Caroline Fayard is congratulated by supporters after advancing to a runoff Nov. 2 with Jay Dardenne for lieutenant governor at the Royal Sonesta Hotel Saturday evening. "I think it's wonderful. She wants to be lieutenant governor. Most lieutenant governors have other political aspirations. She realizes the importance of the position and wants to pitch Louisiana to the rest of the country for what we do best," said Avery Kessler, an Uptown resident at the party who said Fayard was the first Democrat he had ever voted for. (Photo by Sabree Hill / UptownMessenger.com)
Voters in Uptown wards were instrumental in lifting two residents – lieutenant governor hopeful Caroline Fayard and judicial candidate Jennifer Eagan – from crowded fields in their respective races Saturday into the Nov. 2 runoff election, according to an analysis of precinct-by-precinct results released Sunday.
Uptown voters also would have preferred a runoff between Candice Bates-Anderson and Richard Exnicios for the juvenile court post, rather than Bates-Anderson’s outright win, the results show. Also on the ballot, support for restructuring the recreation department was even stronger in the Uptown than it was in the city as a whole.
Statewide impact
Republican Secretary of State Jay Dardenne led the eight-candidate field for lieutenant governor in statewide voting on Saturday, garnering 28 percent of the vote. Fayard, a Democrat making her first run for office, was competing for the second slot in the Nov. 2 runoff against Republican country musician Sammy Kershaw, who had run for the office previously, and five others. Fayard and Kershaw’s tallies remained close as ballots were counted, but she earned 24 percent of the vote over Kershaw’s 19 percent with more than 33,000 votes separating them.
The vast majority of that margin, 20,000 votes, was earned in Orleans Parish, where Fayard easily led the field with 50 percent of the vote. Dardenne placed a distant second in Orleans Parish, with 22 percent (or about 9,000 votes), and Kershaw’s 661 votes put him only a handful of ballots shy of last place in the city. (Third place was Democrat Jim Crowley with 10 percent, and fourth was Republican Kevin Davis with 8 percent.)
New Orleans voters’ lack of interest in anyone other than Fayard or Dardenne was even more pronounced in the seven Uptown voting wards between Felicity Street and the Jefferson Parish line, precinct-level results show. In the Uptown, Fayard and Dardenne split a combined 76 percent of the vote, leaving the other six candidates in mostly single digits in every ward.
The margin between the two front-runners was closer Uptown than the rest of the city, however, as Fayard took 43 percent of the Uptown wards’ ballots and Dardenne took 33 percent. In fact, Dardenne won the 14th Ward, which surrounds Audubon Park and the universities, taking 48 percent there to Fayard’s 29 percent.
Based on Saturday’s results and traditional voting patterns, Orleans Parish will be a base for Fayard moving into the Nov. 2 runoff: the three Democrats in the field took a combined 64 percent of the vote here, to the Republicans’ 36 percent. At the state level, however, those figures are flipped – the five Republicans combined took 64 percent and Democrats took 36 – suggesting the scope of Fayard’s challenge heading into what many pundits say will be a very partisan mid-term Congressional election.
City-level races
In the four-way race for the citywide Section C seat on First City Court, Veronica Henry took 36 percent and Eagen took 31 percent, with Angela Imbornone a close third at 27 percent. A fourth candidate, Mark Michael Gonzalez, received about 6 percent of the total 33,000 votes cast.
In the six voting wards that run from Felicity Street upriver to Carrollton Avenue, however, Eagan was a clear first-place finisher, taking from 40 to 60 percent of the vote in each. Only the farthest upriver ward – the 17th, which runs from Carrollton Avenue to Jefferson Parish – differed: Imbornone was first, followed by Henry and then Eagan, and there the totals were so close that each was separated by only a few dozen votes.
All told, Eagan (an Uptown resident, like Fayard) took about 2,400 more votes in Uptown wards than Imbornone, doubling the 1,200-vote margin that separated them citywide and clinching her place in the runoff against Henry.
In the other open judicial seat on Saturday’s ballot, the Section C seat on the Juvenile Court, Bates-Anderson cinched the election with 52 percent of the vote, avoiding the need for a runoff with her closest competitor, Exnicios, who garnered 26 percent. Bates-Anderson was also the voters’ first choice in the Uptown wards, but by much closer margins: 44 percent over Exnicios’ 40. Exnicios even won two wards, the 14th (with 57 percent of the vote) and the neighboring 16th (with 49 percent, to Bates-Anderson’s 41).
The city’s third-place finisher in the juvenile court race, Catrice Johnson-Reid, has a Milan-area address, but her vote totals in Uptown-area wards was not very different than her citywide total of 13 percent.
The controversial restructuring of the city’s recreation department, favored by the city administration but opposed by the NAACP, passed in Saturday’s election with 75 percent of the vote. It proved far more popular in the Uptown, with support in various wards ranging from the high 70s, the low 80s and even 90 percent in the 14th Ward.
Contact Robert Morris at rmorris@NolaMessenger.com, or post your comment below.
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