LA Times: Political Landscape May Shift on Displaced Voters (Katrina)

[AtLiberty]

Political Landscape May Shift on Displaced Voters

The party makeup of districts in Louisiana may hinge on which evacuees return or are able to cast absentee ballots, experts say

By Johanna Neuman and Richard B. Schmitt
LA Times
9/11/05

WASHINGTON — Government officials and legal experts have begun wrestling with an intriguing question posed by the evacuation of New Orleans: What happens to the politics of a region when a significant part of the electorate suddenly disappears?

The migration of hundreds of thousands of people from this urban center, many of them low-income and black, could have a dramatic effect on the political makeup of a state delicately balanced between the two major parties. If most of the evacuees choose not to return, Katrina's political legacy could be that it made Louisiana a more Republican state.

How Katrina may have rewritten the political map of New Orleans and of Louisiana is just one of many questions the Gulf states are pondering in the aftermath of a natural disaster of such scope that it may have permanently altered the region's demographics and economy.

Civil rights groups are focused on keeping track of Louisiana's displaced black voters and on ensuring that they can continue to vote in the districts they left behind until they make a decision to permanently resettle elsewhere...

For full story, click:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/la-na-voting11sep11,1,6421727.story?coll=la-news-politics-national&ctrack=1&cset=true

[electropop]

1. Mission accomplished!

But a bit too late. While they hollowed out the Democratic base in LA, they also drove the rest of its citizens to hate the GOP. The whole map is flipping blue now, thanks to this most recent debacle.

[zann725]

2. I was intrigued WHY New Orleans' mayor relocated his family to Dallas?!

Of all the places he could relocate to, seems a litte odd to me.

[Merlot]

3. He's a republican who switched parties to win. He's safe in TX.

[Coastie for Truth]

4. More interesting question - how will they impact their new homes

Rumor on the street among political junkies and policy wonks in the San Francisco Bay Area-- the airlift to Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose was suddenly stopped by Gubernator Boobengrooper's office because it looked like "political activists" had taken over the San Francisco Bay Area relocation effort.

Congresswoman Barbara Lee seemed to be the most visible local leader in the relocation effort, followed closely by Glide Methodist Church's Rev. Cecil Williams.

Interesting point - the three Mayors (Newsome, Brown, Gonzales) were willing to go through with the relocation - even with out money from Gubernator Boobengrooper's office - but the plug was pulled by FEMA at the Houston end. (Source - Bernie Ward and Ray Taliafero on KGO 810).

These people are victims of a Bush Cheney Rove engineered Nakba.

[GuvWurld]

5. This is likely a red herring, like debates and campaigns

I may be mistaken since I don't have a link handy, but haven't there been estimates that it will be years before NO is habitable again? If so, any forecast of the "political landscape" seems like a red herring to me. I mean, we may be able to see some writing on the wall in terms of how re-development proceeds, but this will be happening against an overall backdrop of national uncertainty as the revolution proceeds. All bets are off for the future of political parties in America. And to say that the apparent developments of redevelopment in NO give us a clear picture of the eventual outcome is as ludicrous as thinking that campaigns and debates are what determines the outcome of elections.