Democrats Prevail in Louisiana

Sen. Mary Landrieu narrowly won reelection to a second term Saturday, while another Louisiana Democrat scored an upset in a runoff House election, giving their party a jolt of adrenaline after a year of Republican electoral triumph.

Landrieu turned back a forceful Republican challenge from Suzanne Haik Terrell, winning 51.6% to 48.4% in unofficial returns. She held together a tenuous southern Democratic coalition of black liberals and white moderates four days after a fired-up President Bush came to the state to press for one more Senate GOP victory.

“We turned the lights on!” a hoarse Landrieu told supporters in a hotel ballroom here shortly before midnight. “People can see the dangers of partisan, poisoned politics....The light has shown that the Democratic Party is alive and well and united.”

In the House race, Democrat Rodney Alexander unexpectedly won, by a few hundred votes, a vacant seat, the 5th District in northeastern Louisiana, which had been expected to remain in GOP hands. Republican Lee Fletcher said he would review official results before deciding whether to concede.

With the year’s final congressional elections over, Republicans will hold a 51-seat Senate majority when the 108th Congress convenes Jan. 7. Democrats will hold 48 seats, and there is one Democrat-aligned independent. The Republican House majority is projected to be 229-205, with another Democratic-leaning independent. The numbers in the House could change, pending a special election in Hawaii in January and a recount in Colorado.

With her victory in a nasty, bare-knuckled campaign, Landrieu avoided becoming another casualty in what had been a GOP onslaught powered by Bush. In the Nov. 5 midterm elections, Republicans expanded their House majority by six seats and retook control of the Senate -- defying the historical norm for a president’s party. The president’s carefully timed trips were considered to have made the difference in several swing races.

The House and Senate victories in Louisiana gave Democrats a badly needed lift as they regroup for the congressional and presidential elections in 2004.

Republicans, meanwhile, fell short in their bid to seize a Senate seat from Louisiana for the first time since the 1880s. Their Senate majority remains razor thin. A switch of one seat to the Democrats could drop the chamber back into an effective tie; a switch of two would give Democrats control again.

Landrieu was pressed to the limit to defeat Terrell, whose candidacy was promoted heavily by an array of national Republican leaders.

Once favored to win reelection, Landrieu seemed much more vulnerable after falling short in her first try last month and after Democratic senators from Georgia and Missouri lost to Republicans who Bush campaigned for.

She and Terrell wound up their politicking in New Orleans after a 31-day campaign unprecedented for the state.

Never before has Louisiana chosen a U.S. senator in a December runoff. Under the state’s election laws, nine candidates for Senate appeared on the Nov. 5 ballot. But because none captured more than 50% of the vote, the two top finishers -- Landrieu first, and Terrell second -- landed in the runoff.

Landrieu rolled up huge margins in New Orleans, a Democratic enclave, to offset Terrell strongholds in western and northern Louisiana.

The Landrieu name is well-known in the city: the senator’s father, Moon Landrieu, was mayor in the 1970s and served as a Cabinet secretary in the Carter administration.

And the city’s voters were essential to Mary Landrieu’s first Senate win. In 1996, she captured 100,000 votes more than her Republican opponent in the New Orleans area en route to a victory of fewer than 6,000 votes statewide.

On a crisp, sunny Saturday, she crisscrossed the city in a get-out-the-vote driving tour led by a red truck blaring zydeco music. She hopped out at a Winn-Dixie grocery store around noon and started shaking hands with startled shoppers, baggers and checkout clerks.

Janell Ridgley, 23, a Winn-Dixie employee, said she planned to vote for Landrieu during an afternoon break.

Referring to the intense focus on the race, Ridgley said, “It’s so serious this time. My mother threatened me: ‘I’m going to hurt you if you don’t vote.’ ”

But Terrell, a former New Orleans city councilwoman, had pockets of strength in the city. And her voters, like Landrieu’s, appeared highly motivated.

John Gish, 55, a benefits consultant, had an eye on the bigger picture in Congress as he recently cast an absentee ballot for Terrell. Aware that the Republicans already had sewed up control of the Senate next year, he said: “I actually want a large conservative majority.”

Landrieu, 47, is a centrist who has frequently voted with the Bush administration on major issues, such as 2001’s sweeping tax cut and this fall’s resolution to authorize using military force against Iraq.

Cognizant of Bush’s popularity, she stressed that she backed the administration about three-fourths of the time in key congressional votes.

But Terrell, 48, the state’s elections commissioner, countered that the president would be best served by adding another Republican to the Senate.

In a series of televised debates and in dueling TV advertisements, Landrieu and Terrell traded sharp attacks.

Landrieu charged that Terrell had been a lobbyist for a foreign drug company.

Terrell attacked the senator as a liberal akin to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in a radio ad that featured an impersonation of ex-President Clinton. She also accused Landrieu of abandoning the Roman Catholic faith on the question of abortion.

Terrell, also a Catholic, backs a constitutional ban on abortion. Landrieu supports abortion rights, with some exceptions.

Their public exchanges grew so strained that Landrieu told Terrell after one debate, “This is your last campaign.”

The challenger afterward said she interpreted that remark as a threat.

Before the polls closed, both parties mounted a frenzied push to turn out their supporters. Mailboxes were flooded with brochures. Campaign workers leafleted doorsteps and knocked on doors. Others stood on street corners and waved signs to remind people to vote.

Then there were the automated “robo-calls.”

Republican gun owners -- some of whom were outdoors on the first day of hunting season -- were targeted with a tape-recorded telephone message from Vice President Dick Cheney. Military veterans leaning toward the GOP heard from former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, a World War II veteran.

On the Democratic side, former President Clinton taped a telephone call directed at black voters. Many also received phone messages from Sen. John B. Breaux, a popular centrist Democrat, and Rep. William J. Jefferson, who is influential among black voters in New Orleans.

Several black members of Congress also have traveled to the state in recent days to help Landrieu, including Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles).

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Anderson reported from Washington, Hart from New Orleans.