The Rise of the Independent

March 5, 2015 0 Comments

The common wisdom among the “political class” is that Louisiana is a solidly Red State that can be expected to stay in the Republican colum for a long time to come.

After all, every statewide elected official is a Republican, and so are all but one member of the Louisiana Congressional delegation.

A majority of the Louisiana Supreme is now Repulbican, as is a majority the Public Service Commission and a majority of the Louisiana House and Senate — all for the first time since Reconstruction after the Civil War.

Since the 1960’s, the path to victory in Louisiana’s statewide elections for liberal Democrats was simple:

• Unite black voters behind your candidacy, and

• Pick up at least a third of white voters.

Today, there are 2.8 million voters in Louisiana, including 900,000 who are black. It follows that a Democratic candidate who unites black voters can still win statewide elections in Louisiana with as little as 30 percent of other voters.

So the question is, why aren’t Democrats winning statewide today in Louisiana?

Mary Landrieu’s losing 2014 Senate campaign is probably giving Democrats heartburn right now. In their minds, they see an 18-year “moderate to conservative” Democratic woman with unlimited funds going down to ignominius defeat by an overwhelming margin of 56 percent to 44 percent.

What they should be seeing is that they had a terrible candidate with a terrible record in a terrible Democratic year, and they still got 44 percent of the vote!

How often did Mary Landrieu vote with Barack Obama? That’s right! 97 percent of the time!

She wasn’t a “moderate” or a “conservative.” Rather, she was a far-left Democrat who voted for almost everything bad, except energy issues.

I would make this wager: If Mary Landrieu had actually been a moderate to conservative Democrat and voted with Obama perhaps only 80 percent of the time, she’d be in the Senate right now.

If she’d been pro-life, pro-gun, pro-marriage and pro-balanced budget, she would have been almost impossible to beat.

So back to the question: Why aren’t Democrats winning statewide today in Louisiana?

Basically, it goes back to lack of talent.

Democratic candidates are still getting the vast majority of black voters, but they are failing to get 30 percent of the white voters in the state. In many all-white voting precincts, Landrieu got less that 20 percent of the vote. In those same precincts in 2012, Obama received only 12 percent of the white vote.

The common wisdom among the “political class” is that Louisiana is a solidly Red State that can be expected to stay in the Republican colum for a long time to come.

After all, every statewide elected official is a Republican, and so are all but one member of the Louisiana Congressional delegation.

Since the 1960’s, the path to victory in Louisiana’s statewide elections for liberal Democrats was simple:

• Unite black voters behind your candidacy, and

• Pick up at least a third of white voters.

So the question is, why aren’t Democrats winning statewide today in Louisiana?

What they should be seeing is that they had a terrible candidate with a terrible record in a terrible Democratic year, and they still got 44 percent of the vote!

How often did Mary Landrieu vote with Barack Obama? That’s right! 97 percent of the time!

She wasn’t a “moderate” or a “conservative.” Rather, she was a far-left Democrat who voted for almost everything bad, except energy issues.

I would make this wager: If Mary Landrieu had actually been a moderate to conservative Democrat and voted with Obama perhaps only 80 percent of the time, she’d be in the Senate right now.

If she’d been pro-life, pro-gun, pro-marriage and pro-balanced budget, she would have been almost impossible to beat.

So back to the question: Why aren’t Democrats winning statewide today in Louisiana?

Basically, it goes back to lack of talent.

Today, most ambitious whites who want to get into politics register as Republicans. Most ambitious blacks who want to get into politics register as Democrats.

Black Democrats seldom run for statewide office in Louisiana, and almost no serious candidates have emerged.

Today white Democrats also seldom run for statewide office. But why?

Again, the answer is lack of talent. In other words, Democrats just don’t have a large pool of talented, amibitious white candidates to choose from.

Basically, the flawed ideology of the radical left, which has taken over the Democratic Party, has driven away the attractive young moderate to conservative leaders who could bring their party to victory.

Can Democrats be elected statewide in Louisiana today? Of course they can! The numbers still work for them. If they can find and fund the right candidate, he can win, and he can do it with the same formula as before: Unite black voters and win one-third of white voters.

But… the formula is changing! While Democrats can still win in Louisiana statewide, that may be changing permanently, because of The Rise of Independents.

It has happened without fanfare or public attention. It has happened without millions of dollars being spent on political consultants, petition drives, or lobbyists.

The electorate in Louisiana has been changing, and the change is vast and dramatic.

It is not a demographic change. Black voters are a somewhat larger percentage of the voting population, but their low turnout numbers erase their registration increases.

The change is this: Hundreds of thousands of people are leaving the two major parties and registrating as “No Party” or Independents. A few are registering with third parties.

The numbers are massive. Today, 734,734 Louisianians have registered as “No Party” or with other parties. That compares to the Republican Party, which supposedly “controls” the state. There are only 805,533 registered Republicans in the state, which includes 753,157 white Republicans.

It is clear that Independent or “No Party” voters in the state have the ability to swing most any election.

Two Numbers That Should

Terrify the Two Major Parties

Of all the numbers in the Louisiana Secretary of State database, there is one number that should terrify the Republicans and another number that should terrify the Democrats.

For Republicans, the number is 21,851.

That is the number of black Republicans in Louisiana!

For all the minority outreach that the Republicans have done, 21,851 is the tiny number of black voters they have attracted.

There are 901,621 black voters in Louisiana. Yet, only 2.4 percent have registered as Republicans. For the Republican Party, something isn’t working!

Are Republicans such poor salesmen that they can’t market their ideas to blacks?

How many blacks are Christians?

How many are veterans?

How many own businesses?

How many own guns?

How many are policemen and firemen?

From among these potential allies, the Republicans can only find 21,851 willing to join in?

That’s amazing!

On the other hand, the Democrats have an even more embarrassing number to worry about.

It’s a number that is so devastating that they may lose their ability to elect anyone statewide in the foreseeable future and they may become a permanent minority.

That number is 170,717.

That is the number of black voters who have turned their backs on the Democratic Party and registered as Independents or other parties!

They couldn’t go so far as to register Republican. Perhaps they don’t feel welcome.

But they definitely asserted their “independence” in more ways than one: 170,717 of them said “no” to the Democratic Party. Without them, one thing is certain: Democrats cannot win statewide.

So the Democrats have two big problems in Louisiana: The lack of talented candidates to run for statewide office and a rebellion within their ranks — the mass defection of 170,717 voters who said to the Democrats: “Count me out!”

Woody Jenkins is editor of the Central City News and Capital City News. He also serves as Republican Party chairman for East Baton Rouge Parish.