Katrina Texans favor Obama

Washington Post:

In a cramped guard booth on the edge of a community of luxury townhouses, the sense of helplessness that has become so familiar to Gregory Sam since Hurricane Katrina uprooted him from his home town of New Orleans can become all-consuming.

"I'm struggling," said Sam, 29, a college graduate who took an $8-an-hour post as a security guard after more than 20 job interviews led to nothing. "I feel like I'm isolated in the country somewhere . . . in a time warp."

For the nearly quarter-million people such as Sam who were evacuated to Texas after the hurricane and its floodwaters left New Orleans devastated in 2005, powerlessness has been a constant theme, exacerbated by their reliance on goodwill and the government for help in starting over again. Angry at the Bush administration for failing them both before and after Katrina, many view the March 4 Democratic presidential primary as a chance to exert some control over their futures.

"The big thing is rebuilding," said Martin Jones, an evangelical pastor who lost his home and church on the edge of the French Quarter and has settled in Houston. His former parishioners, Jones said, "are looking for a solution, for restoration. People are looking for some semblance of life again. How are [these candidates] going to benefit the folk who lived there?"

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It is easy to understand why these people are struggling. They are still doing the things that made them poor to begin with like supporting Democrats. They were voting for Democrats in New Orleans even though they never were able to pull that city out of the mire of poverty and corruption. One of the reasons they were able to find shelter in Houston is because Texas has a Republican governor and Harris County is run by Republicans. While Houston has a Democrat mayor, he runs the city like a Republican. A vote for Obama is a vote for continued dependency by a group that needs to take responsibility for their circumstances and quit waiting for someone else to bail them out.