The Big Sleazy, part II

National Review, Feb 10, 1997 by Rich Lowry

The Louisiana Independent Federation of Electors, Inc. (LIFE) is arguably the most powerful political force in New Orleans. Operated by the city's mayor, the cocksure 39-year-old Marc Morial, and his political associates, it exerted a decisive influence in November's elections, putting a small army of workers on the street on election day. It is to monitor the activities of just such big-stakes political players that Louisiana and the Federal Government have campaign-finance laws. And it is exactly to escape such scrutiny that LIFE flouts all of them, failing to register or file reports with the Louisiana Board of Ethics, the Louisiana Secretary of State's office, or the Federal Election Commission.

LIFE is an outlaw political group at least in this sense -- and perhaps in others as well. After months of combing through New Orleans election records and interviewing city residents, Republican Woody Jenkins's campaign has compiled a stunning array of evidence to suggest that Democrat Mary Landrieu's slim 5,788-vote victory over him in November's Senate race was tainted by widespread corruption, including the outright buying of votes.

At the center of the alleged misconduct in Louisiana are LIFE and the well-heeled gambling interests that helped deliver New Orleans for Mary Landrieu by more than 100,000 votes. The Jenkins campaign conducted a dozen interviews with New Orleans residents -- all of them living in the inner city -- who say they were promised cash for voting. With the understanding that the names of the interviewees would be withheld, the Jenkins campaign allowed NR to review the tapes. The number of illegal votes accounted for in the interviews isn't more than fifty or so. But the illegal practices recounted seem to implicate Mayor Morial's political organization in blatant wrongdoing, and to suggest a larger pattern of illegality that puts the integrity of Miss Landrieu's victory in serious doubt.

-- One New Orleans woman explained to a Jenkins investigator that she "was sitting on my porch when this nice person drove up in a . . . car and asked me whether or not I was registered voter or not. And I told him I was but I didn't feel like going. And he said, 'Well, if I paid you would you go then?' And quite naturally, a ride and the money, I got up and dusted off my little pants and got in the car." The woman, who couldn't read, says the man, working off a yellow (LIFE-produced) sample ballot, marked how she was to vote and then took her to three different locations where she voted and signed her name "X" each time.

-- A New Orleans man told a Jenkins investigator that he went to three different polling places and voted at each four or five times. He says he was paid $60 for each stop, was carried in a van with several other people, and was handed a yellow sample ballot that fits the description of the LIFE sample ballot (differently colored sample ballots, distributed in massive quantities on election day, are the hallmarks of the various New Orleans political organizations). The man says he didn't have to sign in or stand in line at the various polling places.

-- "Well, my friend had asked me did I want to go vote," another New Orleans woman told a Jenkins investigator. "She said they was paying people to go vote for this person. I say who was the person? She say Mary, Mary Landrieu." The woman got in a van that had three bench seats behind the driver and was driven to three polling places and given a LIFE sample ballot off which to vote. She was promised $25 for each stop. "Hey, hey all I got was $25!" she complains in the interview. "We went to three places. The agreement was we was supposed to get $25 each place." As consolation, she was given a Mary Landrieu T-shirt: "They promise you, and then they going give us ol' stanky T-shirt with her picture on it." (She threw the T-shirt away in a dumpster.)

All the interviews follow a similar pattern: An election worker promises someone money to vote; he transports him to the polls in a car or van full of people; he gives them a LIFE ballot to show them for whom and for what to vote; the voter either signs his name at multiple polling places or doesn't sign at all or, in one case, signs someone else's name. Some of the interviews suggest a fairly well-organized effort. One woman says that she was taken in a van to a polling place where she voted twice, once in her own name, the second time in a name given to her by the driver. She says the driver selected who would vote at which polling places.

The interviews also suggest that polling commissioners -- often long-serving local residents who are cozy with the neighborhood's political operators -- were active participants in the illegalities, allowing selected voters to jump lines at polling places and to vote without signing their names or being checked for identification. One man who says he stood in line for an hour and a half at one polling place complained to a Jenkins investigator that twice he saw four vans pull up full of people who were allowed to jump the line and vote immediately: "They wasn't signing the book or nothin'. Just goin' in and comin' back out."