William Jefferson's corruption might not be the most important issue to folks recovering from "the storm" and "the flood" in post-k New Orleans, but it is an issue.  What's more, it's an issue that moves numbers.  "Honorable explanations" forthcoming or not, there is really just no way to spin accepting a $100,000 bribe on videotape and later finding $90,000 of it in a freezer.  They say humor is a powerful weapon in political campaigns, and the jokes write themselves when politics comes up as a topic among family, friends and neighbors down here.  Indeed, it is almost universally the first piece that comes up when I talk with random individuals throughout the city.

This is an area with a tremendous sense of pride, both before and after the storm -- particularly after since the "looting" and "lawlessness" television coverage, and the fact they have been forced to fend for themselves since August 29, 2005.  You see it in the local blogs, you see it in the new class of NOLA-PD trainees (first since K) that cite "helping rebuild a broken city" as a reason for enlisting, and you can just see it on the street.  Guilty or not, the "cash in the freezer congressman" is a local embarrassment, a natural enemy of those working tirelessly to rebuild both the city and its image.

To that end, Karen Carter is running a brand new ad on the issue.  Judge for yourself...

There's more...

Tray.com beat me to the punch, but Karen Carter and William Jefferson both filed their latest campaign finance reports today.  This is the last full report before the run-off on December 9.

First things first, Karen Carter out-raised Congressman Jefferson by nearly a five to one margin in the month between 10/19 and 11/19.  Carter netted $320,741, while Jefferson brought in a meager $72,485.  That said, the report shows Jefferson with a healthy cash on hand advantage: $117k to $58k.  All signs point to Carter narrowing that margin significantly -- the first signal being that Carter has reported $17,500 in mandated 48-hour reports.  Those are disclosures candidates must file for every contribution over $1,000 in the two weeks before an election.  Finally, the netroots have almost hit the $30,000 mark for Carter's campaign, most of that coming after the closing date for reporting funds raised.  Obviously money is still coming and going into and out of campaigns, but all things equal, this would decrease the CoH margin from to around $59k to $12k.

Basically, it's going to be netroots contributions that close the gap between Carter and Jefferson in the final days before the election.

As a side note, small dollar contributions have totally changed the way campaigns are able to (or unable to) track the amount of cash an opponent has right before an election.  The 48-hour reports used to allow campaigns to monitor cash coming in for their opponents, giving them a rough estimate of what they are going up against down-the-stretch.  Since you don't have to report small dollar contributions on a 48-hour report, it can create a situation where the opposition is totally caught off-guard.

With Paul Hackett, for example, Jean Schmidt's campaign manager had absolutely NO IDEA how Paul was able to dominate the airwaves in the final week and a half of the campaign.  None.  Their campaign manager even said it to Paul's Finance Director after the final OH-2 debate.  That was us.  Online.  And they had no idea what hit them.  Of course, they were too stupid to check ActBlue and watch the numbers skyrocket.  But in the case of candidates like Ned Lamont, where we raised a lot of money online, most came in through our own website and there was no public tracking for that.  Now we spent ungodly amounts of money in that race, so a mere million or two here wasn't going to change much, but imagine how an extra few hundred thousand dollars could blind-side a candidate in the final days of a campaign.  Just small piece of the puzzle in regards to why a broad small-dollar donor base is so important.

There's more...

When Rick Santorum challenged Bob Casey to a series of debates before the primary season had even concluded, many folks believed it signaled a campaign already in trouble.  Multi-term incumbents generally aren't the ones insisting on the toe-to-toe, it's almost universally the attention starved challenger looking for additional free media exposure.  Santorum's team was right, and the ship went down with Little Ricky calling for more debates right up until the final hour.

With 12 days to go, William Jefferson's back is against the wall.

Early Thursday night, the Jefferson campaign sent out a email claiming Karen Carter is "ducking debates" (hard to say Turkeying the issues).  The Jefferson email said, "State Rep. Karen Carter is ducking televised debates on WDSU and WGNO to avoid discussion about her lack of leadership in holding insurance companies accountable for robbing our citizens of their claims.

It's quite ironic that the man refusing to answer questions about accepting a $100,000 bribe while being videotaped by the FBI is calling for more debates, but it is what it is.  The pair are scheduled to participate in one televised exchange two nights before the election.

The numbers I've seen/heard on this race seem to suggest that Jefferson is indeed running a bit scared.  It has me wondering if Jefferson has any plans to start pulling chips off the table to save up for his legal defense fund.  In fact, that was the first thing I thought when I read the article linked above.  It just might be time to do what he can do on free media and a limited television advertising budget -- another reason for the debate call.  Most institutional Democrats have rallied behind Carter, overtly or quietly, and I can't imagine the incumbent has a robust funding stream or throng of loyalists ready to fund his legal defense if he's denied re-election.

There's more...

Sometimes the difference between two candidates in an election can be totally encapsulated in one single day.  For Paul Hackett and Jean Schmidt, it was 10/25/04.  That was the day U.S. Marine Corps Major Paul Hackett touched down in Ramadi, Iraq -- the same day Jean Schmidt failed to report an evening of fine dining and box seats at Cincinnati Bengals game, paid for a biotech lobbying group.

For Karen Carter and William Jefferson, that day was September 2, 2005 ... a mere days after "the storm" and "the flood." You remember it.  

That was the day a President Bush declared, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." That was the day explosions at a chemical facility rocked New Orleans.  That was the day "10,000 people stood in 100-plus degree heat outside the Superdome, wading through knee-deep trash to board busses."(link) Coast Guard helicopters and military Humvees "raced to save thousands of victims" that day, rescuing Americans trapped on rooftops, in attics, or attempting to traverse impassable land and water on their way to food, drink, and general safety.

With all this going on, Congressman Jefferson was "curious." Curious to know if HIS house was looted.  So he boarded one of those Humvees and took a ride to find out ....

There's more...

One of the dynamics I've had a tough time understanding since arriving in New Orleans is how Karen Carter has been defined as "the white candidate," when both are in fact African American.  In the primary, Jefferson was selected by a thin plurality of voters in precincts were 50 to 75 percent of voters are black (Carter came in 2nd).  In precincts with 75% plus African American registered voters, Jefferson just barely missed a majority at 49.5% of the vote (Carter 3rd).  Again, that's with 13 candidates.  Carter, by contrast, cleaned up in precincts where less than 25% of the registered voters were black -- her only real competition coming from the Republican, who she narrowly outpaced.   William Jefferson received 5.7% of the total vote in those precincts.    

But back to this business about the "white candidate," its origins in the current political landscape, and why it's important.  First of all, there's always Katrina.

Prior to the Gulf's intrusion, though, New Orleans was more than two-thirds black and 462,000 residents strong, with more than half registered to vote. It's still difficult to say with any certainty how many people have come back for good, but Democrats are all too aware that the area around New Orleans's Ninth Ward remains empty.

There are good people like Dr. Ernest Johnson over at the NAACP working tirelessly to make sure folks who haven't returned are able to vote as easily as possible.  But displaced New Orleanian voters (or lack of) were quite possibly a determining factor in the recent Mayor's race, and remain a wildcard in this election and the 2007 cycle.

(More on the political football that is the displaced voter soon)  

Even with the $90,000 in a freezer, Jefferson probably walks to re-election if Katrina had never happened -- but Katrina is everything here.  First, his lost committee seat is so important is because it impacts his ability to deliver for a district in desperate need of delivery.  Second, black voters vote for Jefferson (as the numbers above show), shake-down allegations be damned.  But current demographic mathematics are not favorable to him.  A lot of his voters are just gone, and despite the best efforts of people like Dr. Johnson it's not easy to get people voting in a local election when they are scattered across the country.  

I suspect Jeffery at Library Chronicles is on point with his analysis of how the racial divide/"white candidate" meme has been perpetuated.

New Orleanians, particularly in the black community, have (with good reason) come to view much of what has developed post-Katrina as part of a conspiracy to radically alter the demographics, and character of the city disenfranchising and dispossesing the poorest among us in order to create a smaller, quieter, whiter New Orleans. [...]

On the one hand, by playing the federal investigations of his activities as a federal witch hunt tied to the anti-New Orleans conspiracy, he establishes himself as the "black" candidate. (Both candidates are, in fact African-American.. thus the quotes.) Jefferson has made other inroads in this direction by pandering to local ministers through some uncharacteristic complaints about his opponent's pro-abortion and gay rights stances. Social issues like these have never been part of Jefferson's platform and don't usually figure at all in New Orleans politics.. but it will help get Dollar Bill access to a solid GOTV mechanism in the ministers.

As close to the ground level as possible, Jefferson's campaign asserts that pending federal charges are indeed a racially motivated witch-hunt.  Albeit unscientific, but literally to a man, every African-American claiming to pay close attention to the race has echoed those sentiments.  Other numbers I've seen point to similar findings.  For a number of reasons that extend beyond the conspiracy charge, the $90,000 just isn't part of the calculus among African-Americans who overwhelmingly support Jefferson.  A lot of black voters see Jefferson as their Congressman, someone that has delivered in the past, and the 90k just isn't important in the grand scheme of things.  The latter is most certainly true, until you start talking about committees...  

Meanwhile, white folks in the 2nd generally believe Jefferson is totally corrupt, unable to deliver for the city, and part of them problem in Washington, D.C.

The racial divide and conquer has a well-established template in the recently concluded Mayor's race between Ray Nagin and Mitch Landrieu.  Who will forget Nagin's comment on the Martin Luther King holiday, "This city will be a majority African-American city. It's the way God wants it to be. You can't have New Orleans no other way. It wouldn't be New Orleans." Nagin won his first election with "near universal support from white voters," but managed to score 80% of the black vote in his re-election campaign.  And those white voters who ushered him to victory four years ago?  They totally flipped and went 80% for his opponent this time around.  In this race, Jefferson is attempting to build a similar voting coalition to Nagin's, while the folks who funded the Mayor's re-election campaign are backing Karen Carter, and the Mayor is endorsing William Jefferson.  Figure that out ...

There's more...