Black Voters Pick a Republican- Usher Clark to Victory in Louisiana Supreme Court Race Over Faircloth

Something that might interest Louisiana readers. Soemthing we have had to endure up here for months!! That is a very dirty race for the Louisiana Supreme Court up here. It seems that races in this part of state 9Mostly the Delta and Central Louisiana) are usually very tough. It was also a race between two Republicans. You can read an overview of the race here at Clark defeats Faircloth for La. Supreme Court seat. This race was about the only thing on the ballot and thus turnout was very low.
For the record I was hoping Faircloth would win . But ole well .

A little over view of last nights race that was between two Republicans

28,521 52.80% Marcus R. Clark, R -
25,495 47.20% Jimmy R. Faircloth, Jr., R

Here is a Parish by Parish breakdown of the Race

This race was very much a turnout race. The closer you were to Monroe (Ouachita Parish) you ID Clark as the local boy and those Parishes supported him.

The Closer to you were to Alexandria (Rapides parish) you ID Faircloth as the local boy and those Parishes supported him .

The story of the night was that Rapides did not turn out enough to counter the Ouachita vote. Both the Dems and GOP has a very good turnout machine in that Parish..

It is interesting to look at three Parishes . Claiborne that is more in the Shreveport orbit voted in a decisive manner for Faircloth .

Faircloth also won Bienville which is both in the Shreveport and Monroe orbit and Jackson Parish that is much more in the Monroe orbit.

The results were in
Claiborne- Clark 270 Faircloth 448
Jackson -Clark 644 Faircloth 730
Bienville Clark 347 Faircloth 420

Two observations on these numbers. First all these Parishes reside in the same Judicial district and I believe some interesting political dynamic is going on here.

Also the Jindal endorsement as well as Fairclotht apping into the white Pentecostals seemed to help. Esp in Jackson. The one Parish that seems to go against the Orbit dynamic and sticks out like a sore thumb is West Carroll Parish where Faircloth made some surprising inroads . West Carroll should be in the Monroe Clark orbit.

West Carroll was Clark 285 Faircloth 287

But Faircloth's problem was the Black vote. I am not exactly sure why African American leaders backed Clark. Part of it was the traditional machine that usually supports Dems (The Sheriffs , the DA's, etc) was backing Clark.

But in many ways Clark was a guy that usually African Americans might not back (see Clark's whole Faircloth is a trial lawyer stuff for an example)

The problem can be seen in Faircloths home Parish of Rapides LINK (Results from Rapides Parish in Sup Court Race(

The first 10 boxes are very Democrat African Americans boxes. You can see that by looking at the Obama McCain race LINK (Result for Obama/McCain race in Rapides)

Box C06 for instance results were 601 votes for Obama a whopping 3 votes for McCain .

Last night the results in that box for the Supreme Court race it was Clark 15 Fair cloth 18 .

So not only is he not moblizing black turnout in this race he is having trouble keeping Clark from making significant gains in his African Americn boxes .

In Ouachita we see Clark did not have the same problem You can tell the African American boxes quite easily by looking at the Obama/ McCain race in Ouachita here LINK (Results for Obama/McCain race in Ouachita)

For instance look at Box 15 that went Obama 579 McCain 2 .

Last night it went Clark 63 Faircloth 9 (Click here for Ouachita Results in Sup Court Race)

Box 79 that went Obama 513 McCain 2 last night went Clark 108 Faircloth 13 .This underperformance by Faircloth in Black boxes in his Orbit start to add up. Clark did not have the same problem .

Finally many will point out the Jindal endorsement did not help Clark. I disagree with that. ANy Jindal enedorsement was going to have a limited effect in Ouachita Parish. But it appears to me it might have helped in other areas. In the end Faircloth did not have a adequate "get out the vote machine" in his home Parish. There was little Jindal could do to help that.

Update-
It has occured to me that one thing that Faircloth had going against him was a major Parish wide Tax millage was on the ballot in Ouachita. This proposal I suspect might have garned more interest by the local voter there than even the SUp Court race. It was quite controversal . Rapides had nothing like that to help gin up voters to get out.

THE IRONY is the tax millage was directly related to a plant that Jindal is trying to bring to the area. So a Jindal supported proposal might have doomed a Jindal endorsed person If the Parishes were reversed and a similar proposal has been on the ballot in Rapides instead of Ouachita the result of the Supreme Court race might have been different

See PW Police Jury, 1.80 Mills - PJ - not exceeding 15 Yrs. 81 of 81 precincts reporting on this page.