The Democratic Win in Louisiana Is No Sign of the Party’s Revival November 22, 2015 5:00 PM
JOHNFUND
Saturday, Democrats elected their first governor in the Deep South in eight years, as Louisiana state legislator John Bel Edwards defeated GOP U.S. senator David Vitter. The Democrats’ double-digit victory in Louisiana makes up for their losing the Kentucky governorship to Republicans three weeks ago. But Edwards’s victory does little to change the unpopularity of Democrats in the South.
Edwards worked hard to separate himself from the liberal wing of his party on social issues. He was unabashedly pro-gun and anti-abortion, and he emphasized that he’s a graduate of West Point who had served in Iraq as an Army Ranger. That record won over voters while Vitter had to contend with a public backlash against a decade-old prostitution scandal. Edwards clobbered Vitter with one of the most effective attack ads ever — it accused Vitter of answering a call from a prostitute only hours after he had skipped a vote honoring military veterans. The ad concluded with the words “David Vitter chose prostitutes over patriots.”
When Vitter entered the general election, his two major Republican opponents in the primary — Lieutenant Governor Jay Dardenne and Public Service Commissioner Scott Angell — declined to endorse him. Dardenne eventually endorsed Edwards; Angell refused to endorse anyone.
Edwards also was helped by the fact that outgoing GOP governor Bobby Jindal, in the wake of budget crisis and falling oil prices, had approval ratings approaching 20 percent. Jindal, for his part, was a bitter political enemy of Vitter’s and also declined to endorse him. But political pros are under no illusions that Edwards’s victory shifted the fundamentals of Louisiana politics.
“A Republican ought to win automatically,” Charlie Cook, a Louisiana native and author of the Cook Political Report in Washington, D.C., told the New Orleans Times-Picayune. “If Vitter’s name had never come up in the D.C Madam [prostitution] case, we would be looking at a 10 to 15 point win” for the Republican.
Indeed, the GOP triumphed everywhere further down the ballot. A Republican won the race for lieutenant governor easily, and former GOP congressman Jeff Landry crushed incumbent attorney general Buddy Caldwell, a former Democrat who switched to the GOP to appeal to conservative voters. Republicans expanded their majorities in both houses of the legislature and will thus serve as a curb on any liberal tendencies exhibited by a new Governor Edwards.
Education reformers are trying to bolster their support in the legislature so they can limit any damage Edwards might do to the state’s thriving charter-school and voucher programs. In New Orleans, a reform effort in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina has resulted in 91 percent of students attending charter schools, and the results are impressive: The number of students that can read and do math at their actual grade level in New Orleans has doubled in the last five years.
John Bel Edwards won a rare victory as a Democrat in the South by promising he wouldn’t be a liberal. During the campaign, a pro-reform education group produced TV ads and mailers pointing out that public-school teachers’ unions that oppose choice have long thrown their support behind Edwards. But the teachers’ unions lost a big battle this past week when a federal appeals court overturned a lower-court ruling that the Department of Justice had the right to perform a “pre-clearance” of Louisiana vouchers. The court ruling ended a two-year effort by the Obama administration to deny children from low-income families better educational opportunities — under the pretext of promoting integration.
Studies have shown no increase in racial segregation under Louisiana’s post-Katrina school-choice program. The issue of educational funding will be front and center in Louisiana next year when the state tackles a $500 million budget deficit — Edwards has proposed doubling higher-education spending. John Bel Edwards won a rare victory as a Democrat in the South by promising he wouldn’t be a liberal. We will soon see just how real those assurances are — we’ll learn whether he is more interested in the agenda of teachers’ unions or in continuing to help low-income kids escape failing schools.
Read more at:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/427476/democratic-win-louisiana-not-so-significant
