Louisiana 2003: Why did the GOP do so badly?

[TheElectoralBoobyPrize]

I'm not just talking about Jindal's rather narrow loss to Blanco, but also..

1) Republicans made no real gains in the state legislature which was still 2-1 Democratic

2) They didn't win any statewide elected office other than the reelection of SoS Fox McKeithen. They lost the AG race despite running their 2002 Senate nominee (who didn't lose by much) against a scandal-tainted Democrat.

3) On the first ballot of the gubernatorial race, Democratic candidates got almost 60% of the vote...Republicans got a little more than 39%. Jindal's lucky to have come as close as he did in the runoff.

Just one year later, Bush Jr. would win the state by double digits, and the GOP would get its first Republican senator since Reconstruction. And that was BEFORE Katrina made the state's demographics more favorable to Republicans...

[jamestroll]

Older voters typically have heavier turn out and this is especially true in off year elections. At that time there were a large amount of old school yellow dog Democrats still alive and a strong rural Democratic tradition. They may have  been turned off by Gore and Kerry but still trusted their local Democrats.

Also the GOP did not have much of a bench in Louisiana at that time so no real candidates and many votes voted reflexively GOP down the ballot.

The 2004 election seems to be a turning point in hindsight that many of the Southern States were not going to return to Democrats. I look at old articles and remember reading them in 2006 and pundits discussing that if Kerry was going to win a southern state it would be West Virginia, Arkansas or Louisiana. The 2004 results made it clear that those states were gone on the presidential level.

Bush was really able to pull David Vitter across the finish line with 51% of the vote. I do not know the other Democrats in a granular detail but a run off between Vitter and Democrat Chris John would have still likely be very much contested.

[TheElectoralBoobyPrize]

Also the GOP did not have much of a bench in Louisiana at that time so no real candidates and many votes voted reflexively GOP down the ballot.

And conversely, the fact that there were four major Democrats in the race probably boosted Democratic turnout...probably every Democrat in the state could find at least one candidate they liked. That wasn't necessarily the case with Republicans.

Bush was really able to pull David Vitter across the finish line with 51% of the vote. I do not know the other Democrats in a granular detail but a run off between Vitter and Democrat Chris John would have still likely be very much contested.

I think Vitter narrowly loses the runoff due to GOP voters not being particularly motivated as Bush had been reelected and continued Republican control of the Senate was assured. If Kerry had won, however, Vitter wins comfortably.

[brucejoel99]

As for Jindal himself, he actually ran a perfect campaign... for 5 weeks. The problem was that it was a 6-week campaign.

Jindal's collapse in the final week had to do with healthcare: when the outgoing Republican Governor, Mike Foster, appointed Jindal head of the state's Department of Health & Hospitals in '95, Jindal brought the agency out of bankruptcy, & turned a $400 million deficit into a surplus by slashing the budget. When he ran for governor, Jindal cited this experience as an example of how his management expertise solved a major governing crisis.

But Blanco turned it against him in the campaign homestretch by accusing Jindal of balancing the Medicaid budget on the backs of the poor, who relied on Louisiana's public-hospital system for health care. A devastating negative TV ad the Blanco campaign ran in the final days featured a wheelchair-bound doctor who used to work in the state's public health system accusing Jindal of ruining it.

The doctor's last line was, "By the way, I'm a staunch Republican." It was a powerful ad, & Jindal didn't respond.

He actually did, in fact, challenge the claims made by the ad, but he did so through the free media. He didn't produce a commercial directly taking on the Blanco spot, which he could've easily done. He had plenty of information, & there were a whole lot of people, for 2 weeks in a row, clamoring for his campaign to go up with response ads. It's really odd that they didn't. Maybe they were overconfident. They did have ads slamming her for going negative, but they didn't go after the substance of her ads. They never gave people a reason to believe that the things she was saying weren't true.

[LiberalDem19]

Louisiana hadn't completely re-aligned at that point. Plenty of the Southern states voted Bush but still elected Democrats downballot.

[Senate Minority Leader Lord Voldemort]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWKYU3KWWBk

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Red states are going back to 2008 scenario, due to Trump not doing enough about urban poverty. The South has the lowest minimum wage than any other parts of the country at 7.25 an hour. Since, there arent many mail delivery jobs, Walmarts in the South is a way of life of working, with kids and welfare

[TheElectoralBoobyPrize]

I wasn't wondering why Jindal lost...it was good for him to get 48% of the vote when Republicans combined only got 39% on the first ballot. It's more of a mystery why he did so well...he probably got a good chunk of the Ewing voters. And the fact that he did so well should have helped Republicans down the ballot, but it didn't. I still think he was a weak candidate...he was a career bureaucrat who had spent of most of his adult life outside the state at that point. That would've turned off rural whites (whom Blanco narrowly carried) even if he had been white. Also have you heard him speak? His big victory in 2007 was due to post-Katrina demographics, weak Democratic opposition, and him being able to run an "I told you so" campaign. Ironically, I have a relative who voted Jindal in '03 but not in '07.

At the same time, Louisiana was trending Republican big time at the federal level (look at the swing from 1996 to 2000).

[Continential]

I wasn't wondering why Jindal lost...it was good for him to get 48% of the vote when Republicans combined only got 39% on the first ballot. It's more of a mystery why he did so well...he probably got a good chunk of the Ewing voters. And the fact that he did so well should have helped Republicans down the ballot, but it didn't. I still think he was a weak candidate...he was a career bureaucrat who had spent of most of his adult life outside the state at that point. That would've turned off rural whites (whom Blanco narrowly carried) even if he had been white. Also have you heard him speak? His big victory in 2007 was due to post-Katrina demographics, weak Democratic opposition, and him being able to run an "I told you so" campaign. Ironically, I have a relative who voted Jindal in '03 but not in '07.

At the same time, Louisiana was trending Republican big time at the federal level (look at the swing from 1996 to 2000).

Would Beaux have made it closer had he ran in 2007?

[TheElectoralBoobyPrize]

I wasn't wondering why Jindal lost...it was good for him to get 48% of the vote when Republicans combined only got 39% on the first ballot. It's more of a mystery why he did so well...he probably got a good chunk of the Ewing voters. And the fact that he did so well should have helped Republicans down the ballot, but it didn't. I still think he was a weak candidate...he was a career bureaucrat who had spent of most of his adult life outside the state at that point. That would've turned off rural whites (whom Blanco narrowly carried) even if he had been white. Also have you heard him speak? His big victory in 2007 was due to post-Katrina demographics, weak Democratic opposition, and him being able to run an "I told you so" campaign. Ironically, I have a relative who voted Jindal in '03 but not in '07.

At the same time, Louisiana was trending Republican big time at the federal level (look at the swing from 1996 to 2000).

Would Beaux have made it closer had he ran in 2007?

I had forgotten that he had considered running...he could've been the Democrats' "white knight."