And maybe - maybe - a portent of things to come for the country (I say "maybe", because the Democrats, in far too many crucial locales, are still the ones counting the votes, and their math skills are, shall we say, pretty weak). "Jeff Landry quietly flips Louisiana back to red".
In what may hopefully be a sign of things to come, Louisiana voters went to the polls this weekend and replaced Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards with Republican Attorney General Jeff Landry. (Edwards was term-limited.) Landry’s campaign message had been simple. The people of Louisiana deserve to expect better from their elected officials and he has been offering a plan to make that happen. For the first time in more than a decade, Landry won the race with a clear majority of the votes, avoiding the state’s easily manipulated “jungle primary” system which would have kicked in if he had only won with a plurality.
He's got his work cut out for him.
Louisiana definitely needed a change. Under John Bel Edwards, New Orleans became the most violent city in the world, with the highest per capita murder rate in the country. That includes the highest number of women being murdered in America, despite the city having a far smaller population than Chicago, Baltimore, or San Francisco. (New Orleans ranks 53 in the country by population.)
Landry won 2:1 over the donk candidate. That's impressive.
ReplyDeleteBut change? We'll see.
Most of the US watched in horror at the disaster of Louisiana post-Katrina. While the media did yeoman work trying to convince people that Bush and Cheney personally steered that Hurricane into the city and then laughed maniacally as the inhabitants descended into savage cannibalism, the rest of us saw incompetents such as Nagin and Blanco continuously fumble the ball, and corrupt apparatchiks such as Jefferson (and again, Nagin) line their pockets and divert resources to their own ends.
ReplyDeleteWe don't expect to see parts of the US act like banana republics... and yet, there it was.
Or it may be a call to action for the DNC to fire up its vote generators to counter the Republican 'disinformation campaigns'.
ReplyDeleteA few wins all around, then. Good work, Louisiana.
ReplyDeleteHaving spent a significant part of my life living in New Orleans, I can vouch for the fact that it has always been violent. It also essentially has no "safe" neighborhoods: the violence permeates every part of the city. The most affluent neighborhoods include a mix of poverty. Its culture is devoid of a work ethic and highly accomplished (proud even) of revelry. And its politics is remarkably corrupt.
ReplyDeleteThe sane part of Louisiana has never been able to make any inroads into improving the city because people in New Orleans like it the way it is.
I've never been there, but it sounds like a wide-open town.
ReplyDeleteMy contacts with New Orleans has been minimal, but I had the opportunity to read an investigation article about one local special district there, the one that maintains the levee system around New Orleans. The same one that failed during Hurricane Katrina.
ReplyDeleteAnd, brother, it was an eye opener! The tie in for me was that the special district worked with the US Army Corps of Engineers in maintaining the levee system around New Orleans, and I was appalled at the sheer indifference to the actual condition of those levees, pre-Katrina. The corruption extended into the federal agency supposedly responsible for making sure the locals maintained the levees.
At risk of being labeled a racist (along with all my other observations) is that New Orleans is majority black and very poor. Its major source of income is tourism. They used to get a lot of money from the oil industry operating in the Gulf, but Dirty Old Joe largely crippled that. So it's no wonder that the city is violent and corrupt, but what is astonishingly remarkable is that Republican Landry was elected governor despite the Democrats that own New Orleans lock stock and barrel. Maybe the message is finally getting through.
ReplyDeleteDisclaimer: Mr. H and I honeymooned there, and boy, were we children lost in the woods.
To grossly oversimplify, Louisiana has long had two warring cultures: the Democratic Catholic south and the conservative Baptist north. Power has swung back and forth from one to the other forever, well before the conservatives became Republicans. Getting Landry elected is a plus, but just the latest swing. Yes, the Democrats own New Orleans and the power there is majority black, but the Democrats always owned it and it was just as corrupt before the blacks took over. Have people in New Orleans seen the light? Not a chance. It will remain majority black, corrupt, and dysfunctional long after we're gone. But the food is fabulous.
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