Carters battle for Cong. runoff slots
15th March 2021 · 0 Comments
By Christopher Tidmore
Contributing Writer
With early voting commencing on March 6, few polls have been conducted to date in the 2nd Congressional District special election to replace Cedric Richmond. The sole campaign voter survey released so far by Dr. Silas Lee of Xavier University seems to indicate that state Sen. Troy Carter leads the primary field at 28 percent, with state Sen. Karen Carter Peterson in second place at 19 percent. The poll also shows that the race remains wide open – with undecideds still amounting to 38 percent of the electorate.
Troy Carter’s campaign received advance warning of this poll over a week ago, sources tell The Louisiana Weekly. It might have proved part of the reason why former congressman and current state Senator Cleo Fields broke his silence last week and endorsed Troy Carter. Fields’ nod came on the heels of Troy Carter winning the Alliance for Good Government endorsement and the support of many of the elected officials in Jefferson Parish, including Parish President Cynthia Lee Shang and District Attorney Paul Connick.
Karen Carter Peterson, in contrast, has garnered considerable national support from Emily’s List to Stacey Abrams. She has managed to bank a far higher amount of campaign contributions than Carter (or any of her opponents), funding an elaborate GOTV ground game – particularly in the senator’s base in Orleans Parish, run by LaToya Cantrell‘s former campaign director, Anna Nguyen.
Given that in the November 2020 elections in Orleans and the West Bank of Jefferson parishes Black female candidates tended to emerge victorious over male opponents in most cases, recent history would suggest that Carter Peterson might have an advantage in a runoff thanks to the money she has to spend. That is only if the turnout remains high enough and, if as a result, women constitute a majority percentage of the electorate.
The senator’s own comments after Abrams’ endorsement emphasized this very point. “When women are not on the table, they’re on the menu. It is time for women to have a seat at the table,” she said.
Of course, in a low turnout election, like the Orleans runoffs last fall, female candidates were not as successful as they appeared in the primary a month prior—especially against an African-American male running to the Left of a particular woman candidate, as DA contender Kiva Landrum learned.
Moreover, Carter Peterson needs to make the cut and earn her spot in the runoff. The aforementioned poll seems to suggest that the anti-establishment campaign of Baton Rouge activist Gary Chambers Jr. seems to be having some traction in EBR and down the River Parishes. According to the survey, he ranks third at six percent.
“We can’t be satisfied with being dead-last and we can’t elect career politicians if we want change to happen,” Chambers said.
Latina Democrat and small business owner Desiree Ontiveros may have had some traction in her appeals to the growing Hispanic as well as gentrified millennial population in the 2nd District. She came in fourth place at two percent.
Statistically tied to her was African-American Republican Claston Bernard, whose fundraising and campaign infrastructure imply a very serious bid in a district that normally would never consider a Republican.
Regardless of his chances of eventual victory, Bernard might himself have a shot at the runoff. Despite his somewhat anemic results in the poll, large numbers of Republican undecided voters remain unclaimed. They have to go somewhere, and Bernard may be the most likely beneficiary.
Last November, Republican David Schilling earned 15.01 percent of the vote with no money and no unified party support – against unbeatable incumbent Cedric Richmond. The other GOP contender, Sheldon Vincent Sr., won 4.91 percent. Collectively, in other words, if the Republicans stand together, a mere 20 percent of the vote could win a runoff slot, at Peterson’s expense.
Yet, in Sen. Carter Peterson’s defense, the fifteen-person field seeking to replace Cedric Richmond already divides the vote in such a matter to make further consolidation behind another contender problematic. After all, three additional Republicans are running: Chelsea Ardoin, Sheldon Vincent and Greg Lirette; along with Libertarian Mindy McConnell; independents Belden Batiste and Brandon Jolicoeur; and four other Democrats, Harold John, J. Christopher Johnson, Lloyd Kelly and Jenette Porter. Collectively, all of these candidates earned six percent in the Silas Lee survey.
The poll’s margin of error was 3.5 percent, but it did offer some hope for these other candidates. Roughly fifty percent of the electorate in Baton Rouge, and almost a third of voters in the River Parishes remain unfamiliar with both frontrunners, while both Troy Carter and Karen Carter Peterson enjoy similar levels of name recognition in New Orleans.
The survey may also prove a bit dated, as Sen. Carter Peterson’s campaign has sent a series of direct mail pieces in recent days to likely voters, expending a considerable portion of her campaign war chest in the process.
Dr. Lee polled 450 registered voters across the 2nd District between February 8 and February 11. The survey was released on February 25.
This article originally published in the March 1, 2021 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
