1. Gather as much information as possible and sleep on it.
2. Find out where you live, politically speaking.
LWV Fall 2007 Candidate Guide for Orleans Parish
Look Up Your District
Louisiana Legislative Maps
3. Know your candidates through their websites (and through the forums, thanks NOLA Cleophatra!). Again, use the LWV Guide above.
4. Know your candidates through friends and neighbors to see if material on website matches reality.
– Talk with people who’ve lived here a while, see where they stand on local issues and which candidates they endorse, also research how the viewpoints of those running and their political affiliations have changed over the last few years and then make up your own mind. Note: In my opinion, the terms Democrat and Republican are largely meaningless in Louisiana.
– Edit: This evening, a respected Social Services lawyer friend and I talked about the candidates for Criminal District Court. She gave Laurie White a nod, but also offered insight into two other candidates. Gary Wainwright would decriminalize small-time drug possession, while Donald “1-800-NOT-GUILTY” Sauviac is a colorful dresser who is often seen in lime green suits and the like. Someone for everyone.
5. Go to the blogs.
– Adrastos
– Ashley
– Bayou St. John David
– Celcus
– Jeffrey
– Oyster
– Read the Comments sections of these and other blogs, where the real discussion (and other hanky panky) goes down.
– If I’ve omitted any other must-reads, please feel free to leave them in the Comments section below.
5. Don’t read current issues of the Times-Picayune, the Gambit and their endorsements.
6. Learn more about the political history of where you live.
Gambit Weekly: Street Politics In The Big Easy (1997)
TP: New Orleans’s Various Political Groups (2006) – SOUL BOLD FACE LIFE COUP … it’s acronym central!
Bayou Buzz | New Orleans Oliver Thomas Fall Could Change Council Racial Balance (2007) – a nice history of City Council racial balance since the 1970s
7. Hang in there. The “train wreck on top of a 44 car pile-up” will be over soon. (A cookie to the one who can tell me whose blog I saw that on today.)
More to come as I find it. Please feel free to chime in or add to the repository here.
8. Go to one of the many fun, free, forums! While there, you will swing between confusion, anger, boredom, inspiration and amusement as you listen to the candidates. Give the candidates the crazy eye and/or handshake test.
Answer to #7 – Adastros, of course!