Legal Commentary

A Demographic Shift for NOLA : William Jefferson's Defeat

By Jeralyn

Indicted longterm LA Congressman William Jefferson has been defeated. The winner of the House seat for the district which includes New Orleans is Republican lawyer Anh Cao.

Cao emigrated from Vietnam when he was 8, after the fall of Saigon. This is his first elected office and he will be the first Vietnamese-American in Congress.

Turnout in Saturday's election, which was postponed due to Hurricane Gustav, was not high. While Jefferson's corruption charges are thought to have increased turnout in the white community and largely contributed to his defeat, and turnout among blacks was lower than usual, this is also interesting: [More...]

In heavily white precincts, turnout was about 26 percent, while it was only about 12 percent in the heavily black precincts....The exact percentage of blacks here, like the population itself, is unknown after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, but is thought to be 55 percent to 60 percent, down from around 70 percent before the storm. The City Council has turned majority-white after years of being led by blacks. “It’s clearly shifted,” [analyst] Mr. Rigamer said of the population. “You have fewer African-Americans in the city than previously.”

....Mr. Cao, who has never held elective office, has been an advocate for the small but prominent Vietnamese community here ....“These elections continue to show us that there is a smaller, different and more progressive New Orleans that is emerging.”

More on the thriving Vietnamese population of New Orleans here and here.

Here's a Dateline segment from 2007 on the Vietnamese community's early return to New Orleans after Katrina and their rebuilding the coummunity without much government help.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on December 07, 2008 (boomark / email).