Carnegie Reporter, Vol. 4, No. 2 | The Lost (And Found) Voters of Hurricane Katrina, page 3

The Campaigns
With the basic voting system in place—although still criticized by voting rights organizations and others—the campaigns and voter outreach went into full swing by late winter. National attention was focused on the mayor’s race, but the election of a new City Council was also crucial, with multiple candidates for each seat.

Embattled first-term Mayor Ray Nagin faced 22 opponents on the April 22 ballot. His three major opponents were white, most notably Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landrieu, son of the last white mayor of New Orleans, “Moon” Landrieu, and brother of United States Senator Mary Landrieu. The two others were Audubon Nature Institute CEO Ron Forman and Rob Couhig, lawyer and entrepreneur. Nagin was struggling against widespread criticism that he had mishandled the immediate response to Katrina and bungled recovery efforts. Sensing that the incumbent would lose, his major opponents raised and spent record amounts of campaign money—twice as much as in any previous mayoral election. For the primary and runoff, the top five candidates raised a combined total of $10.8 million. Mitch Landrieu spent the most, about $3.9 million, almost twice Nagin’s $2.1 million.

However, all candidates faced the same difficulties of campaigning in a city still largely in a state of collapse with few of the usual means in place to identify and communicate with voters. Candidates with enough money could rely on television to air campaign ads, but could not be sure how many voters they reached, despite the ads’ high costs. The usual mainstays of direct mail and phone banks suffered from inaccurate address and phone number information; polling was difficult and unreliable for the same reason. Billboards, yard signs and newspaper advertisements proliferated, along with noisy supporters waving signs at major intersections as the election neared.

Candidate forums for displaced voters were held in some major cities, but public turnout was often disappointing. At one forum in Houston in March, the candidates’ staffs outnumbered potential voters. Even door-to-door campaigning was difficult for the simple reason that so many homes were empty or destroyed and “walk lists” were unreliable.

The candidates learned as they went, gradually coming to the realization that the best sources of votes were in the city, its suburbs and communities somewhat further out. “In the main, the reality is that most of the voters are right here in Orleans Parish and within 100 miles,” one campaign manager told The Washington Post. “So we spend our time running up and down the road to Baton Rouge more than anything else.”

Determined to achieve a high turnout of displaced and minority voters in spite of every difficulty, dozens of nonpartisan civil rights, community and religious organizations conducted intensive efforts both on their own and collectively. Seventeen of them formed the Louisiana Voting Rights Network to inform voters, monitor the polls and advocate for fair voter registration and elections procedures. Members of the Network ranged from the ACLU and ACORN to the League of Women Voters, People for the American Way, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, National Urban League and NAACP, to name a few. Over 150 volunteer monitors were stationed inside voting sites to observe and help solve problems on election days.

These and other groups made a priority of reaching displaced voters living temporarily out of state by organizing charter buses and caravans of cars to bring them to either the satellite voting sites outside the city or to their home precincts inside the city. Soon after fleeing to Houston, Kemberly Samuels met ACORN members at the disaster recovery center there and volunteered to help. “I haven’t missed an election since I turned 18,” she said. “It’s the only way you can make your voice heard.” Many groups helped with the complexities of absentee voting—which involved submitting an application, proving eligibility in some cases, receiving the ballot, filling it out accurately and mailing it on time—relying on a barely functioning local mail system. They even set up fax machine centers throughout the country for submitting absentee ballot applications and ballots, a method approved as an emergency measure.

The groups sponsored candidate forums and rallies. ACORN used its network of members throughout the country to work phone banks and distribute voter information, directly reaching 8,000 voters, by its own estimate. The Louisiana Election Protection program contributed legal resources that ranged from extensive research on absentee ballots to staffing a national hotline to advising potential voters. The National Bar Association recruited volunteer attorneys to help staff the NAACP’s Displaced Voter Assistance Centers in 16 cities outside Louisiana.

By then Labostrie was living with a daughter in suburban Metarie, only a few miles from her empty Gentilly home. She helped ACORN keep in touch with other displaced New Orleans voters in order to provide them with accurate information. “All they were hearing was rumors of one kind or another,” she said. “People needed somebody to call to find out what was going on and how to get back home.” ACORN also held numerous meetings to help people understand how they could vote. “That went really well,” she said.

Like the candidates, these organizations learned lessons as they went.

People who turned out for bus rides were enthusiastic, but the numbers were below expectations; many displaced voters chose to drive themselves or ride with others. Samuels was on one of the buses from Houston to a satellite voting site in Lake Charles, Louisiana. It was filled mostly with older voters. “They know what struggles we had to go through to get the right to vote,” she said. Election day for her was “bittersweet,” she recalled. “I was happy that I could vote, but there were so many people we couldn’t reach because of communication problems and transportation problems.”

The satellite voting centers were useful but more people preferred simply going home to their New Orleans neighborhoods. During the first few days of early voting and absentee balloting, results fell short of expectation, raising fears that minority turnout would be disappointing and that predictions of black residents losing their voting influence would come true.

Perhaps the greatest handicap was that Katrina had damaged everything from church buildings to office equipment and private vehicles, and forced so many of the groups’ members and volunteers to move out of state. For example, ACORN’s national headquarters was in New Orleans and required extensive reconstruction. It lost thousands of area members who were forced to relocate. Church congregations and neighborhood organizations were stripped of their members who fled the state, a crippling loss of volunteer resources that persists today. “Even the ministers are dispersed,” resulting in a leadership vacuum, Labostrie said. “We need someone to shout real loud.”

Next page: Nonprofit groups organized charter buses and caravans of cars to bring displaced residents back to the city or to satellite voting sites outside New Orleans so they could vote.

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