I have never preferred the analysis of UNO's Ed Chervenak.
His conclusions regarding Anh Cao's upset victory over William Jefferson drove the title and tenor of the Times-Picayune writeup and have contributed to a meme that seems to have been repeated in other blog posts and articles I've read about this election.
African Americans didn't show up at the polls because they were 'confused.'
The dearth of voters showing up at the polls Saturday likely owed to lack of awareness of the election, Chervenak said.
With Louisiana holding closed party primaries for the first time in 30 years, the winner-takes-all general election became the third race of the season, rather than the second, as under the previous system. Complicating matters, Hurricane Gustav forced the first contest to be postponed a month, pushing the general election into December, sandwiched between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Call me crazy but hasn't the scheduling of New Orleans elections always been confusing? African Americans weren't confused on election day in October, when Jefferson barely slipped into the runoff with an anemic twentysomething percent of the vote. Chervenak is essentially suggesting that African Americans knew about the October date because it had been previously scheduled and didn't know about this date because it was making up for one postponed in early September. This sort of implies that voters go to the Secretary of State's website and writes down all election dates on the calender a year in advance and then don't ever look at the news after that. And this idea that it was confusing because there was a closed primary... it's ridiculous. You know there's an election coming by watching the news or taking notice of the fliers and signs everywhere.
African Americans were not mobilized for this election, there's no doubt about it. It may be true to a certain extent that people were 'unaware' that polls were open, but I'd argue that people were not significantly more unaware than usual. From my experience, most people that follow politics generally learn when elections are being held and most people that don't, don't. Those in the latter category need to be mobilized. That's why campaigns are run.
This is every election.
Chervenak's rationale for why he thinks it was confusion is also interesting:
One school of thought holds that Jefferson was abandoned by voters who could no longer bear the weight of his legal difficulties. After FBI agents allegedly found $90,000 in marked bills in his freezer and linked him and several relatives to a wide-ranging bribery scheme, Jefferson was indicted on 16 counts of public corruption. His trial is expected early next year.
But in Chervenak's view, "People don't change their preferences that quickly in such a short period of time."
It seems implausible, he said, that "people would come to his defense and support him with their vote in two elections only to stay home for the election that would keep him in office."
Want to know what I think? I think that what Ed Chervenak believes amounts to 'demographics is political destiny.' Actually, I know it does. I've taken one of Professor Chervenak's political science courses. It was awful and there was a strange bipartisan student rebellion against him. (Ask me about this another time.) (Also, Oyster monitored use of the 'demographics is political destiny' theme during the Presidential race. Maybe he even coined that phrase.)
Chervenak inexplicably thinks it's 'implausible' for people to vote one way one time and then, after events occur, vote another way at a later time.
In 2004, President Bush was reelected. In 2006, his Presidency, party, and platform was repudiated by the same country that had just given him "a mandate" two years prior. Were white Republicans 'confused' about the date of the election in 2006?
Guess what? A lot of African Americans were 'confused,' but not by the date of the election.
I think a lot of African Americans were 'confused' by the actions of the African American political establishment.
I think a lot of my African American neighbors heard all sorts of stuff about how they needed to reelect people like Jefferson and Nagin in order to protect their communities only to watch those same politicians instead work to implement the same trickle-down recovery policy championed by the conservative establishment while their own neighborhoods are deprived of services and investment.
I think this confused African Americans enough that this time, many decided they'd rather stay at home or stay in Houston than mobilize for this corrupt Jefferson guy who doesn't seem all that interested in delivering for flooded black neighborhoods after all.
This isn't to say that had Jefferson had more money or actually done some campaign work, we wouldn't have seen a different outcome, but to suggest that African American confusion was a reason for Jefferson's defeat is a total cop-out.
The Times-Picayune needs to stop going to Chervenak for everything. At the very least, they need to stop publishing his analysis as fact by surveying a more diverse lineup of political analysts for articles like this one.
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