Word: landrieu
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Peace in the Middle East and Bosnia may be elusive, but the Clinton Administration has brokered a sensitive cease-fire in Louisiana. Vice President Al Gore flew to Baton Rouge last Friday to preside over the reconciliation of two Democrats: Senate candidate Mary Landrieu and Congressman Cleo Fields, the state's leading black politician. The Gore intervention might seem like an awful lot of White House muscle to settle a neighborhood brawl. But the stakes are high in Louisiana's closely contested Senate race, which pits Landrieu against conservative Republican Louis ("Woody") Jenkins. When Fields finally endorsed Landrieu last week...
Equally important, the race tests the party's ability to bridge its racial divisions in the South. Louisiana Democrats, like others in the region, have split into two camps: Landrieu's largely white moderate wing and Fields' predominantly black liberals. Landrieu, a former state treasurer and political moderate--pro-choice but, like Bob Dole, in favor of a capital-gains tax cut--ran afoul of her party's liberals last year when she and Fields were locked in a bitter gubernatorial primary. Fields backers say it was racially insensitive of her to run ads saying she was more electable than...