Landrieu banks on all politics being local in Louisiana

Reporting from New Orleans —  Mary Landrieu’s chances of hanging onto her Senate seat – and quite possibly her party’s chances of hanging onto the Senate -- depend on a surge of voter turnout here in this longtime Democratic stronghold where Landrieu is part of a political dynasty.

So as polls opened early Tuesday, her campaign had the volume on the Landrieu jet-black milk truck turned up extra high. Out of the back, speakers blared fusion jazz and funk tunes. Campaign workers grooved on the side of the road just outside of downtown where construction workers were building a new veterans’ hospital.

Landrieu soon showed up to apply the common touch that has served this Washington insider so well in Louisiana over the last 18 years. Her supporters hope those skills will put her over the top here against a far-less-colorful opponent, despite polls showing the two are headed for a runoff election next month in which Landrieu would be the underdog.

Asked how she can be so confident of winning the majority she needs for outright victory Tuesday, Landrieu said: “I have done this now four times. I know my state very well. Washington is very confused about Louisiana. They stay in a perpetual state of confusion about this state.”

This election will, indeed, be a test of whether Louisiana politics is still all local -- bucking an overwhelming trend toward nationalization of political contests.

Landrieu’s lead rival, GOP Rep. Bill Cassidy, has delivered a barrage of ads accusing Landrieu of being in lock-step with President Obama, whose approval rating with Louisianans is abysmal. Democrats fear -- and Republicans hope -- those attacks have shaken voter confidence in the incumbent.

Landrieu’s best hope of winning is a big turnout in New Orleans, where her brother is the mayor, her father the former mayor and the voters are rich with the family’s loyalists.

On Tuesday, she had campaign workers knocking on doors in the farthest reaches of the city. As one volunteer began to venture down a largely abandoned block to coax a couple of potential voters out of dilapidated shotgun houses, she looked nervously at the address list campaign headquarters had given her, wondering if there was a mistake. There wasn’t.

The candidate, meanwhile, gave tight squeeze hugs to random supporters she encountered on the trail Monday and Tuesday as if they were close family members. Landrieu had plans to dance the Wobble with a group of seniors by afternoon.

Voters appeared to be responding. In the lower 9th Ward, an area that was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, poll workers reported turnout was unusually heavy for a midterm election.

“This is big for a midterm,” said Esther Smith, a poll worker at the Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School, where a steady stream of voters continued to pour in by late morning, almost all of them Landrieu supporters. “They were all lined up before we even opened.”

Several of the voters interviewed spoke fondly of the senator, referring to her simply as “Mary.”

“She came down to the neighborhood and helped us rebuild” after Katrina, said Markisha Frazier, a 35-year-old cook. “She came to our church. Several times, personally. Mitch came too,” she said in reference to Landrieu’s brother. “They didn’t just send people.”

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