Duke Out

It has been three days since the Louisiana gubernatorial election, and the sun has come up all three days, so I suppose it’s true that life goes on.

It was only two months ago that former governor Edwin Edwards and white supremacist David Duke placed first and second in the primary, qualifying them for a run-off election. Incumbent Governor Buddy Roemer, who had been systematically self-destructing for the past four years, found himself in third place, wondering what had happened to his self-styled “Roemer Revolution.” The rest of us found ourselves facing a dilemma: whether to vote for a man with a reputation for playing it fast and loose, or for a former Klan wizard and neo-Nazi who not so long ago was burning crosses and celebrating Hitler’s birthday.

Many voters agonized over the decision. Some, I suspect, went into the polling booth and put a finger on each button before making a choice. In the end, Edwards — a man who bragged that he is “also a wizard . . . under the sheets” — won with 61 percent of the vote. Reason prevailed over anger.

It is ironic that this bitterly divisive race occurred in such a culturally and ethnically diverse state. Louisiana is, after all, one of the most exciting places in America. Here, Europeans and Africans met by chance and by force on Native American land, and the three cultures blended to produce such highly original expressions as jazz, blues, and rock and roll. The architecture and cuisine and oral tradition in the southern part of the state are so different that the area has been described as “south of the South” and “the northern tip of the Caribbean.”

Today, people of all these ethnic backgrounds are frustrated with the failure of their government to address their real needs. Indeed, the rise of David Duke has been enhanced by the grinding of several gears in our social machine. First and foremost, our politics have failed to produce an honest response to the twin evils of poverty and racism. When Duke blasted “welfare abuse” and “racial quotas,” he touched a chord among frustrated hard-working people and the over-burdened and dwindling middle class.

Many of his supporters are racists. But others are simply fed up. They want to let the system know it, and Duke offered a chance to send a message to the powers-that-be. Unfortunately, much of their legitimate anger was cleverly misdirected by Duke. He pledged to reform the welfare and tax systems, yet state taxes are not exceptionally high in Louisiana, and welfare abuse accounts for a minuscule part of the state budget.

Duke’s success underscores the failure of the Democrats to speak directly to the anger among voters. No viable candidate — and certainly no Democrat — offered voters such a clear outlet for their frustration. Duke simply picked up the fumble and ran with the ball. If another candidate without Duke’s past had run on a similar platform, he would undoubtedly have been elected.

But no one did, and white voters in Louisiana continue to flee the Democratic Party and join the GOP. State registration figures show that since 1987, the Louisiana Democrats have lost more than 116,000 white voters and the Republicans have signed up 96,000.

That trend continued this fall — even after Duke climbed aboard the GOP ballot. In the six weeks following the primary, a record 13,000 white voters registered as Democrats. But even more — 15,223 — flocked to the Republicans.

The increasing political polarization in Louisiana — and across the region — means that the Democrats are going to have to reassess their century-old role as the party of conservative Southern whites. To counter the white flight, they will have to fashion a message that will broaden their support — a message of racial unity and economic equality.

Louisianans are familiar with demagoguery. But unlike Huey and Earl Long, who used similar tactics to haul us forward, Duke is trying to push us backward. He claims to repudiate his past, but his literal and political facelifts conceal an ugly agenda.

Here it was the media that failed. Television stations and daily newspapers across the state did little to explore Duke’s hidden agenda until the panic of the final days before the vote. He got everyone to dance on the only plank in his platform. Only his past was questioned, and he almost succeeded in parrying that attack by claiming to have changed, even to be a born-again Christian. His present went virtually unexplored.

Jason Berry, a writer based in New Orleans, complained about this “lazy coverage” in a New York Times op-ed piece. A few hip, Yuppie weeklies like the Times of Acadiana in Lafayette, Gris Gris in Baton Rouge, and Gambit in New Orleans tried valiantly to expose Duke, but even they focused on his past. The real issues were seldom raised. What real experience at governing does Duke have? How would he run the state? How would he handle the myriad responsibilities of being governor? And what are the real solutions to the few problems he did raise? Exactly how does “workfare” work in an economy crippled by recession and unemployment? Why was no one asking these questions?

Some voters insisted it was okay to cast a protest vote for Duke because it didn’t really matter: The legislature and the law would prevent him from doing anything terrible. But in Louisiana the governor appoints commissions, boards, department heads, even the superintendent of education. Who would have been head of the state police under Duke? What would happen to the Department of Culture, Recreation, and Tourism? To the Black Culture Commission? To the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana? These questions went unasked and unanswered.

Ironically, Duke often complained that the media treated him unfairly. In fact, they hardly laid a glove on him. It wasn’t until the very last days of the campaign that people began to fill in some of the gaps left by the media. The head of the Louisiana National Guard appeared in a television commercial to point out the absurdity of having a former Nazi sympathizer as the commander-in-chief of Louisiana troops. My own father, a barber, said in an interview that, though he had thought he would never again vote for Edwards, he could not bring himself to vote for a man who once proposed sending the French-speaking Cajuns to northern Maine as part of an “ethnic relocation program.”

The media also failed with Edwards, satisfied to simply characterize him as a crooked politician indicted on racketeering charges. He was never convicted, but many considered him guilty by accusation. Voters were not reminded that his progressive and reform-minded first term had brought real change to the state. We were only reminded of his scandal-plagued third term — a message clearly reflected on the bumper stickers sported by frustrated Duke opponents: “Vote for the crook. It’s important.”

Yet for all his foibles, real and exaggerated, Edwards did not fail. He took Duke on head-to-head in televised debates, pointing out his opponent’s present inadequacies as well as the sins of his past. In the final debate, the former governor noted that while Duke was burning crosses in people’s yards, he was building hospitals. He suggested that if Duke has really changed, he should begin by helping to heal the communities he intimidated for two decades. Edwards even owned up to his own sins, admitting that he has made mistakes and insisting that he wants to reform.

He seems keenly aware of the chance he has been given. In his victory speech, Edwards thanked those who had voted for him — “willingly and unwillingly.” He went on to declare that Louisiana had faced the darkness and chosen the light.

As I watched him, I felt great relief and pride. Edwards was right. Louisiana had undergone a terrible struggle as the rest of the nation and much of the world watched. But we came down on the right side. We rejected the politics of division and hate — something the rest of the nation has yet to do. Next time, those politics may not be wearing a swastika or a white hood. They may be harder to recognize.