BATON ROUGE, La. — Mary L. Landrieu, the last Deep South Democrat in the United States Senate,
was defeated in a runoff election here Saturday by Bill Cassidy, a
Republican congressman who incessantly attacked the incumbent for her
support of President Obama.
With
Mr. Cassidy’s victory in what had been the last undecided Senate race
of the midterm elections, the Republicans gained a total of nine Senate
seats, giving them 54 senators and firm control of the upper chamber
when the 114th Congress convenes in January.
For Democrats, Saturday’s outcome was yet another sobering reminder of their party’s declining prospects in the South,
a region they dominated for much of the 20th century. Ms. Landrieu was
the last statewide elected Democrat in Louisiana, and Mr. Cassidy will
join a fellow Louisiana Republican, David Vitter, in the Senate, making
it the first time in 138 years that a Democrat from the state has not
sat in the Senate.
Speaking
to supporters at the Crowne Plaza Hotel here, Mr. Cassidy said, “This
victory happened because people in Louisiana voted for a government
which serves us but does not tell us what to do. Thank y’all.”
Even
though Ms. Landrieu narrowly edged out Mr. Cassidy in a multicandidate
primary in November, his victory was widely expected. A second
conservative candidate with a significant following, Rob Maness, ran a
strong third in the primary, and subsequently endorsed Mr. Cassidy.
As
in much of the South, Louisiana has seen many white Democrats defect to
the Republican Party. Compounding Democrats’ problems was Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which forced roughly 125,000 reliably Democratic voters to permanently relocate to other states.
Mr.
Cassidy, 57, is an associate professor of medicine at Louisiana State
University who joined the House of Representatives in 2009. He closely
followed the Republicans’ overall strategy this year of nationalizing
congressional races and linking Democrats to President Obama. Mr.
Cassidy’s campaign and the outside groups supporting it regularly noted
that Ms. Landrieu had voted with Mr. Obama 97 percent of the time.
Mr. Cassidy also repeatedly promised to seek the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which Ms. Landrieu voted for.
Louisiana
regularly ranks as one of the poorest and unhealthiest states in the
country, but Mr. Cassidy’s biography allowed him to pre-emptively combat
suggestions that he was insensitive to the needs of the poor: According
to his congressional website, he founded a community health care
clinic, treated uninsured patients at the public Earl K. Long Hospital
in Baton Rouge for two decades, and set up an emergency medical facility
for Katrina evacuees in an abandoned Kmart shortly after the storm.
An early ad featured him in green scrubs and a lab coat, poring over a dog-eared copy of the health care bill by lamplight.
“Most
in Congress who voted for Obamacare never read the bill,” he said in
the ad, adding: “I read the bill. It was clear there would be canceled
plans, expensive premiums, no guarantee you could keep your doctor. I
voted no.”
For
Ms. Landrieu, 59, the daughter of former Mayor Moon Landrieu of New
Orleans and the sister of the current mayor, Mitch Landrieu, the defeat
brings an end to an 18-year run in the Senate in which she earned a
reputation as a Democratic Party nonconformist, particularly with her
staunch support of the oil and gas industry.
Her
prospects in the runoff dimmed after the Nov. 4 election, when
Democrats lost their majority in the Senate. That meant that she would
no longer chair the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources,
which had given her significant sway over the oil and gas industry,
which is crucial to Louisiana’s economy.
Senate
Republicans also promised Mr. Cassidy a spot on the Energy Committee if
he were to win, further undermining Ms. Landrieu’s ability to claim
that she was uniquely positioned to protect oil jobs in the state.
Last month, Ms. Landrieu was also unable to rally enough fellow Democrats to support a bill approving the Keystone XL
oil pipeline. She had hoped that its passage would show that she could
still be a major player in setting national energy policy.
Her natural allies also appeared to have abandoned her in the advertising war. A Center for Public Integrity data analysis
found that ads by groups backing the senator amounted to less than 1
percent of the 14,000 total TV ads that ran during the runoff period.
In August, Republicans seized on revelations in The Washington Post
that Ms. Landrieu claimed her parents’ house in New Orleans as her
primary residence in campaign qualifying documents. Critics said it
showed that Ms. Landrieu had become overly wedded to Washington, where
she owns a home on Capitol Hill.
In
the final days of the campaign, Ms. Landrieu went on the attack as
well, claiming that Mr. Cassidy received thousands of dollars in pay
from Louisiana State for medical work that she said he did not do. Mr.
Cassidy has denied any wrongdoing, and university officials said they
were reviewing the matter.
In
her concession speech at the Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans, Ms.
Landrieu spoke warmly about her father, who, as mayor, oversaw the
racial integration of the city in the 1970s. She cast her work as a
continuation of his legacy.
“We may not have won tonight,” she said, “But we most certainly have won some extraordinary victories.”
As
a congressman, Mr. Cassidy represented Louisiana’s Sixth District,
which covers most of his hometown, Baton Rouge. His record in Congress
has been reliably conservative, earning him endorsements from the
National Rifle Association, former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, and Phil
Robertson, star of the “Duck Dynasty” reality TV series.
Louisiana
voters also decided two runoff races for the House of Representatives.
The Fifth Congressional District seat, in northeast Louisiana, was won
by Ralph Lee Abraham, a rural doctor and Republican candidate, according
to The Associated Press. The current congressman, Republican Vance
McAllister, lost his re-election bid in November after being captured on
video kissing a campaign staff member who was not his wife.
In
the Sixth District, which Mr. Cassidy is vacating, Garret Graves, a
Republican former coastal adviser to Gov. Bobby Jindal, defeated former
Gov. Edwin Edwards, The A.P. projected. Mr. Edwards, an 87-year-old
Democrat, was released from for prison in 2011 after serving time for
extortion
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