The Democratic primary in the Second Congressional District is getting tighter, and that could be bad news for incumbent Bill Jefferson. The latest independent poll shows Jefferson falling slightly and all of his major African-American challengers creeping upward.

What’s really “new” about the latest poll is that the “undecided” vote is breaking solidly away from Dollar Bill, who also has seen his core base of support dwindle over the past six months.

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The thing I love most about Louisiana politics is its cast of unforgettable characters. For the last 30 years, one of the most colorful and lovable of those characters was my friend and mentor Joe Walker, a veteran pollster, political strategist and mentor to generations of politicos and students of government. Joe died suddenly last Thursday at age 74.

I met Joe in 1977 when I was an aspiring young political reporter for The Times-Picayune. “I want you to teach me about politics,” I said to him. “I love this stuff, but I have a lot to learn — and I can tell you know this game as well as anybody.”

I didn’t know at the time that Joe also had taught government and constitutional law for four years at Tulane and Loyola universities. It was my good fortune that I appealed to both his love of the game and his love of teaching. We became fast friends, and over the years he taught me just about everything I know or have figured out about politics.

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When New Orleans was under water right after Katrina, hundreds if not thousands of volunteers from Acadiana came to our city to help rescue our citizens during the worst days of the storm. Most of these brave and selfless rescuers were not sent in by the government; they just came out of a sense of duty to their fellow human beings. Now they need our help.

The need is especially great in nearby Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes. In the coastal community of Isle de Jean Charles, which is home to many members of the United Houma Nation, life as its residents know it ended when Gustav slammed ashore last Monday. Several local bloggers and volunteers have already gone there to assess the damage and to offer what help they can.

Now it’s up to the rest of us.

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Don’t unpack your suitcases yet, folks…  

UPDATE:  There’s a pretty decent weather blog on Weather Underground by a guy named Jeff Masters, who writes that there are two schools of thought on Ike’s path. Interestingly, neither school has it coming directly at New Orleans.  One has it going to Texas, the other to the Florida Panhandle — even within 50 miles of Tampa.  Often times the “official” track forecast merely “averages” the various tracking models and casts a wide “cone” hundreds of miles to the east and west, and that appears to be happening right now.  The thing to remember is that all of the models have a significant margin of error 3 days out, and a great deal of wiggle room 5 days out. Hence the “cone of uncertainty,”  a/k/a “cone of confusion.” Now that we’ve all learned  how to evacuate, let’s hope the mayor can figure out a better way to let us back in. Personally, I’d love to see us not have to practice so often.

Good luck, everybody.

We evacuated into the storm, leaving New Orleans Friday afternoon and heading to our camp on False River (a few miles up Island Road from Mike Gio). We had planned to spend Labor Day weekend on the river anyway, so the evac simply meant taking more “stuff” with us — including all the data processing hardware, servers, etc., from Gambit Weekly.

Things were fine until Monday, when, as the photos above show rather graphically, we narrowly escaped a 70-foot sycamore tree falling right on top of the room in which we were standing. We literally watched outside the back windows as the tree wobbled and then came crashing down — missing our place by a foot or two. Sadly, Mike Gio and his family were not so lucky. (Mike, I’ll lend you my rosary next time.)

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(This post is actually by Michael Tisserand, former Gambit Weekly editor and participant in Saturday’s (8/23) Rising Tide III conference, which was excellent. Michael and his family have recently returned to New Orleans, and I know of his strong interest in public education, so I asked him to submit something to our blog about the education panel discussion at RT3. Here it is — and thanks, Michael.)

Paul Tough’s recent New York Times Magazine cover story extolling the New Orleans charter school movement didn’t have many fans on the Rising Tide III education panel on Saturday. “Garbage,” said Christian Roselund, a writer, former United Teachers of New Orleans communications director and (of course) a blogger. Around him, heads nodded in agreement.

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That’s not the only word, but it is the best word I can think of to describe Rising Tide III, from which I have just returned. High fives to the organizers, panelists, and participants for putting together an awesome and altogether memorable experience. And a great big “thank you” to all the bloggers for welcoming Gambit Weekly and blogofneworleans into your growing fold. On a personal note, it was really fun to finally put faces and names to all the local bloggers I’ve started reading in the past year. I would name you all here, but I’m quite sure I’d leave someone out, so forgive me if I acknowledge you collectively. You guys rock.

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(From Levees.org and Sandy Rosenthal)

On the eve of the anniversary of the worst engineering failure in U.S. history, the grassroots group levees.org will release a new short film, The Katrina Myth:  The Truth about a Thoroughly Unnatural Disaster. The film, to be debuted on Thursday, Aug. 28, goes after the “destructive and unfair myths that are slowing the region’s recovery.”

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 Louisiana Secretary of State Jay Darden, a Republican, has cleared Jefferson Parish Registrar of Voters Dennis DiMarco, also a Republican, of any wrongdoing in connection with a GOP party-switch mailer sent to 12,000 West Bank Democratic and Independent voters asking them to join the Republican Party.

The mailer went out with DiMarco’s office listed as the return address — or sender — which could easily give voters the impression that the parish registrar was asking them to switch parties. That’s a clear violation of the law, which requires political neutrality by registrars. The mailer prompted an immediate and understandable complaint from Democrats.

“It was certainly sloppy in terms of the proofreading,” Dardenne told The Times-Picayune, after conducting what the paper called “a short investigation.” Dardenne added: “It certainly wasn’t criminal.”

Well, maybe not, but there’s still the matter of consequences for this blatantly misleading piece of political mail. The folks who did send out the recruitment mailer — several Jefferson Parish officials and their “design company” — have supposedly “taken responsibility,” according to Dardenne.

What does that mean?

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We all pay closer attention to storms post-K, and that means we should pay closer attention to where we get our information about storms.  I have found two excellent weather-related sites in recent years — the tropical pages at Crown Weather and Weather Underground.  Truth is, you only need to bookmark the Crown Weather site, because it includes a “roundup” of several other sites, including Wunderground. 

What I like most about Crown Weather is that the person who writes the opening summary puts it in plain English (mostly) and cuts to the chase. I don’t know the writer’s identity, but he/she does a great job of distilling ALL the intelligence out there from various sources and almost always concludes with his/her best read of where a particular storm is going — and he/she is usually right.

Hopefully, you won’t have to be checking these sites very often in the coming months/years, but it’s always good to have them handy.