There are almost 250,000 former residents of New Orleans, mostly Black, who are ready to vote next week in the Texas primaries.
The Washington Post reports,
For the nearly quarter-million people such as Sam who were evacuated to Texas after the hurricane and its floodwaters left New Orleans devastated in 2005, powerlessness has been a constant theme, exacerbated by their reliance on goodwill and the government for help in starting over again. Angry at the Bush administration for failing them both before and after Katrina, many view the March 4 Democratic presidential primary as a chance to exert some control over their futures.
...Nearly every evacuee interviewed, including those who say they harbor no desire to return, said rebuilding the New Orleans area and restoring some measure of the lives they knew is their overwhelming priority in this year's election. They want a president who can relate to the downtrodden and is dedicated to rebuilding more than just the city's tourist attractions. They are angry, for instance, that Donald Trump will soon construct a 70-story hotel in the city's central business district while neighborhoods in the Ninth Ward are still rodent-infested wastelands.
We're talking about a very close race in Texas. It will be ironic if the bumbled, incompetent approach the Bush administration took to the victims of Katrina will have a serious impact upon the primary. In the past, between one and two million Democrats have come out to vote in this primary. Obviously, if a significant percentage of the transplanted Katrina victims come out to vote, they could make the key difference in this tight race.
The WAPO article reports,
Many here had kind words for Clinton, but most members of the New Orleans diaspora said they will vote for Obama, with whom they share a sense of racial kinship and who they believe will not let their city's historically black neighborhoods die.
"If you have not sacrificed, suffered throughout your life, you wouldn't understand us. [Obama] has," said Godiva Anderson, 49, a real estate broker who settled in Houston after Hurricane Katrina. "I'm not taking anything away from Hillary, but she's a white woman. She hasn't had the same struggles that we've had."
Between very liberal Austin and Dallas and Houston, with their high concentrations of African Americans, combined with the quarter million New Orleanians, Texas is looking more and more like Obama territory.