Blanco tries to repair her state and reputation

NY Times:

She is struggling to rebuild a shattered state. But along the way, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Louisiana is also working to repair a wounded reputation - her own.

She has been mocked as weepy and indecisive by radio talk show hosts who deride her as "momma governor." She has feuded with the White House, which did not invite her to a recent announcement on levee protection. She has been criticized on Capitol Hill by Republicans as having made a "dysfunctional" response to Hurricane Katrina.

And through it all, Ms. Blanco, a 63-year-old Democrat, has found herself dogged by invidious comparisons to a certain mayor of New York whose stand-tall image after Sept. 11, 2001, seems to have become the one that all elected officials are expected to duplicate during a crisis.

"People can't stop comparing her to Rudy Giuliani," said State Representative Troy M. Hebert, a Democrat from Jeanerette. "When 9/11 came, he looked like he was doing something. I'm not sure he was. But he looked like it."

...

"Sometimes people think you are falling down when you are the only one standing," she said.

The question now is whether Ms. Blanco can regain enough political traction to lead her state out of its trauma. A post-hurricane poll showed that only 19 percent of voters would definitely support her for re-election in 2007. The depopulation of New Orleans, her party's base, has emboldened Republicans. And some Democrats question whether she has a vision for reconstruction, beyond the laundry list of needs she ticks off in news releases.

"She's got problems facing her," said Bernie Pinsonat, a pollster. "I don't know if any governor could survive this."

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Still, Ms. Blanco has come under fire for not throwing her weight behind legislation proposed by State Senator Walter J. Boasso, a Republican from Arabi, that would consolidate levee boards in the New Orleans area. The boards, which oversee levee maintenance, are considered corrupt and inefficient, and many experts believe they must be revamped or combined before the levee system can be improved.

Angered by inaction on Senator Boasso's bill, a grass-roots organization in New Orleans gathered 45,000 signatures demanding a special session to enact levee consolidation. And the New Orleans Business Council took out full-page newspaper advertisements advocating the bill's passage.

Many political analysts viewed Ms. Blanco's failure to support Senator Boasso's bill as evidence of her plodding, cautious approach to government.

"There really is this growing sense that there is this absolutely terrible lack of leadership in the state that is hurting us at every turn," said Elliott B. Stonecipher, a nonpartisan pollster from Shreveport.

Ms. Blanco defended her legislation, which authorized the Office of Coastal Restoration and Management to withhold money from poorly performing levee boards, as superior to Mr. Boasso's. But she said she was leaning toward calling a special session in late January to enact levee consolidation.

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There is more. Here is a hint for the NY Times, I know they are Republicans, but all the Times needs to do to see two governors who handled the situations cased by Katrina and Rita well is look at Haley Barbor in Mississippi and Rick Perry in Texas. Both responded with leadership and responsibility. Both those qualities were lacking in Louisiana. Neither of those guys blamed the President for the problems in their states, they just rolled up their sleeves and went to work.