House candidate David Duke (R) in Independence, La. (Thomas B. Edsall — The Post)

By Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 1, 1999; Page A3

MANDEVILLE, La.—A decade ago, David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan grand dragon, shocked the nation. As the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate and governor, he won majorities of white Louisiana voters, campaigning against affirmative action, welfare and crime. Duke lost only because of the solid opposition of black voters.

Now, Duke is struggling in his bid to succeed retiring Rep. Bob Livingston (R-La.) in a special election today in an overwhelmingly white district.

Duke's sagging fortunes reflect the powerful economic, political and cultural trends that are changing this suburban-rural region of southeast Louisiana.

In a section of Metairie once better known for its gun and pawn shops, a Borders bookstore and coffee bar opened last year, serving an influx of new voters who would never dream of voting for Duke.

Local officials in the 1st Congressional District are banking on the new Naval Research and Technology Park at the University of New Orleans to become a cornerstone of high-tech growth, shoring up an economy dangerously dependent on oil, shipbuilding and the low-paying tourism industry.

Here in St. Tammany Parish--20 years ago a rural backwater--developers, less than half a mile from Duke's house, are building the Sanctuary, a gated community where a four-bedroom, 3,685-square-foot residence sells for $512,000. The Sanctuary is for a different class of voter than the construction workers, cab drivers and insurance salesmen who make up the core of Duke support.

Perhaps most important, Republicans in Washington and Baton Rouge have in the years since Duke's heyday in the early 1990s enacted much of his agenda on welfare reform, affirmative action, tuition assistance for the working middle class and immigration restrictions.

These trends are factors in the current lead in all polls held by former governor David Treen, an establishment Republican who is backed by most party leaders, including Rep. Livingston, who retired after disclosures of extramarital affairs.

But Duke is not out of the game. Under Louisiana's election system, all candidates, Republican and Democrat, run against each other in the "first primary." If no one breaks 50 percent of the vote, the top two go at it in a May 29 runoff.

The crucial battle for second place and a spot in the runoff has been between state Rep. David Vitter, a conservative reformer and Rhodes scholar, and a wealthy ophthalmologist with the unforgettable name of Monica Monica ("her father loved her so much he named her twice," aides say).

Monica has poured $1 million of her own money into increasingly harsh TV attacks on Vitter and Treen. Her unrelenting assault on Treen and Vitter and their angry commercial responses may well have have cost the front-runners support and turned the contest into a six-person horse race, according to political operatives.

Those standing to gain are Duke, state Rep. Bill Strain, a 6-foot-9 good-old-boy Democrat, and GOP entrepreneur Rob Couhig.

Although his prospects are not strong, it is Duke's presence that gives the contest national significance. This election has become a referendum on whether Duke is politically alive or dead, and whether stark racial appeals continue to resonate in a Deep South white district right next to majority black New Orleans.

"If David Duke wins in Louisiana, the Republican Party can kiss its House majority goodbye in 2000," said Ken Johnson, spokesman for Rep. W.J. "Billy" Tauzin (R-La.). "Every Republican candidate will find themselves morphed into David Duke. If you thought Newt Gingrich was a poster boy for bad behavior, just let the Democrats get a shot at David Duke."

Johnson's goal is to mobilize mainstream Republicans to support Treen. But Johnson's anxiety is grist for the Duke campaign, which is based in large part on the fear Duke generates in politicians trying to defeat him.

"We have a chance to make a very powerful statement," Duke says. "What is the worst nightmare for the liberals in the U.S. Congress? Isn't it David Duke getting elected? . . . I'm kind of like the little Dutch boy in reverse. I'm going to pull the finger out of that dike and the American people are going to come rushing over it."

Polls suggest that not enough people will come rushing over, but Republicans warn that Duke "flies under the radar," and white Duke supporters hold their cards close to the vest when asked what their intentions are on Election Day.

There is a makeshift aspect to Duke's political operation this year. One afternoon about a week ago, Duke came to the door of his house and de facto headquarters with shirt untucked to meet a reporter. Kelly O'Reilly, a Duke volunteer, straightened out the couch where he had been napping.

As Duke discussed his highly controversial views, warning of a Zionist conspiracy to weaken the white Christian tradition in America, Roy Anderson, another volunteer who said he has not held a paying job in 17 years, painted a large sign promoting a "DUKE RALLY" at American Legion Post 267.

Two days later, at the Duke rally in Jefferson, there were 58 people in a room that can hold 400. This did not deter Duke from trying to rouse the desultory crowd for nearly an hour. Speaking about the Littleton, Colo., school shooting, he said: "Those boys in Columbine High School were the epitome of diversity. They wore fingernail polish, they called themselves the gay trenchcoat mafia, they were anti-Christian. . . . Diversity is what is destroying the country." And of civil rights, Duke said, "The truth is that in many major cities in America, whites can't even get on the bus without putting their lives in danger."

The message produced only token applause, in part because Duke has been preempted by the conservative policies enacted by the Republican Congress and by Louisiana's GOP governor, Mike Foster.

The first thing Foster did after he won in 1995 was to order an end to state affirmative action. Foster and the legislature have enacted a tuition assistance program directly addressing Duke's complaints of the unfair financial burdens on middle-class college students and their parents, a program benefiting many formerly disaffected white voters.

Duke's competitors in the race are not about to be outdone by Duke when it comes to tough stands. The usually cautious Treen--former governor Edwin W. Edwards (D) once said it took Treen an hour and a half to watch CBS's "60 Minutes"--has, for example, demanded that convicted drug dealers be executed on the same streets where they conducted business.

In the interview, Duke speculated on the prospect of defeat, describing himself as a conservative counterpart to Norman Thomas, the socialist who first ran for president in 1928 on a platform of Social Security and Medicare: "You ask, 'Am I a success?' Yes, I'm a success. Thomas was never elected to the presidency, but he could say afterwards: 'Look at the policies of the Democratic Party. That's my program.' "