When even a liberal Democratic congressional district rejects divisive, leftist culture wars, it may be evidence that the Democratic Party should move back toward the center.
Or maybe not. Sometimes a local race is just local.
National pundits paid little attention, but the arguably less “progressive” of two Democratic candidates won an April 24 runoff for the southern Louisiana congressional seat vacated by former U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond, who took a job in the Biden White House. State Sen. Troy Carter defeated state Sen. Karen Peterson, 55% to 45%, despite being massively outspent by left-wing activist groups such as the pro-abortion EMILY’s List, which backed Peterson with a $1.8 million outlay. Peterson also touted endorsements from national left-wingers such as U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
Pithy as ever, legendary political strategist James Carville gave his assessment of the race to Times-Picayune reporter Tyler Bridges.
“Voters voted against wokeness,” said Carville. “They just did. Woke did very, very poorly.”
That said, the analysis goes only so far. While Peterson ran leftward and Carter ran on his willingness to build bridges to the center, the differences arguably were more style than substance. The two candidates from New Orleans had roughly similar voting records in the state Senate, and while Carter stylistically has been more willing to work across ideological divides, he has introduced liberal legislation aplenty, from an early push for gay rights to attempts at “police accountability.”
Still, in the campaign, Peterson went so full-on leftist that some voters apparently found her inauthentic. As Bridges noted, “She gave full-throated support for the Green New Deal, the Medicare for All universal health care plan, [and] a $20 per hour federal minimum wage.”
Jacques Morial, a savvy public policy strategist for nearly four decades and the son and brother (respectively) of former New Orleans mayors Ernest “Dutch” Morial and Marc Morial, disagrees with Carville’s take. As a noted “progressive,” Morial supported Carter, not Peterson, saying their legislative careers showed Carter to be the more effective progressive.
In addition to that record, Morial told me of two other reasons for Carter’s victory.
“One is personality — demeanor. Troy Carter actively listens to people. He is able to project empathy in an effective, authentic way. Karen, not so much.”
Second: “Voters were actually woke to all of this and were not influenced by nearly $2 million in third-party, outside ‘dark money’ advancing a false narrative that Troy Carter was some kind of ally of Donald Trump while Karen was a progressive savior. It was so completely absurd that people rejected it.”
Of the national progressive folks who backed Peterson, Morial said, “I love and appreciate them, but they never set foot in Louisiana during this race.” They didn’t check with local progressive leaders, he said, whose attitude is that “nothing about us is for us without us.”
Still, this much can be said assuredly: Peterson’s hard-left turn during the campaign turned off moderates and the 16% of the voters who supported Republicans in the earlier jungle primary. One can argue that this bloc became a significant proportion of this election’s swing voters who decided the outcome.
As a conservative, I hope Carville’s anti-woke analysis is right. I know Morial to be very astute, though, so Carville, for once, might be mistaken.
Either way, there’s something to be said for Carter’s habit of at least talking with and listening to the other side. No matter what the ideology, national leaders who take that lesson from Carter’s win will be doing us all a favor.
