BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) – Six years ago, Sen. Mary Landrieu’s effort to draw billions of dollars in federal disaster aid to Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina helped keep her in office for a third Senate term.
Since then, Landrieu has lost much of that post-Katrina goodwill. The prominent Republican support she garnered in 2008 from local elected officials whose parishes and towns were ravaged by Katrina and Hurricane Rita in 2005 has withered amid sharper partisan divides.
As Election Day nears, Landrieu and Democratic Party surrogates have amped up the references to hurricane recovery, trying to remind voters of her disaster aid work as they seek support to keep her in the Senate even though the state is growing ever more Republican.
Disaster recovery was featured in a recent Landrieu TV ad, and the rallying cry has been sounded in the campaign.
“Mary Landrieu never stopped fighting for the people of Louisiana when we needed her the most, when we were on our knees, when we were going through the rubble of our lives, while we were picking through the smelly debris that destroyed our homes and our livelihoods,” state Rep. Walt Leger, a New Orleans Democrat and No. 2 House member, told voters at a recent campaign rally.