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- NATION, Page 47American NotesELECTIONSDoubling Up On Duke
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- Talk about bipartisanship. Until two days before the
- election, Ben Bagert was the Republican Party's official
- nominee to run for the Louisiana Senate seat held by three-term
- Democratic incumbent J. Bennett Johnston Jr. But state
- representative and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke was
- also in the primary race as a Republican, running a campaign
- that played on white resentment over affirmative action and
- welfare. Though polls gave Johnston about half the vote in the
- Oct. 6 primary, they also showed Bagert, a state senator, badly
- trailing Duke. That opened up the possibility of a Nov. 6 runoff
- between the two front runners. The prospect of the former
- Klansman becoming the G.O.P.'s standard-bearer made state and
- national party leaders so unhappy that eight Republican
- Senators declared their support for Johnston. Then Bagert made
- the ultimate sacrifice: he withdrew from the race. The
- bipartisan blocking maneuver seemed to be paying off. Early
- returns gave Johnston 56% of the vote, enough to win the
- election outright.
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