Just a guess from afar but it looked like Jefferson played the race card effectively as a black guy getting prosecuted for getting caught doing what all the white guys were doing.

Marion Berry in DC was similar situation.

Find a qualified candidate to run against him with local,deep roots and raise funds.  He's got to come up in either the state or presidential election years '07 and '08.

After Katrina we got no visible help from outside.  A year later we're still getting no visible help from outside.  We've been stalled on getting aid, stalled on getting FEMA trailers (thousands of which are still sinking into the mud in Arkansas), stalled getting the flood elevations set, stalled on insurance.  The popular consensus is that the only real progress is locally driven.

Louisiana also has a long history of visibly corrupt but also effective leaders, from Huey Long to Edwin Edwards.  We also have a long history of using the vote to say "fuck you" to the rest of the country; after all over 30% of us voted for David Duke for governor.  So in the end it doesn't surprise me that District 2 was willing to overlook Jefferson's little freezer problem; the real problem, in an area that is living on the domestic security level of Maslow's Heirarchy, is the incident on the bridge.  When Karen Carter appeared in Spike Lee's film, those same voters who thought it was a hoot to pull the lever for Duke saw her as wanting to open the gates for the horde of torch-bearing N-----s to loot their neighborhood.  Mother Theresa couldn't have won against that.

   I can't believe that ministers, the moral leaders of the community, would endorse a politician utterly simmering in corruption and graft like William Jefferson. Theft and dishonesty are sins, after all. I would have thought that unlike the James Dobsons and Ted Haggards of the world, the African-American ministers in Louisiana were genuinely motivated by religious values, not political agendas.

  When sometimes progressives are criticized for "mocking religion", it's for incidents and attitudes like these. How can you take a religious leader seriously when he overtly endorses pondscum?

Black churches in the South aren't just churches any more than white suburban megachurches are just churches.  In the years of Jim Crow churches were the only black communities that were reliably allowed to exist, and to this day they perform a lot of functions that are performed by other, more visibly disparate organizations in the white community -- including GOTV.

Note: Delay would have won if he had not been indicted.  

Good note, markc. We are a ship of fools down here but we don't have the monopoly on it.

I think the JP folks figured it was no risk - $ Bill will get indicted and they will get a do-over in the special election.

Of course, these are the same brain surgeons who turned down Truman's oil/gas lease offer and spent the next 50 years trying to get it back.

The final margin for Jefferson in Jefferson Parish was 71% to 39% - a margin that can be attributed to Sheriff Lee's furious political assault in the closing days of the campaign.

I would have so much more confidence in the accuracy of this article if those numbers didn't add to 110%.

New Orleans has always had a leadership deficit, even when white people controlled Orlans Parish. I'm white, and I've lived there two seperate times.

Part of the problem is racism and poverty, and part of it is an acceptance of corruption in order to survive and "get along." I'm not a Nagin supporter, but he stopped the process of procuring a business license where you had to always list a "silent partner' on your application, who then received either part of the "proft" or a "fee." This was standard practice for 50 years!

Where most cities would offer incentives for industry to locate there, New Orleans officials would demand a payoff before allowing them to come in. No Fortune 500 companies remain in Orleans Parish (maybe Shell still has something there.)

Read a description of the school system below, reaction to a book by Jonathan Kozol on segregated schools:

The Orleans Parish School system is an example. It has applied his theries for 30 years. The board is predominately black. With the exception of one Hispanic, all the superintendents have been black. Almost 100% of the teachers, administrators, and students are black. The test scores are the lowest in Louisiana. Armed guards at every school and sometimes in every classroom cannot stop the crimes, including murders and rape. At Fortier High School, the valedictorian failed the exit exam four times. The black power structure has looted more than $100 million from the system. These are the victims of Kozol's educational theories. You may have seen some of them at the Superdome and Convention Center after Hurricane Katrina. They were totally dependent on the government.

I know I am talking out of my hat here, but it seems to me that the people of that district, at least the ones who care about who their congressperson is, identify Jefferson as their guy.  They are not endorsing corruption, as such, and they are not taking a stand on any particular issue.  The only issue is that they are going to fight to preserve what they view as their own.

Remember the voters of Youngstown, Ohio, who continued to support Jim Traficant long after it was clear that he was not only corrupt, but crazy?  Traficant was their guy and no "outsider" was going to take their guy away from them.

Jefferson's supporters, like Traficant's, know their guy is a wrong guy. They have to know it at some level of understanding.  But they are rationalizing that fact away.

Sounds implausible?  Seems ridiculous?  Consider the 25-30% of Americans who still think George W. Bush is a bold and courageous leader, a good, Christian man, the best president ever.  He's their guy.

And yet at the same time, the political establishment in New Orleans, and the voters, have spoken quite clearly.  And what they said is that corruption is perfectly reasonable, and that they no longer expect or want help from the Federal government.

I'm sorry, but really... hissy fit, much?

I wouldn't say the voters said any such thing, and it really would do a great service to your readers if you guys brought on maybe some local bloggers  - or asked them to do a retrospective to be posted here - to discuss what the issues actually were on the ground (as opposed to the DC/national political bloggers issues), as  well as why, while Jefferson is and was disliked by many, Carter was disliked equally if not more and some of the other little ins and outs of local politics, as this was a local election.

To not only speak for, but in the process completely demean these people who have already gone through more than most of us do in a lifetime, without even a hint that some of the underlying issues are even known, much less understood, (as parts of this post does - as well as some of the comments) just really is uncool. In my opinion.

You guys are all right.  We're just a bunch of ign'rnt fuckmooks.  Because Jefferson Parish picked the wrong guy, you shouldn't rebuild New Orleans.

Rot in hell.

     As far as the LA02 election is concerned, why the hell are you so condescending, uh Matt Stoller? Would you say that the American people asked for the Iraq War, being raped financially, unable to send their kids to college or get health care, uh? Thats the logic here. If you really are a liberal, stop with the rightious indignation. What happened was the result of local circumstances that really weren't there to be stopped. Even the idea that outsiders could do something about it demonstrates a notion of colonial superiority. Let bygones be bygones and try better next time, but don't say that oh, the African Americans are corrupt and the White nonhispanic suburbanites are sqeaky clean.

"The people in that city desperately needed leadership, but they voted out of spite, mistrust, and bitterness ... And what they said is that corruption is perfectly reasonable, and that they no longer expect or want help from the Federal government."

This is the equivalent of suggesting that because Bush won two presidential elections, all of America said that a movement towards a police state and hypocrisy is perfectly reasonable.  It reminds me of people outside America who scoff at ALL of us because we have an idiot for a president, for whom almost 50% of us did not vote.

You should get a Pulitzer for journalism in which you write off a whole group of people because a majority (and not an overwhelming one at that) voted for a corrupt man.  

Do you know that some here put Jefferson back in office so that the feds can keep an eye on him, and that his indictment will be on the congressional front burner?

Stick to what you know.

- Maitri (a New Orleans blogger)