Inside Report for Nov. 28, 2008

• By SCOTT DYER
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Nov 28, 2008 - UPDATED: 12: 05 a.m.

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On election night, after East Baton Rouge Parish’s votes had been counted, Mayor-President Kip Holden’s proposed $989 million construction program was losing 73,539 no votes to 73,401 yes votes.

Down by only 138 votes, Holden had every reason to be optimistic as the 33,341 absentee or early voting ballots were counted. (Only 30,917 of those people actually voted on the tax proposal.)

Black voters had turned out in droves on Nov. 4 to support U.S. Sen. Barack Obama’s bid to become the nation’s first black president, and many of them also were supporting Holden’s proposal to raise sales taxes by a half-cent and property taxes by 9.9 mills to fund the ambitious program.

In the 17 precincts where black people accounted for 95 percent or more of registered voters, Obama won 99 percent of the vote, U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu got 97 percent, and Holden’s proposal won 70 percent.

By contrast, precincts with 95 percent or more white voters rejected the bond issue by nearly a 2-1 margin. The overwhelmingly white precincts preferred Republican John McCain over Obama by a nearly 4-1 margin.

And as it turned out, Obama crushed McCain 20,140 to 12,809 among the early voters, enabling Obama to snatch a last-minute victory in East Baton Rouge Parish. 

But those same early voters rejected the mayor’s tax proposal by 2,933 votes, and the proposition lost by just 3,071 votes. Metro Councilman Pat Culbertson, who voted absentee himself, has a simple theory.

“A lot of the folks who voted absentee just didn’t bother voting to the end of the ballot,” Culbertson said, noting that Holden’s tax proposal was the last item on the ballot.

Holden acknowledges that the placement of his tax proposal cost him support not only among early voters, but election-day voters as well.

Parishwide, nearly 20,000 more votes were cast in the presidential race than on Holden’s tax proposal. Among early voters, the difference was about 2,400 votes.

Looking back, Holden attributes the drop off to the fact that many early voters cast their ballots before the campaign to promote the taxes hit full stride. “I don’t think some people had a clear understanding about what they were voting on,” Holden said.

The Committee for the Future of Baton Rouge, a political action committee run by Baton Rouge Area Chamber Board Chairman Jim Ellis and state Sen. Sharon Weston Broome, D-Baton Rouge, raised about $400,000 for a media blitz to push the proposed taxes. 

Almost immediately after the Nov. 4 vote, Holden began talking about holding another tax election, possibly as early as next fall.