New Orleans Is Democratic Issue, Backdrop

Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, stood amid the soggy ruins of a devastated neighborhood here Friday and declared that Republicans would pay the price in the midterm elections for the Bush administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina.

“This is a searing, burning issue, and I think it’s going to cost George Bush his legacy, and it’s going to cost the Republicans the House and the Senate and maybe very well the presidency in the next election,” Dean said. “People will never forget this.”

Eight months after Katrina struck, top Democratic leaders from across the nation traveled to New Orleans for the party’s annual spring meeting.

The locale, chosen to highlight the wreckage that remains across this battered city, was used by Democrats to provide a symbolic image for the fall campaign.

“I’m surprised that the place still looks this way,” said Dean, resting his foot near two rusted-out cars in a vacant neighborhood. “I hate to be partisan at a time like this, but this is why the Republicans are going to be out of business. Nine months after the hurricane to have this? This is ridiculous.... It’s worse than the television pictures.”

When asked whether Democrats bore a share of the liability, Dean declared: “In a disaster this size, everybody has responsibility, but it ends up in the federal government’s lap, and they dropped the ball.”

Louisiana Republican Party chairman Roger Villere Jr. rebuked Dean for his “attempt to use this tragedy for a partisan leg-up.”

“While President Bush has shown an unwavering commitment to rebuilding the Gulf Coast region,” Villere said, “many Democrats have forgone good taste and openly exploited the natural disaster for personal political gain.”

But Democrats gathering in New Orleans said they believed a winning theme of their fall election campaign would be that Republicans in Washington had eroded a sense of community across the country by favoring the rich and ignoring the needs of ordinary Americans.

“They are the party of selfishness and self-absorption,” Dean said. “We are the party that believes we are all in this together -- every American.”