{"id":3233,"date":"2008-12-08T08:22:11","date_gmt":"2008-12-08T15:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2008\/12\/08\/william-jefferson-can-stuff-his-political-career-into-the-freezer\/"},"modified":"2008-12-08T08:23:08","modified_gmt":"2008-12-08T15:23:08","slug":"william-jefferson-can-stuff-his-political-career-into-the-freezer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2008\/12\/08\/william-jefferson-can-stuff-his-political-career-into-the-freezer\/","title":{"rendered":"William Jefferson can stuff his political career into the freezer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>Anh Joseph Cao<\/strong>, a little-known 41-year-old community organizer and GOP attorney, knocked off nine-term Democratic Rep. <strong>William Jefferson<\/strong> in a stunning upset in Louisiana&#8217;s Second District to become the first Vietnamese American elected to Congress.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>In recent years Jefferson has been fighting scandals and a federal indictment for money laundering, bribery and misusing his congressional office, which he denies. Last year the FBI reported finding $90,000 in marked bills in Jefferson&#8217;s freezer.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>This is rare bi-partisan good news.\u00c2\u00a0 The Republicans get a member of Congress to add to the &#8220;R&#8221; side of the ledger and aisle and another vote on most issues, as well they get another victory which, combined with Saxby Chambliss&#8217;s thumping in the Georgia Senate run-off race, gives them cause to attempt with a straight face to say that the Republican Party is in absolutely splendid shape.\u00c2\u00a0 The Democrats get to be rid of a corrupt politician who was caught with $90K in a freezer &#8212; imagine yourself in Nancy Pelosi&#8217;s position in 2006 of having to place Jefferson in committee\u00c2\u00a0seats\u00c2\u00a0lest you\u00c2\u00a0rid an especially vulnerable constitutency (post Katrina New Orleans residents) which just re-elected him.\u00c2\u00a0 And, as 2010 is likely to be\u00c2\u00a0a year Republicans make electoral gains, this represents one number scratched off the &#8220;Republican gain&#8221; number &#8212; it&#8217;s a Congressional District where Democrats outnumber Republicans by 26 percent&#8211;, which may look good psychologically if, say, this Democratic pick-up is the difference between 10 Republican pick-ups and 9 or 20 and 19, or&#8230; you get the picture.<\/p>\n<p>So&#8230; we are truly in a post-partisan political world.\u00c2\u00a0 And a good year for Community Organizers at that!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Anh Joseph Cao, a little-known 41-year-old community organizer and GOP attorney, knocked off nine-term Democratic Rep. William Jefferson in a stunning upset in Louisiana&#8217;s Second District to become the first Vietnamese American elected to Congress. In recent years Jefferson has been fighting scandals and a federal indictment for money laundering, bribery and misusing his congressional [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3233\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}