Special elections coming up in GA and LA

Political prognosticators Isaac Wood and Larry Sabato at the University of Virginia report today that there will be up to five special elections for the U.S. House in 2007 -- two of them in the South.

The first race will be to fill the vacant seat of deceased Georgia Republican Rep. Charlie Norwood (GA-10), who passed from lung cancer in February. His shoe-in replacement was thought to be State Senator Jim Whitehead (R). But then Whitehead started making public statements -- to his detriment, as Sabato notes:

In a column that appeared in The Elberton Star, Whitehead admitted suggesting that someone "probably ought to bomb" the University of Georgia ... Then, in a March 26 letter to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Whitehead claimed that liberals have been registering "known al-Qaida terrorists" to vote.

The lead Democrat in the fray is ex-Yahoo! executive Jim Marlow, who in the GOP-leaning district is mostly hoping to squeeze into a run-off with Whitehead, and from there bank on Whitehead's "self-destruction."

The other House seat likely to open up is Rep. Bobby Jindal's (R) LA-1 district, which many believe will be vacant if/when Jindal wins the 2007 Louisiana gubernatorial race. Jindal is such a formidable candidate in the contest to replace outgoing Gov. Kathleen Blanco that no major Democrat has risen to challenge him.

But don't call Jindal the winner yet. Jindal was heavily favored to win in 2003 -- but analysts think racism, more than anything, kept the Southeast Asian American from getting votes from GOP whites. And now, Wood and Sabato note, Democrats are not shy about playing to racism in hopes of stopping Jindal again:

Already, Democrats are subtly undermining Jindal by referring to him as "Piyush," his middle name. Actually, it isn't subtle at all: the goal of using his foreign sounding middle name is blatantly obvious, and smacks of racism, a tactic that should be condemned whether the insult is being hurled by Democrats or Republicans. We'll still bet on Jindal, just not heavily at this stage. He will need weak opponents and a strong aura of invincibility all the way to October in order to win.

UPDATE: Wood and Sabato are wrong -- Piyush is Jindal's given first name, not "middle name." But they're right about the intention, which is much the same as Fox News highlighting that Barak Obama's middle name is "Hussein." See here for a story in the New Orleans Times-Picayune about the issue.

Labels: Georgia, louisiana, Southern Politics