Word: louisiana
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BOWING OUT Louisiana's first female Governor, once popular Southern Democrat Kathleen Blanco saw her star fall in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when she was roundly lambasted for a plodding, tuned-out response to evacuating and assisting victims and for fumbling poststorm recovery efforts. Blanco announced that "after much thought and prayer," she had decided not to seek re-election...
Without figuring out acceptable ways to leverage similar energies in New Orleans, there is no practical hope for resurrecting the city. The U.S. Congress has passed bits of bipartisan legislation, making it easier for faith-based groups to receive public funds and technical assistance. And the Louisiana Recovery Authority stresses the need to involve and support religious leaders and their organizations. But the city's faith-based organizations are now sagging. Unless Kramer's church gets $125,000 soon, its beg-and-borrow construction projects will grind to a halt. Scruggs too says that keeping the grass-roots rebuilding efforts...
After weeks of insisting that she planned to run, Louisiana's Democratic governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco announced that she would not seek reelection this fall. For Democrats, who hoped to hang onto the seat in an increasingly Red State, Blanco's announcement blew the race wide open. If the news was disheartening for her supporters and her party, it was perhaps more dismaying to her political enemies, who were clearly relishing the prospect of an all-out rout as the G.O.P. planned a run against her Katrina record...
...Soft-spoken and matronly, Blanco retained the mannerisms of the Cajun Country high school teacher she once was even as she rose through the ranks of Louisiana politics to become, in 2003, the state's first female governor. And those qualities served her well until Hurricane Katrina hit. In the storm's chaotic aftermath, when Louisianans craved strong leadership, she came across as weak and indecisive. Blanco's performance earned her the dubious title of one of TIME magazine's "worst governors"; as her approval ratings plummeted, so did the Democratic governor's prospects for a second term...
...Democrats, it is a veritable free-for-all. Louisiana public service commissioner Foster Campbell, a North Louisiana populist in the Huey Long tradition, is in the running. But many are pinning their hopes on former U.S. Senator John Breaux, who left office in 2005 to join a powerful Washington, D.C., lobbying firm. Breaux remains a popular, widely known figure, but there's one problem: having changed his permanent address to Maryland, he may be ineligible to run for state office under residency requirements set forth in Louisiana's constitution, a snag Republicans started hammering away at in television attack...