All the Duke's men.

Louisiana is a law unto itself, but it still has something to tell the rest of the country.

THE Louisiana election has been hailed all over the world as a repudiation of bigotry, but Louisiana voters sent another message that will prove important in the presidential campaign of 1992. The governor's race was a decisive triumph for neo-populism. In fact, neo-populism, whether of the Duke or the Edwards variety, was the only brand of politics on offer, the voters having rejected the reform alternative of Governor Buddy Roemer by almost 3 to 1.

Populism feeds on resentment of those who enjoy too much or work too little. Since the days of William Jennings Bryan, it has been the voters' response to politicians and policies that are technocratic, undemocratic, or unjust. That is what happened in Louisiana-as also in Mississippi and Pennsylvania-and it may happen again in the presidential elections next year.

Louisiana possesses the most exotic political culture in the United States, a simmering gumbo of racial, religious, and ethnic conflict. But it is also the most urban, industrialized, and ethnically heterogeneous of the Deep South states. It may prove a useful trial market for Duke's brand of populism before he plays to a national audience. Let us look at the various groups to whom Duke appealed most strongly.

According to figures from Voter Research & Surveys published in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, his strongest support came from white Protestants, 62 per cent of whom voted for him in November. Within this group, his strongest support came from "Dixiecrats": Anglo-Saxon Protestants in the rural parishes of north Louisiana, who have far more in common with east Texas and Mississippi than they do with south Louisiana. (As any north Louisianian is quick to point out, all the major highways in the state run east-west; the interstate linking Shreveport to Baton Rouge has yet to be completed.) North Louisiana is a region of small farms and big plantations, Baptist churches, and pulp and lumber mills. Huey Long won elections as a northerner, exploiting resentment against the Big City and Big Oil.

North Louisiana did not share in the high old time south Louisiana enjoyed in the years of the oil boom, 1973-1981. But it suffered along with the rest of the state when the oil boom went bust. In the middle 1980s unemployment in the northern parishes rose and state services shrank; state taxes increased to make up for the massive shortfall in oil revenues. Northerners have resented their "hind teat" treatment for more than a century, but they felt particularly betrayed by Edwards in the years of economic adversity. They had been the last to get in on the good times and were the first to lose out.

Traditional Dixiecrats are also concentrated in the toe of the Louisiana boot. These are the "Florida parishes"-so called because the territory until 1810 was part of the Spanish province of West Florida-settled by Loyalists escaping the American Revolution. People in these parishes see themselves as different and at odds with Washington, Baton Rouge, and their immediate neighbors. Violent blood feuds have a long tradition in these parts. The racial balance is nearly even here, making relations between blacks and whites historically more tense than anywhere else in the state. The large black vote and creeping suburbanization from New Orleans gave Edwards an edge in the two-way race, and the Florida parishes switched from Duke to Edwards in the November election. But the same region that is home to Jimmy Swaggart has shown "Christian forgiveness" to David Duke in the past, and may do so again.

Indeed, Duke's message played best of all to those who follow Swaggart and the other televangelists. Duke won 69 per cent of the vote of these white self-described "fundamentalists." But Duke did somewhat less well among white weekly church-going Catholics and Protestants, winning 57 per cent of their vote. Non-observant voters who wish to sanitize Duke's past may be more likely than practicing churchgoers to accept his professions of Christianity.

Across the confessional divide, white Catholic voters in Louisiana have proved less receptive to Duke's message than Protestants, giving him 52 per cent of their vote, but Catholic ethnics of Irish, German, French, and Italian descent in the New Orleans suburbs did cast a protest vote for Duke in October against Roemer and in 1990 against Bennett Johnston.

New Orleans has always been a turbulent city with fierce ethnic rivalries. Alone among antebellum Southern cities, New Orleans experienced a significant influx of Irish and German immigrants seeking opportunities laboring on the docks and digging canals. The demand for immigrant labor was high: black slaves were far too valuable to risk in such endeavors. Irish and Germans often stopped off in Brooklyn before they made their way south, and the result is the extraordinary "Nointh Ward" or "Yat" (for

Where y'at?") accent, which sounds uncannily like a Brooklyn accent to a Yankee ear. There was great resentment of these newcomers among the indigenous population. Although the Know-Nothing party in the 1850s was anti-Catholic as well as anti-immigrant, it enlisted enthusiastic support from prominent Catholic Creole families. In the 1890s, blacks and whites banded together to lynch a group of Italian immigrants, and the rigid race classification system that grew up in the aftermath of Plessy v. Ferguson made room for a new category neither white nor black, called "Dagoes."

Turf Wars

NEW ORLEANS has had the same sort of turf wars as Northern cities. Since World War II, white New Orleanians gradually migrated to the suburbs, more slowly than in Washington, Atlanta, or Detroit but with the same result. These exurban migrants look back on their old neighborhoods with a mixture of resentment and fear. They are living less well in the blue-collar suburbs that surround the Crescent City than they or their parents did in the city. The old neighborhoods with their tree-lined boulevards and spacious single-family houses are now predominantly black. White suburbanites living in cramped tract houses and condominiums hold blacks directly responsible for their reduced circumstances.

This group and its political outlook is replicated in every major city in the South, Northeast, and Midwest. This is the group of potential Duke supporters that packs the most political wallop nationally. The good news is that most white suburbanites in Louisiana did not vote for Duke in the runoff election, but they had cast their protest votes for him in the two earlier elections. Likewise, if Duke runs in the presidential primary in Michigan, Detroit suburbanites may vote for him as a protest. The less viable Duke is as a nominee, the more attractive he will be as a protest vehicle.

Louisiana was relatively immune from the race-baiting politics that plagued other Deep South states in the 1940s and 1950s. This relative tolerance is the legacy of the Cajuns, descendants of the eighteenth-century Acadians. After the French and Indiana War, the Acadians were forced by the British to leave their land in Nova Scotia. Like French Huguenots who harbored Jewish refugees in the Second World War, the Acadians have been more tolerant on racial matters because they have suffered persecution themselves. In the 1960s whenever there was racial trouble, Governor John J. McKeithen invariably called out the National Guard from the Cajun parishes, because he could depend on the Cajuns to go easier on the blacks.

Duke's evangelical protestations and his links with the Klan have repelled Cajuns, who in previous elections preferred the Cajun Edwin Edwards or the Shreveport Methodist Bennett Johnston. However, in November Duke won 56 per cent of the self-described Cajun" vote. Cajuns, too, were disenchanted with Edwards in his last term in office, and Duke's message of laissez-faire struck a responsive chord among fishermen resentful of federal regulations.

Laissez-faire appeals helped Duke with Republicans as well. Duke split the Republican vote with Edwards by approximately the same margin as the rest of the white vote, 56 to 44 per cent. This spells trouble for the Louisiana Republican Party. At the same time that Kirk Fordice was making Republican populism respectable in Mississippi, Duke was discrediting it in Louisiana.

The Louisiana Republican Party, caught between Governor Roemer's unpopularity and Duke's demagoguery, suffered setbacks in statewide and legislative races. Roemer seemed remote from the voters, and his technocratic style of governance alienated many allies. Roemer's attack on Duke was good news for Louisiana; it helped propel his supporters into the Edwards camp and assured Edwards a landslide victory. But the good news for the state was bad news for the Republican Party.

A Warning to Bush

SOMETHING similar could happen in the 1992 presidential primaries.

President Bush appeals to the same core constituency in the South as Roemer: affluent, well-educated suburbanites. That vote could be overwhelmed by the developing conservative populist trend. Depending on who in fact enters the primary race in states like North Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and Mississippi, we could see George Bush appealing to country-club Republicans against an opponent or opponents with a resonant message for pickup-truck Republicans. If he faces Patrick Buchanan appealing to white-collar social conservatives and David Duke appealing to blue-collar populists, the President is in danger of serious embarrassment.

Moreover, in every election starting in 1952 in which a serious challenge has been mounted within the incumbent's party, he has lost the subsequent general election. This danger would be maximized if Duke were to run as an independent in November 1992. He could draw off Republican votes in Midwestern states like Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, and Illinois as well as in the South.

Without Lee Atwater, a master of the Southern political idiom, the Bush White House seems oblivious to the danger lurking on Super Tuesday, March 10. The best course for the White House in response to the populist challenges from Duke and Buchanan would be to endorse the economic-stimulus policies of Jack Kemp and Vin Weber. Republicans who wish to preserve the Reagan coalition must recall how Reagan won over conservative populists in the first place, by sending them a message of economic hope in a time of adversity.