recount stories of decades ago of the civil rights movement which they said were directly applicable today? What horrible things are going on in Louisiana democracy equivalent to poll taxes, literacy tests, and the symbolic letting police dogs loose to terrorize? Well, the facts that the state requires people voting absentee to first have to request a ballot before getting such ballot, and that the state has not set up out-of-state satellite voting.

GOP riches in SOS race makes party prospects good

An embarrassment of riches pervades the special election for secretary of state for Republicans, signaling bad news for Democrats and perhaps indicating a big GOP year in Louisiana in 2007.

With state Sen. Jay Dardenne announcing for the office, this gives Republicans two quality candidates for it as he joins former party head Mike Francis. Both are well-funded with good reform credentials that no doubt will resonate through the state after the current unelected occupant Al Ater has politicized his position.

At this point, the only high-profile Democrat that has expressed serious interest in (although not entrance into) the contest is state Rep. Carla Dartez. But she is underfunded relative to the Republicans and, as a more liberal Democrat, could not do a good job to try to shake off the perception that through Ater and the Democrat-controlled Legislature that Democrats are out to use electoral trickery, if not outright fraud, to maintain their tenuous grasp on power in the state.

If this is the contest that shapes up, given that perception and her underfunding, Dartez may not even make the general election. An early poll didn’t even register her (having Dardenne at 17 percent, Francis at 7, although with over 50 percent undecided, there’s not a lot to read into this other than Dardenne is known from politics and Francis has to work harder to become more known). Further, being a special election, a low-stimulus election of this nature disproportionately would disfavor a Democrat, especially one whose scattered base probably will mean she would have 50,000 fewer voters statewide to draw upon.

Perhaps the surest sign of GOP confidence is that the race has drawn two quality candidates. Except for races for the governor’s mansion (and not always even then), in the past Republicans seldom have fielded more than one (if even that) strong candidate for executive offices. If one of these wins later this year, and especially if both made the general election runoff, this would presage a big 2007 for the GOP.

Bossier City, Parish need to lead to solve road problem

Pay for an extension of the Arthur Ray Teague Parkway, or give a gift to a private developer? Essentially the same people who ran Bossier City then as now opted for the latter, but a wiser decision then may have spared Bossier City traffic headaches for years to come.

Several years ago, Congress created the Red River National Wildlife Reserve, and the plan to get it up and running within a decade. This included the building of a headquarters a couple of miles south of the Jimmie Davis Bridge in Bossier Parish. Keep in mind this was public knowledge the past few years, and certainly something local elected officials should have known – that the federal government would be acquiring land that was part of the parish to comprise a portion of Refuge, it would be putting a headquarters complex there, and it would need access to that.

Suddenly, and belatedly, now that the development of the refuge is to the point where the access road needs to be decided, parish and city officials have come to realize that the only real choice is Sunflower Road, which runs east from Barksdale Boulevard and as far as access serves only as the entrance to five subdivisions, four of which have no other access. It has two lanes, no sidewalks, and a ridiculously-slow 25 miles per hour speed limit.

This situation triggered a notice authored by local elected officials and distributed by the South Bossier Citizens Assembly to area residents, urging them to contact the office of Rep. Jim McCrery (who also introduced the bill in 2000 to create the RRNWR) to convince the Fish and Wildlife Service not to make Sunflower Road the access point. All of this is well and good and should be pursued, but the fact of the matter is, Sunflower Road is the only potential access to the Refuge for the next five years and, unless the federal government decides it wants to wait that long to open the headquarters complex, that is going to be the access road to it. And it doesn’t seem likely that Fish and Wildlife will want to wait that long – the federal government has envisioned opening the center by 2008.

The Mar. 27 informational session sponsored by the SBCA revealed the parish could have something in place by Sep. 2007. Well, what is everybody waiting for?

Unfortunately, the latest capital plans by the city and parish don’t intend for southern expansion of the Parkway until 2010. Here, things get a bit tricky because virtually all of the land on which the extension would be built is under parish jurisdiction, yet it’s Bossier City that would benefit much more by it. So, the project essentially must be completed by the parish, and one reason why it has not been done more expeditiously is because the parish has had much more high-priority items like courthouses to build with the limited funds it has available. It would have to have a bond issue passed to complete the $15 million project.

But to Bossier City, this has become a crisis because it will suffer from heightened use of Sunflower Road and because the building of infrastructure for the Refuge probably will increase eventual costs and time needed for the Parkway extension. Thus, the impetus to solve this problem must come from Bossier City, even if it has to get others to do it on its behalf.

The problem is the federal government needs to know that work will begin on some kind of extension in time for the Refuge’s complex to have access when it opens, otherwise it will use Sunflower Road. The solution is to have Bossier City to get Bossier Parish to start on that right away; specifically, if the parish needs the money to get cracking, for the city to give it the money, in the form of a loan.

The city could easily pull a few million dollars out of its Riverboat Trust Fund to lend to the Parish for this purpose. Or, it could delay some other capital projects to do the same. The point is, immediately a two-lane road a mile or two long could be started upon and finished in time to placate the federal government.

Of course, the full extension could be well under way had the city lent the parish the entire $15 million years ago, and we’d have the completed project much sooner (with Bossier City’s citizens also reaping the benefit of a good rate of return on that investment). Instead, by way of example, the typically short-sighted, bauble-loving Bossier City Council and its then-mayor decided a couple of years ago to hand $21 million to private developers to pay for a parking garage the developers would have paid for on their own whose rate of return to the city probably is negative.

With all due respect, complaining to the federal government is not going to solve the problem, and if that’s all local elected officials support they are derelict. What will is Bossier Parish politicians using some foresight and willpower cooperating with Bossier City politicians expanding their thinking from its usual parochial quality to give the federal government a better choice. Bossier governments need to cooperate to start on the extension, right now.

Queen Bee gets a C

The 2005 hurricane disasters may have changed the face of Louisiana, but the have not altered Gov. Kathleen Blanco, if her address to open the 2006 regular session of the Legislature indicates anything. She still is the hesitant leader with fuzzy vision who would rather tinker at the margins and get along to go along, all the while insisting the opposite.

According to Blanco, Louisiana is powerless to control its own fate, captive to the whims of the federal government, the educational marketplace, and the economic environment. She insists the state had to wait on the federal government on money to fund housing recovery, to approve of a housing plan, and to produce flood maps – when in fact she did nothing about creating a housing recovery plan until recently, relying upon the problematic, failed “Baker bill” as her “plan” and gift of money, and that waiting on flood maps is not at all required to initiate rebuilding efforts.

She claims educational excellence will come as soon as the Legislature supports her plan to give educators pay raises – ignoring the fact that throwing money at teachers does not produce lasting, meaningful improvement in the system, assuming the system even deserves it. And the money to provide those increases comes from one-time federal grants to reduce the state’s health care tab – but Blanco claims the money is permanent in nature because she is negotiating with the federal government for a “long-term commitment” for a “redesigned health care system.” As well, “confidence that our economy will stay strong” does not make her additional spending plans “fiscally sound.”

To Blanco, economic development still remains a game where government spends the state into prosperity with new programs or through bribery by dangling targeted economic incentives or outright gifts in front of business, not a function of creating a more-hospitable economic climate through reduction of costs on economic activity in general through lower taxes, reduced regulation, and in presenting a government that is efficient and ethically unchallenged.

These priorities show Blanco continues to provide poor leadership, while she hypocritically denies she is a follower. She congratulated herself and the Legislature on flood control reform, even as she initially did little for it and only later jumped on the bandwagon. She mentioned consolidation of Orleans government as the next great task even as just weeks ago she barely lifted a finger to make it a reality.

Nor can she prove to us she leads with the proper vision by trying to project force when she clearly has none. Her asserting that she would object to oil lease sales for drilling offshore Louisiana unless Louisiana got a bigger cut from production, that “this is not an idle threat” was pathetic precisely because it is.

The hurricane disasters merely made the state’s myriad long-term problems more evident and pressing than ever, requiring bold leadership with a vision bent on turning around Louisiana’s liberal/populist past. Blanco’s address shows she is not the one to provide it.

More misestimations of Orleans population, registration

Sometimes, a blind pig finds an acorn. We observe a good example of this aphorism and its opposite (they often don’t find one) in a couple of announced studies of New Orleans’ population and voter registration totals which have in common that they both take rather debatable approaches to their investigations.

Greg Rigamer of GCR and Associates makes, to be frank, a mistake when he assumes just because registered voters in large part have not changed registration addresses to outside of Orleans Parish that they will be in Orleans to participate in the Apr. 22 and May 20 elections. As anybody familiar with the electoral behavior literature knows, it is hazardous at best to assume that just because displaced individuals have not changed their registrations that they faithfully will troop to Orleans Parish on election day – especially when the best estimates have roughly 275,000 Orleanians living out of state at the present, (and no more than a small fraction will avail themselves of early, mail-in, or satellite voting).

Yet the GCR Associates study the state paid for makes precisely the bad assumption that most on the registration rolls in Orleans will be present and ready to vote. The report’s author does not seem to understand that changing a registration in order to reflect the fact that they will not show up in April and May to vote, when faced with much bigger problems and entirely uncertain about when and if they will return to New Orleans, is probably the last thing on displaced Orleanians’ minds.

As I noted in a previous posting, my paper presented at March’s meeting of the Louisiana Political Science Association demonstrates, comparing historical rates of changes in registration totals to the present to show the actual “retention” rate of voters we can expect to be on the ground in Orleans on election day, these estimates are too optimistic on both the numbers that will be present (projected to be 130,000 in April, 138,000 in May) and in the proportion of blacks present (about 53 percent). (And my offer still is good: if anybody wants a copy of the paper, write me.) Data are no good unless you’ve got good theory behind it.

At least Rigamer actually does not overestimate too badly in both numbers and percentage of black population. Still, it’s disturbing that the state paid taxpayer dollars for an analysis that appears to be so unsophisticated and off the cuff (although neither is that inefficiency atypical of Louisiana government). Totally missing the mark is an academician who seems to offer little more than historical speculation and anecdotal evidence to say New Orleans won’t have a majority black population for some time (although, not having seen it, I’m having to go on the description afforded of it).

News flash: New Orleans did by the end of 2005 (about 80,000 blacks, 76,000 non-blacks, according to my estimates). Lesson (drawn from both examples): it takes good data used reasonably to draw truly valid conclusions about New Orleans’ future political geography.

Money, innovation can help repair indigent defense

One helpful aspect of Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s executive budget is its increased emphasis on improving the quality of indigent defense. Roughly 80 percent of all criminal trials in the state involve indigent defense, and due to unstable funding sources the system has a tendency, despite the best efforts of many, to underperform and perhaps even take resources from the judicial and law enforcement systems.

This point got driven home February when a New Orleans judge threatened to free prisoners awaiting trial because the ravages of the hurricane disasters essentially had stopped any revenue from coming into his public defense system, paring public defender staff by sixth-sevenths, making adequate defense virtually impossible. Eventually, the state coughed up $500,000 in emergency funding to keep it going.

Blanco proposes doubling the amount of money going to the Louisiana Indigent Defense Assistance Board which distributes such funds. Historically, however, LIDAB’s District Assistance Fund has been weighed more towards smaller-populated districts. While this may help keep indigent defense operating in these areas, larger jurisdictions are where the majority of the state cases get heard and where unfortunately appears the staggering number of cases a public defender is expected to represent. Currently, LIDAB is reviewing its criteria to determine DAF funding disbursements.

Polls buoy Jindal's hopes, crush Breaux's and Blanco's

Rep. Bobby Jindal and state Republicans hardly could ask for better news – a Verne Kennedy poll for the 2007 governor’s contest puts Jindal way out in front and sheds light onto the new reality in Louisiana politics, a state Republicans will enjoy to the chagrin of Democrats.

The poll had Jindal at 39 percent, retired U.S. Sen. John Breaux 17 percent; Gov. Kathleen Blanco 16 percent, U.S. Sen. David Vitter 10 percent and former Attorney General Richard Ieyoub 2 percent. Shaw Group CEO Jim Bernhard, PSC Commissioner Foster Campbell and state Sen. Walter Boasso each had 1 percent. But the most interesting statistics were the attendant “don’t know” figures – 12 percent for the “primary,” 9 percent for the “general” election. Similarly discouraging for Democrats, another poll privately commissioned by Democrat Party strongman Agriculture Commissioner Bob Odom put Jindal in front of Breaux heads-up 48-42.

They may try in the near future, but there simply is no way for Democrats to put a positive spin on these numbers, probably beyond their worst nightmares 18 months out from the election. Consider:

Louisiana yet again warned to get its act together

Sen. David Vitter served notice that Gov. Kathleen Blanco and the Louisiana Legislature had better get with the program in the upcoming legislative session in order to maximize the state’s chance of getting optimal federal assistance to offset effects of the hurricane disasters of 2005.

In a speech, the Republican Vitter, who should know better than anyone else in the state given he is the only Louisiana elected official that sits with the majority in the Senate, emphasized the main issue that could cause the federal government to take a circumspect attitude in doling out recovery funds was state government’s ethos regarding managing monetary resources, and stressed four areas in which state government action could assuage federal fears:

Demonstrating that there was coordination among all levels of government to produce a unified vision about recovery

Having decisive leadership in and around New Orleans to create an environment in which recovery, driven by people, not government, could occur

Proving through governmental spending reform actions that the state was a good steward of funds

Displaying an attitude of fiscal prudence

Vitter did not mince words, which we can presume echo the thoughts of congressional leaders who control how much money the state will get: “We need bold reforms to prove to the nation . . . we are getting our act together in Louisiana government.” Unfortunately, early indications are the Democrat elites who run the state, as usual, don’t get it.

Coordination and leadership appear uncertain. Only recently has the state gotten with it with a housing recovery plan after dithering in anticipation that the federal government would do something on its own. The just-released Bring New Orleans Back commission’s report, modified by New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, provides an excellent starting point and the state’s plan to pay homeowners for repair or sale of their properties should be folded into it regarding Crescent City recovery.

More troublesome has been Democrat Blanco’s and the Democratic-controlled Legislature’s history regarding spending reform and fiscal prudence. In the past special sessions, Blanco had to be pressured to embrace flood control reform, and she allowed the Legislature to scuttle any attempts to consolidate wasteful government structuring in Orleans (while she fought tooth-and-nail for legislation to increase the chances for fraud in elections to assist the Democrats). Also, her latest budget indicates a reckless use of money designed to enhance her reelection prospects that even Vitter found necessary to directly address. And too many in the Legislature not only remain clueless about all of this, they incredibly think they are doing everything right and are too closed-minded to understand why the rest of the world thinks otherwise.

Again, as Vitter’s speech reminded, it all comes down to this: those with political power in Louisiana historically have sided with a liberal/populist agenda to the detriment of the state’s economy and general quality of life. America didn’t much care about that until a crisis occurred and it had to intervene. Now it’s asking Louisiana’s power elite to grow up to help make the intervention effective. And if they won’t Louisiana will need tough love which the federal government will accomplish by withholding sufficient recovery resources until they do.