Far from New Orleans, evacuees work on turnout and clout in upcoming election

By The Associated Press

Posted 1:05AM on Sunday 2nd April 2006 ( 19 years ago )

Snaking his Mercedes through a cluster of low-income rentals in a corner of Houston densely packed with Hurricane Katrina evacuees, Eusi Phillips stops at each complex and makes two deliveries: a stack of absentee voter forms for the front office, and fliers he tapes above washing machines urging tenants from New Orleans to cast their ballot in the April 22 election back home.In the laundry rooms, Phillips hopes to find Louisiana's newest power bloc of voters."It's a matter of circling the wagons," said Phillips, 27, who has been canvassing Houston apartments each weekend and has built a voter information Web site. "In communities like the Lower Ninth Ward, how are they going to have a say in what happens there if we don't reach these people and get them to vote?"Across Houston, Phillips and representatives of at least two nonpartisan groups are rallying eligible voters among the 150,000 refugees who have remained in the city since Katrina landed Aug. 29, 2005. Most volunteer campaigners are frustrated, homesick evacuees like Phillips, who say nothing about party politics but speak, with rising anger, about who's going to fix what's broken in New Orleans.The groups search for voters at job fairs and churches. They comb parking lots for Louisiana license plates and don't easily relent when faced with excuses.Never voted before? Here's the form you need.Leery about mailing in an absentee ballot? There's a bus you can ride to the nearest Louisiana polling station for free.It's an effort that may be unparalleled domestically since the 1860s, when soldiers cast ballots in the Civil War, said Michael McDonald, an assistant professor of government and politics at George Mason University in Virginia."The big unknown here is how many people still feel a part of the community," said McDonald, who studies voting trends and behavior. "I suppose one of the things we'll see coming out of the election is that if turnout is low among absentees, it might be that many of these people have no intention of returning."Organizers insist that won't happen. One group that's given one of the biggest hands to evacuees since Katrina, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, aims to sign up 25,000 evacuees nationwide before the election. Another community advocate, The Metropolitan Organization, set its goal at 10,000.But with three weeks before the election, the numbers seem lagging. The two groups have about 4,000 Houston signatures combined. Nationwide, some 10,000 evacuees have mailed absentee ballot requests, according to Louisiana Secretary of State Al Ater.Although not a single displaced Louisianan showed up when Ater, the state's top election official, spent two hours in Houston last week to take voters' questions, he said the empty church auditorium didn't suggest apathy. The no-shows may have reflected either poor scheduling or that many voters already know how to cast ballots.Still, evacuees' participation in the election will be crucial _ and not just so their interests are met. Black leaders and civil rights groups, already positioning for a possible challenge, insist low turnout among those still living outside Louisiana would invalidate the results.What is Ater's standard for deciding if the New Orleans election was fair? "By and large, turnout will certainly be a key factor," he said.He added, however: "We're not the voting police. We cannot force people to vote, we cannot force people to want to vote."That job is where groups like The Metropolitan Organization come in.Envisioning "a significant political force" _ born from Katrina and solidified by the issues evacuees have faced since leaving six months ago _ TMO has spelled out a broad agenda. Priorities include reserving public land for affordable housing, establishing long-term job training and improving education in low-income neighborhoods."How obvious all these issues are to the people who left New Orleans, it's apparently not obvious to the people making the decisions there. So there's some real frustration," said Broderick Bagert, senior TMO leader.But for some evacuees, it's a single-issue campaign."People want to go home. That's the agenda," said Marlo Fleury, filling out an absentee ballot form during a job fair in the George R. Brown Convention Center, which sheltered thousands of evacuees after Katrina. "A lot of people have the same ideas. If we vote, we can get it done."Bagert said his group has begun drafting questions to ask candidates during an accountability session April 8 in New Orleans. The session will be broadcast to cities where significant numbers of evacuees remain, including Houston, Atlanta and Louisville.Bagert said New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu have agreed to appear.Organizers in the various groups have so far shied from endorsing candidates, but that could change."We have access to the largest bloc of potential voters," said Angelo Edwards, a main leader of the Katrina Survivors Association, an arm of ACORN. "Whatever candidate gets our endorsement, they're going to get access to them."Phillips, who spent about $1,000 creating a Web site and printing fliers and T-shirts, said he's had more than 11,000 hits on his site since its January launch.The unemployed law school graduate and occasional jazz musician got involved after he failed to receive one of 700,000 voter information mailers Ater says his office sent to evacuees, using addresses provided by FEMA."If I didn't get anything, how many others didn't?" Phillips said.But even with the aggressive push, not everyone is paying attention. New Orleans resident James Mackie Jr., who filed for an absentee ballot with about a dozen others after a church service for refugees in a Houston hotel, believes some evacuees are too preoccupied to concentrate on an election."They're still trying to get their lives together here," Mackie said. "Honestly, voting is not their No. 1 priority right now."Others see it differently, including New Orleans resident Ulanda Shedrick, who registered to vote even though she plans to stay in Houston."Even though you're not there, (voting) still makes you feel like part of the community," she said. "That's going to appeal to a lot of people."___On the Net:HASH(0x1ce1068)HASH(0x1ce10ec)

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