GOP Presidential contest could have major impact local City Council races

19th March 2012   ·   0 Comments

By Christopher Tidmore
Contributing Writer

The day after former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum charged to unexpected victories over Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich in Alabama and Mississippi, the first attack mailers appeared in mailboxes of registered Republicans across Louisiana.

“Rick Santorum, Washington Insider…joined with Hillary Clinton and VOTED TO ALLOW CONVICTED FELONS TO VOTE”, wrote the pro-Romney SuperPAC Restore Our Future, along with broadsides calling the Penn. Senator “Another Big Spending Politician…vote for Mitt Romney.”

The fact that Santorum voted to make federal law the same as almost every state, including Louisiana, restoring voting rights after a convict’s sentence was complete, and that he was the author of Welfare Reform while Romney was the architect of legislation as Massachusetts Governor that would essentially become Barack Obama’s Health Care Reform Bill was, of course, unmentioned in the mailers’ discussion of political ideology.

A WWL TV poll, taken prior to the other Southern victories, puts Santorum in first place going into the March 24th election, with 25 percent to the Massachusetts Governor’s 21 percent, and the former US House Speaker’s 20 percent. Texas Congressman Ron Paul rounds out the pack with 6 percent.

The surge in GOP voters going to the polls on Saturday, may have some interesting impacts on the Council races.

ORLEANS COUNCIL AT-LARGE

The question plaguing pundits in the Crescent City has been, Will the surge in Conservative white voters give District “B” Councilwoman Stacy Head a first primary victory in the race to succeed Arnie Fielkow?

Certainly, recent Council At-Large special elections have shown an advantage for moderate Caucasian Democrats over African-American challengers. That explained the triumph of Jackie Clarkson over Cynthia Willard Lewis. Black turnout is depressed in Special Elections, and with the GOP Presidential contest as the only other major vote in Orleans Parish, few have expected greater minority voter excitement on March 24.

However, Stacy Head is not facing a head-to-head contest with one prominent Black challenger named Willard Lewis, but must also face African-American State Representative Austin Badon. Moreover, Saturday’s ballot also boasts of a Republican. Perennial candidate Andrew Gressett may be, but at least a large percentage of GOP voters going to the polls will punch the button for the Republican, out of party loyalty if nothing else.

Normally, those voters would go for Head. Complicating the situation further for the District “B” conservative Democrat is the fact that the Mayor’s cousin Gary Landrieu is also on the ballot. Name recognition only gives him three percent in the polls according to a survey commissioned by Stacy Head, but he steals enough white votes to make a first primary victory problematic for the District “B” Councilwoman.

Add to that establishment Repub­lican anger towards her over a question of redistricting. Councilwoman Head supported a measure to move several GOP-leaning Lakefront com­munities out of the previously Republican District “A” and into the African-American majority District “D.” The redistricting drew a map quite friendly to the re-election of her White Democratic colleague on the Council, Susan Guidry. How­ever, it may have forever ended the chances of a Republican winning a seat on the New Orleans City Council.

Politically, Head did not have to vote for the redistricting measure for it to pass the council. However, she did so, drawing the ire of not only the City’s Republican Party leaders, but District “D” Councilwoman Cynthia Hedge-Morrell, who had little interest in conservative White voters diluting the Black voting strength in her previously strongly minority district.

Some Republican Parish Executive Committee members pledged re­venge against Head, once their favorite Democrat in the City. And, they turned their support to Austin Badon.

In the next week, sources tell this newspaper as its goes to press, that direct mail pieces from prominent Orleans Republicans will arrive in mail boxes next week, asking white voters to support Rep. Badon.

In the meantime, not only must Stacy Head not garner 50 percent on March 24th, but Badon must make it past Willard Lewis, who has shown considerable strength in organizing her base in New Orleans East. That is the same African-American base upon which the State Rep. can normally count.

KENNER

Most Kenner voters are unaware that a Council election is even occurring on March 24th to replace Ben Zhan (recently promoted to the Jefferson Parish Council). Neither of the candidates are well known, and Mary-Sharon Howland has the open backing of Mayor Mike Yenni.

Normally, in a special election, that advantage of money and organization would prove the defining element, but Howland has the distinct disadvantage of running as Kenner reacts to the Rivertown Mardi Gras Museum “debacle”.

“People are angry at Mike,” local Kenner political activist Richard Brown told The Louisiana Weekly. “They saw the closure of the museum as bad enough, but no one thought the amount we could get for it was enough.” The City of Kenner ended up netting $44,000, less after auctioneers fees, a paltry sum for a museum that had been a mark of pride for the small, suburban town, ever since Aaron Broussard inaugurated the facility in 1992.

“The backlash has been huge,” Brown said of its closure. Keith Reynard, Howland’s principal challenger, has made the museum closure, and Yenni’s refusal to donate the collection to the Louisiana State Museum’s Carni­val Archive, a central piece of his campaign.

Match that with residual anger remaining over Yenni’s attempts to raise Kenner’s milliage rate last year, and Reynard’s campaign has a populist twinge that could provide an upset on Saturday.

Howland, though, has the advantage of money.

HARAHAN

“I don’t have a horse in this race,” explained former Harahan Police Chief and Councilman Peter Dale, “But Eric Chatelain knocked on my door. He asked for my vote. I don’t know anyone who has even spoken to Craig Johnson.”

Dale served with Johnson’s fat­her, during the latter’s tenure as Mayor, and enjoys good relations with the family. Still, he admitted, “People were surprised when Craig ran,” and the connotation Dale implied was that the surprise was not exactly positive.

Paul Johnson, Craig’s father, had served as Mayor for eight years, then won back his previous job on the Harahan Council. A year after that election, though, Paul Johnson decided to run for another open Jefferson Parish Council seat, winning to succeed Elton Lagasse with little opposition.

“It’s been a life plan of mine,” Johnson Sr. told The Louisiana Weekly. “Serve in Harahan, and then serve the parish.” His son Craig, however, was a comparative unknown in Harahan politics, not nearly as involved as his father.

Mayor Vinny Mosca, who had worked ardently on Paul Johnson’s behalf in the Jefferson Parish Council race, admitted to shock when he learned that the Councilman’s son was running to succeed his father. “It came out of nowhere.”

Mosca decided to back challenger Eric Chatelain, accusing Johnson of trying to play nepotism.

However, name recognition, nepotism’s political cousin, could decide this race on Saturday. To say that Eric Chatelain has outworked Craig Johnson in Harahan ranks as one of the great political understatements. Yet, the latter, funded through connections of his father’s, has matched Chatelain’s sign coverage throughout the small suburban city.

In a low turnout election, Chatelain’s grassroots organizing would likely win the day, but a higher GOP turnout to the polls thanks to the presidential contest could mean that voters, unfamiliar with the intricacies of Harahan’s politics, could cast their ballots based on simple name recognition.

And, the name Johnson, held by the former Councilman and Mayor of Harahan, would be hard to vote against.

This article was originally published in the March 19, 2012 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper