Heroine of the Week
Incumbent Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu, center, successfully beat back a political assault by the Bush regime to win re-election in a runoff on Dec. 7. Her victory indicates that the news of the death of the Democratic Party might be premature. (Associated Press photo)
Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu is the Heroine of the Week for winning re-election despite the fact that her Republican challenger, Suzanne Haik Terrell, was hand-picked by "President" Bush, who, among other prominent Republicans, visited Louisiana to stump for his candidate.
The New York Times reported that although the Democrats have had a 130-year monopoly on Louisiana's two Senate seats, "many analysts had believed that Ms. Terrell, whose campaign was engineered and fueled by the White House, had the momentum going into [the Dec. 7] runoff election, which was needed because of Ms. Landrieu's failure to win 50 percent of the vote in November."
Landrieu won 637,375 votes, or 52 percent, to Terrell's 595,520 votes, or 48 percent.
"Aided by warm, clear weather, the Landrieu campaign succeeded in pulling out enough African-American voters to counter Ms. Terrell's overwhelming support among white voters, a strong commitment from the national Republican Party and a last-minute attempt to discourage blacks from going to the polls," the Times reported.
"The president put his personal prestige on the line [in Louisiana], unleashing the full strength of the party's apparatus to help Ms. Terrell raise money, organize, make commercials and get out the vote," reported the Times. "In addition, he flew [to Louisiana] Tuesday on Air Force One to campaign with her, raising $1.2 million and producing a powerful commercial that saturated the airwaves."
Landrieu's re-election puts the composition of the Senate at 51 Republicans, 48 Democrats and one independent. The Republicans' razor-thin majority of 51 senators is "still enough for them to control the committees but not enough to immunize them against renegade Republicans who might defect," the Times noted, adding that the independent senator, James Jeffords of Vermont -- a former Republican who defected early in Bush's presidency -- usually votes with the Democrats.
"The White House invested significantly in Ms. Terrell and tried to make voters see it as a national election. It deployed the most famous names in Republican politics — President Bush and his father and mother, Vice President Dick Cheney, Rudolph W. Giuliani and Bob Dole among them," the Times also noted.
The Associated Press reported quoted Democratic campaign strategist Donna Brazile, who was Al Gore's 2000 campaign manager and who worked on Landrieu's re-election campaign, as saying that the key to Landrieu's win was voter turnout in Democratic stronghold New Orleans, which Landrieu's campaign workers worked to ensure.
"Republicans launched a '72-hour' plan, with Bush, Giuliani and other heavyweights leaving recorded phone messages that urged likely Republican voters to get to the polls," the AP reported. "But the Democrats were more successful, particularly among blacks. Landrieu took the urban areas with heavy black voter concentrations and Terrell won most of the suburbs."
The AP noted that "Terrell's loss was a turnaround for Bush, whose campaign appearances in the midterm elections were credited with nationwide Republican victories that gave the GOP control of the Senate."
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