Mary and the Landrieus - Politico

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And then there was Mitch.

Mary Landrieu’s defeat as the Deep South’s last Senate Democrat hit party loyalists here hard. Many blamed the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee for depriving her of a shot at a comeback surge by pulling the plug on her media buys in the runoff. GOP Congressman Bill Cassidy ducked the press, amid late-breaking reports that he earned $250,000 in five years from the LSU medical system while in Congress. Cassidy submitted to only one debate, and hit only one issue: “If you like Obama, vote for Landrieu.”
As Landrieu’s loss loomed before the election, another message emerged from party strategists and media commentators: If the moribund Louisiana Democratic Party has any chance at revival, it lies with her brother, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, who previously won two statewide races as lieutenant governor and has been a catalyst in revitalizing the flood-battered city.

“The stupidity of throwing Mary under the bus is sending a message about the Democratic Party—we’re defeated,” stewed Raymond Strother, a retired political consultant who previously worked in one of her campaigns.
Many African-Americans saw Cassidy’s TV ads as a primer in race-baiting. The spots evoked the primal myth of the Old South in which white womanhood must be defended. In ads that ran around the clock, viewers saw Landrieu’s face pictured cheek-to-jowl with the black president like uneasy lovers in a Valentine.

“They’re pandering to the lowest common denominator,” bristled Stanley Taylor, a retired African-American member of the National Association of Letter Carriers, speaking by cell phone as he canvassed voters before the election. “Those spots are racist and totally dismissive of people’s ability to figure out their own self-interest.”

The blowback of racial politics marks the end of an era that began in 1970 when the senator’s father, Moon Landrieu, as the newly-elected mayor of New Orleans ushered African-Americans into local government, while guiding an era of dramatic urban growth. New Orleans had a white voting majority at the time; today it is about 60% African-American.
“Rather than suggest some policy objectives, it’s been easier for the Cassidy campaign to enflame racial fear to motivate Republican voters,” brooded community organizer Jacques Morial, whose father Dutch was the first African-American mayor of New Orleans, succeeding Moon in 1978. His brother Marc later served two terms as mayor and is today president of the Urban League.

Landrieu’s loss showed yet again that the great power in American politics is to make people believe that something false is true. Cassidy’s campaign recast the three-term senator as a projection of the black president largely reviled by the majority of white voters here, as in the rest of the South.

As Republicans swept the Senate in November, Landrieu drew 42%, against Cassidy and a second GOP opponent, heading into the open primary with a 16,000-vote lead. An uphill slog to be sure; but she lost any chance when the national party pulled money for media buys to counter the fusillade of Cassidy’s attack ads that came down to four words: Mary Landrieu, Barack Obama. Despite Senator Landrieu’s outward optimism in recent days, Saturday’s election seemed a foregone conclusion after the primary election a month ago.

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The racial politics that ended Landrieu’s senatorial career augurs the sunset of an era of a state congressional delegation delivering major capital projects from big bad Washington. Given the Tea Party impact on Republican politics, it taxes credulity to imagine Cassidy delivering capital projects as Landrieu and the old line of Democrats did. He opposed most of what she supported.

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