Since 2005, it has been poor form to characterize anything relating to Louisiana politics as a “perfect storm.” But there are few other ways to describe the last-minute scenario of events that sunk Democratic Rep. Bill Jefferson, who is awaiting trial for bribery charges, in his New Orleans district on Saturday.
For all the parallels that have been drawn between GOP Rep.-elect Anh “Joseph” Cao and prototypical one-term wonder Michael Patrick Flanagan (R-IL), who upset embattled Democrat Dan Rostenkowski in 1994, the biggest difference may be that Cao’s chances of winning reelection in 2010 look much slimmer than Flanagan’s did in 1996.
While Hurricane Katrina may have diluted the black share of the 2nd CD’s population just a little, very little evidence supports the theory that the district has become significantly less Democratic over the last three and a half years. In fact, we estimate that while there were about 20 percent fewer votes cast in 2008 than there were in 2004, Obama actually won a slightly higher share of the vote than Kerry in the district – just over
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