Bush Measures Coattails In Louisiana

Emboldened by November election triumphs, President Bush urged Louisiana voters on Tuesday to pad the GOP Senate majority and defeat a Democratic incumbent who claims her own Bush-friendly voting record.

The president said first-term Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., should be replaced by Republican Suzanne Haik Terrell to give him a true partner in battles to lower taxes and put conservatives on the federal bench.

"There's one person in this Senate race whose willing to stand up and say she will join the president in listening to the people and make the tax cuts permanent — and that is Suzie Terrell," the president told a boisterous, flag-waving crowd of at least 5,000 Terrell backers.

In a related development, a poll conducted by the University of New Orleans showed the race to be dead even, with Landrieu getting 44 percent and Terrell 43 percent. Thirteen percent were undecided.

The daylong Bush trip, which included a $1.25 million fund-raiser in New Orleans, marked the president's return to the campaign trail after the Nov. 5 elections. Republicans rode the president's midterm coattails to widen their House majority, regain control of the Senate and do better than expected in governors' races.

Terrell makes no apologies for her ties to the White House or the Republican stars who have campaigned for her and against Landrieu, reports CBS News Correspondent Mark Strassman.

"If she wants to bring in Hillary Clinton or Ted Kennedy to Louisiana, that's fine by me," Terrell says.

For Landrieu, that would be unthinkable. She can't afford to antagonize the state's many Bush supporters, or Louisiana could elect its first Republican senator since Reconstruction.

A moderate Democrat, Landrieu often votes with the president, and her courting of his supporters has been risky.

"Landrieu has tried to get as close as she could to the president and still be a Democrat," says Louisiana political expert John McGinnis. "And that's been a tightrope for her to walk."

Should she fall, Louisiana's black voters may not be there to catch her. They're one-third of the state's electorate – crucial votes for Landrieu – and publicly grumbling she's ignoring her Democratic base.

"Democrats cannot blame African-American voters for not being excited when they vote like, seem like and campaign like Republicans," says Louisiana state Sen. Cleo Fields.

In the November election, voting was light in many Democratic precincts, particularly among blacks who comprise 30 percent of Louisiana's voting-age population. About 35 percent of blacks voted, while about 50 percent of whites did.

That pattern prevailed throughout the South on Nov. 5, when candidates such as Sen. Max Cleland, D-Ga., lost to Republicans when their efforts to cozy up to Mr. Bush turned off some blacks.

Landrieu knows that. But she's running out of options – and time. She and Terrell meet Saturday in a runoff. There's also a House seat at stake in the voting.

For Republicans, a Terrell victory would solidify their hold on the Senate, help Mr. Bush pass his agenda and magnify the president's political stature.

Minus this race, Republicans control the incoming Senate with 51 votes against 47 Democrats and one independent who sides with Democrats. Terrell would be the first Louisiana Republican ever elected to the Senate; a Republican was last appointed during the Civil War Reconstruction.

For Democrats, a victory would help the party rebound from their November losses.

Indeed, the Landrieu-Terrell contest epitomizes the challenge Democrats failed to overcome in November, and the dilemma they must solve before 2004: How do they run against a popular wartime president without alienating their most loyal voters?

Landrieu hopes to show them how, but her prospects have been slipping.

"If I had any doubts," about voting for Terrell, "they were erased just now," said Judy Carson, 21, of Monroe, La., who waved an American flag and disposable camera in hopes of catching Mr. Bush's attention from her arena bleacher seat.

Terrell is the last in a long line of GOP candidates receiving a midterm boost by Mr. Bush. Some three dozen of the GOP candidates he campaigned for last year won their races.

Terrell was one of the first Republicans to travel to Austin, Texas, in the late 1990s to encourage Mr. Bush to run for president, and was a co-leader of his successful Louisiana campaign in 2000.

Landrieu has accused Terrell of being blindly loyal to the White House, an idea the president went out of his way to counter.

He called Terrell "somebody who's not afraid to speak her mind to the president of the United States."

The president last visited Louisiana on Sept. 11, 2001, when he landed briefly at Barksdale Air Force Base while trying to elude a perceived terrorist threat against Air Force One.