Katrina evacuees a large, silent force
Only small portion within Texas are registered to vote
HOUSTON - When Melva London, a committed Democratic activist in Louisiana's Jefferson Parish, relocated to Houston after Hurricane Katrina, she quickly changed her registration so she could vote in Texas. But even though she decided long ago to support Barack Obama, the 55-year-old London did not feel comfortable canvassing her new neighbors on his behalf, knocking on strangers' doors in an unfamiliar area.
" 'Grandmaman,' you can do this," her 17-year-old grandson, still in Louisiana, beseeched her by phone. "Don't be afraid of Texas, get out there."
The other day, London was at Obama's Houston headquarters in a pink running suit and pristine white sneakers, holding a stack of handbills testifying to the candidate's Christian beliefs. She had enlisted as an Obama precinct captain, and was preparing for the campaign's ambitious pre-primary canvas last weekend.
Few of those Louisianans who have resettled in Texas have been pushed to take such initiative. Tomorrow's primary here will be the first national election since the 2005 storm that caused what could stand as the greatest domestic migration in American history. More evacuees ended up in Houston than any other city - 100,000 still remain, by some estimate - but only a small portion of them have even registered to vote, according to local officials, political consultants, and academic specialists.
As a result, many of the people who felt most aggrieved by the current administration's policies will have no role in tomorrow's potentially decisive opportunity to choose the candidates to replace it.
"We really haven't seen a tremendous influx," said Paul Bettencourt, the voter registrar of Harris County, which includes Houston. An analysis by Bettencourt's office a little over a year ago counted about 10,000 voters in the county who had been previously registered in Louisiana.
Despite their large numbers and dependence on government - and the fact that if, properly mobilized, they could help to swing the balance of power in local elections and the allocation of primary delegates next week - the overwhelmingly black population resettled by Katrina remains a largely silent force in Texas political life.
"I don't know a lot of folks that are trying to organize politically the New Orleans folks," said Charhonda Williams, a former resident of downtown New Orleans now working in Houston as an organizer for the Service Employees International Union. "Houston's a much different place for us. It's much more spaced out, so you don't have the same sense of community."
In the storm's immediate aftermath, many of the displaced Louisianans settled into a series of apartment buildings on Houston's west side that accepted their housing vouchers.
"We just went in and swept those apartment complexes," said Keir Murray, a consultant for a 2006 state-legislative candidate who tried to identify potential new voters there. "We encountered a lot of those folks and the general reaction was, 'We're moving back.' "
The campaign was successful in registering "several hundred," according to Murray, but only "50 to 60" likely voted.
"It was too early because there were still a lot of Katrina evacuees who were still expecting to return to New Orleans," said Gerry Birnberg, chair of the Harris County Democratic Party. "We've been respecting their desire to participate in choosing leadership in Louisiana."
Indeed, political operatives in Houston can recall with greater detail efforts to mobilize those new residents to vote - including local candidate rallies and scheduled buses to transport voters home - in the 2006 New Orleans mayoral election than any election in Texas.
"It was humbling for many of them to face the idea of abandoning New Orleans," said Ron Kirk, a former mayor of Dallas, where an estimated 60,000 Katrina evacuees reside. "But many of them have found the necessity of moving on with their lives, and I have to believe that includes civic engagement."
Consultants say there are multiple methods for locating resettled Katrina survivors through public records. Recipients of aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency with Houston addresses, older residents who applied for new Texas drivers' licenses shortly after September 2005, and those who filed with the post office to change their address from ZIP codes in New Orleans to those in Houston would all likely be Katrina refugees.
Yet due to the way district boundaries have been drawn, and a lack of local interest in the 2006 Texas gubernatorial campaign and in Houston Mayor Bill White's effectively uncontested reelection in 2007, few campaigns have had an incentive to target the untapped votes.
Now they do, but neither of the two Democratic presidential candidates had established much of an organization in Texas when the voter-registration deadline passed in early February, before the Super Tuesday primaries that showed that Texas's vote could be decisive.
"I am not sure there will be a separate effort to target these folks," said Josh Earnest, an Obama spokesman. "I think we'll be casting a wide net in terms of reaching out to Democratic primary voters and African-American voters in particular." (A spokesperson for Hillary Clinton did not respond to a request for comment on the campaign's plans in Texas.)
In addition, the Harris County Democratic Party is playing no role in attempting to mobilize new voters to participate in the primary and caucuses that will be held tomorrow, according to Birnberg. "Our fear is that if we concentrate on Katrina evacuees it will be perceived as favoring one campaign or the other," he said.
While Obama has dominated the black vote in recent primary contests, the new residents would be a politically unpredictable presence in Houston elections because of demographic differences with a local black population that is a "tick or two higher" socioeconomically, according to Judson W. Robinson III, president of the Houston Area Urban League.
"We have noticed that the New Orleans population was learning towards the Hillary ticket. The Houston population is more an Obama population," said Robinson. "We would have to assume the more accommodating policies of the Hillary side were more attuned to a lower-income group."
Strategists say they expect greater efforts by campaigns, Democratic Party organizations, and outside groups to register new voters before the November election.
"This election is going to be crucial, so we're going to see turnout like never before," said Representative Al Green, who estimates that his Houston-area district includes 20,000 Katrina survivors.
Many of the Katrina refugees have continued to migrate within Houston.
"It has been hard to keep track of them," said Murray. "A lot of these folks have just disappeared into the fabric of the city." 