TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/112591/1125102.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.5 KB | 118 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 43

LOUISIANA

The No-Win Election


The neo-Nazi and the rapscallion slug it out, and in the end,
decency and the pocketbook prevail

By MICHAEL RILEY/NEW ORLEANS -- With reporting by Don Winbush/
Bossier City and Richard Woodbury/Houston


    In the privacy of the voting booth, it came down to a
balance of terror. After riding out the historic race between
neo-Nazi David Duke and rapscallion Edwin Edwards, Louisianians
had to choose between Duke's appeal to white hostility and fear
of the economic chaos and racial divisions that his victory
promised. In the end, their pocketbooks and qualms about Duke
prevailed.

    Throughout the campaign, Edwards supporters warned that if
Louisiana elected a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan as
Governor, a wave of revulsion would sweep business, tourism,
conventions and jobs out of the state. Duke skillfully
manipulated the politics of discontent, playing on resentment
of quotas, welfare and Big Government. He railed against
Edwards' liberalism and his penchant for gambling and womanizing
and trading government jobs for campaign contributions. But in
the end, the bumper sticker won the day: VOTE FOR THE CROOK:
IT'S IMPORTANT. Concluding that electing a bigot would be too
costly to a state in dire economic straits, voters gave Edwards
60% of the vote. The turnout was an astonishing 75%.

    Searching through the results for useful lessons, analysts
found some disturbing truths. Anyone who thinks that Duke is
merely a Bayou State phenomenon should be disabused by the
numbers. More than 40% of his $1.37 million in contributions
came from outside Louisiana, mostly small donations from people
in 46 states. Duke's supporters were not all racists. Many were
hardworking people who felt alienated from government-as-usual
and desperate for help. "He says what a lot of people think but
don't have the guts to say," observes oil-field supervisor Mark
Hulin. "We're all middle-class people who are tired of paying
taxes for all those people who don't want to better themselves."
The Duke phenomenon, a volatile mix of race, class and plain
rage, will not simply disappear. He may even challenge George
Bush in next year's Republican primaries.

    That Duke got as far as he did is perhaps the most
important message of all. This, after all, is a man who has
never held a regular job. He has made his living by selling hate
materials and trolling for contributions for various racist
organizations. He wore a swastika in college, founded the
National Association for the Advancement of White People,
advocated dividing America into separate ethnic nations, denied
that the Holocaust happened. His reason for studying German in
college was to be able to read Hitler's Mein Kampf in the
original.

    Yet Duke's campaign was not farfetched. He won a place in
the runoff by defeating incumbent Republican Buddy Roemer, a
Harvard-educated reformer whose imperious manner doomed him to
a single term. Duke won blue-collar voters, largely rural, young
and male. But he also made inroads into the middle class,
capturing conservatives from both parties. If the election had
been held just after the primary, Duke would have won.

    But as the days passed, the tide slowly began to turn.
First, Roemer grudgingly endorsed Edwards and urged his sullen
supporters not to sit out the election. Then, in a televised
debate, Duke was confounded by an emotional question about
bigotry. "I am scared, sir," began black TV reporter Norman
Robinson. "I've heard you say that Jews deserve to be in the ash
bin of history. I've heard you say that horses contributed more
to the building of America than blacks did." Robinson went on
to ask why any minorities should entrust their lives to Duke --
and the moral opposition to Duke's hate-mongering past
coalesced.

    Then Duke hit another stumbling block. Having claimed to
be born again, he was asked where he worshiped and named a
church no one had seen him attend. A top campaign aide, who
doubted Duke's Christianity and called him "a racist, coward,
draft dodger and bald-faced liar," deserted him a few days
before the election.

    And finally, the magnitude of the choice facing Louisiana
started to settle in, especially among New Orleans' professional
class. Experts predicted that dozens of conventions worth nearly
$100 million would be canceled. University of New Orleans
economist Timothy Ryan put the losses at about $1.8 billion and
45,000 jobs. "Louisiana," warned James Moffett, chairman of
Freeport-McMoRan, the state's second largest public company,
"wouldn't just be redlined by businesses around the nation and
the world, we'd be X-rated."

    The anti-Duke coalition was one of the most bizarre in
modern American politics. Churches, environmentalists and
liberal activists joined with the Establishment to fight Duke.
Former Republican Governor David Treen endorsed Edwards, who
once joked that Treen was so slow it took him an hour and a half
to watch 60 Minutes. Even President Bush made an 11th-hour
endorsement, fearful of what a Duke victory would mean for his
party's efforts to woo black voters.

    But having won, Edwards will now have to govern a badly
bruised and divided state. Virtually all of Duke's votes came
from whites, while the black vote went for Edwards. Having won
only as the lesser of evils, Edwards now owes it to all
Louisianians to restore some standards of decency to his
traumatized state.