Race is key in New Orleans-area House runoff

In the toughest challenge of his political career, U.S. Rep. William J. Jefferson must hold on to his strong support from black New Orleans voters and add white votes from a neighboring parish to win a runoff election Saturday and hold onto his House seat.

Challenger Karen Carter, a state representative who polled well among white voters in Jefferson Parish in the Nov. 7 primary, needs to cut into the congressman’s popularity among blacks to pull off a win.

That’s the consensus among political observers watching the runoff between the two moderate black Democrats.

“If Carter doesn’t get a high white vote, she can’t win,” said political scientist Ed Renwick of Loyola University in New Orleans. “If Jefferson doesn’t get an overwhelming majority of the black vote,” he can’t win.

Silas Lee, a national pollster who teaches sociology at Xavier University of Louisiana, said: “What we have here is a race that is polarized demographically as well as geographically.”

Both candidates in the 2nd Congressional District must perform well in Jefferson Parish, where there was a 5% higher voter turnout during the primary than in Orleans Parish, which includes population-drained New Orleans.

Jefferson, 59, has held the seat for 16 years and has never had to seriously defend it. But this year is different.

The congressman has been plagued by a scandal that resulted in his ouster from the powerful House Ways and Means Committee. The FBI raided his home and office, and said it had a videotape of him taking a $100,000 bribe. Agents reported finding $90,000 wrapped in foil in the freezer of Jefferson’s Washington home.

Jefferson has not been charged with any crime and denies wrongdoing. In a new television ad, he tells viewers, “I have never taken a bribe from anyone.”

But Renwick and other political pundits believe the unsavory details surrounding the investigation may be enough to undo Jefferson.

“He has mammoth problems,” Renwick said. “Seventy percent of people who voted in the primary decided not to vote for him. Generally speaking, when an incumbent has a negative of over 40% they usually lose.”

That’s what Carter is banking on. She has focused on Jefferson’s legal troubles, contending that he can no longer be effective in Congress and promising that “she will restore credibility and respect to political service.”

One particularly biting Carter TV ad portrays children in a spelling bee. They spell words such as “corruption” and “deceitful,” and start to spell “hypocrite” while a narrator describes the complicity of Jefferson and his relatives in the federal bribery investigation.

Jefferson spokeswoman Melanie Roussell said Carter was “just running as, ‘I’m not Bill Jefferson.’ That’s her strategy. And it’s not working.”

Jefferson has called the spelling bee ad “shameless exploitation” of children.

In Jefferson strongholds such as black working-class neighborhoods, criticism of the congressman falls on deaf ears. His popularity was evident at a recent forum on public housing where he was greeted like a rock star and received a standing ovation.

With many liberal black voters already in his pocket, Jefferson has made a pitch to conservatives of all races.

In recent weeks, he has reminded constituents of his conservative voting record on same-sex marriage, late-term abortions and human cloning, and has accused Carter of abandoning “family values.” Carter has acknowledged her support of abortion rights and has opposed a constitutional definition of marriage as the union of “one man and one woman.”

Renwick, the political scientist, said same-sex marriage was “unpopular among fundamentalists, whether white or black.”

“It’s an issue he can use with both these groups, which ordinarily would not be on the same side,” he said.

Jefferson also has accused Carter of shirking her duties as chairwoman of the state House Insurance Committee -- saying she rarely attends meetings -- and of illegally earning money from professional service contracts.

Carter spokesman Jonathan Henderson called the charges “utter lies and distortions.”

And he called Jefferson disingenuous for invoking conservative debates.

“It’s not until this campaign that all of a sudden he is Mr. Pro-Life and Anti-Gay,” Henderson said. “It’s purely politics.... It’s hypocrisy at its worst.”

Roussell insisted that Jefferson’s opposition to same-sex marriage was “a matter of religious conviction.” The congressman regularly attends church and often makes biblical references in his speeches.

But it is Carter who has won some Republican endorsements. She has also outpaced Jefferson in overall campaign contributions; last month her war chest was four times larger than his.

However, Carter is likely to face an uphill battle in neighboring Jefferson Parish, where some officials have been vexed by comments she made in the Spike Lee documentary “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts.” In the film, she criticizes Jefferson law enforcement officials for blocking Katrina evacuees from crossing a bridge to safety in the town of Gretna after the storm. The incident sparked national outrage.

Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee recently mailed out fliers urging voters to say “no” to Carter. But he insisted he was not endorsing Jefferson.

That shouldn’t hurt Jefferson, who won 23% of the approximately 31,000 Jefferson Parish residents who cast ballots in last month’s primary, compared with Carter’s 8%.

Roussell acknowledged that the congressman was depending on his core support of African Americans and working-class residents to pull him through. But she said Jefferson’s overall message was aimed at all constituents regardless of color, social standing or political persuasion.

“The insurance issue hits everyone in the pocket right now,” Roussell said. “And everyone relates to social issues. That’s not race or class targeting.”

ann.simmons@latimes.com