Dem disarray in Louisiana

AP via The Guardian:

Even before Hurricane Katrina, the Louisiana Democratic Party was struggling in a conservative state skewing more Republican in its voting tendencies.

Voters overwhelmingly backed President Bush for re-election in 2004 and selected their first Republican U.S. senator since Reconstruction.

Katrina dwarfed those concerns with even bigger problems: nonstop criticism of Democratic Gov. Kathleen Blanco and the scattering of thousands of residents from New Orleans, normally a Democratic stronghold, amid questions about how many will return.

As the Democratic State Central Committee gathered Saturday to choose its third state party chairman in less than three years, many Democrats said they wanted to refocus the party in the increasingly Republican South.

``I think the most polite term that you can use is disarray,'' said Elliott Stonecipher, a Louisiana pollster and political analyst. ``The party apparatus seems to have taken a knockdown, if not a knockout punch.''

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On paper, the party is still dominant, with about 1.6 million Democratic voters in Louisiana to 694,000 Republicans, according to January voter registration numbers from the secretary of state's office. About 600,000 are registered with other party affiliations.

However, Democratic voter rolls are shrinking while the number of registered Republications has grown in recent years.

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Katrina muddied the political scene by dispersing voters to other states, making accurate polls and easy campaigns nearly impossible.

Stonecipher said the Democratic Party needs New Orleans' black voters, who usually vote heavily Democratic, to return in large numbers.

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The story leaves out recent polling indicating that 80 percent of New Orleans' blacks say they will not return. That is much more than the margin of victory by Democrats in statewide elections in recent years.