House 2nd District battle played out in church
by Jonathan Tilove - Times-Picayune (excerpt)

Black churches are a crucial battleground in a district where it's expected that about 55 percent of voters will be African-American, an electorate that would normally vote overwhelmingly Democratic unless given a compelling reason to do otherwise. The crossed paths of the two candidates Sunday came even as Richmond charged, in an interview recorded Saturday with Eddie Francis for WYLD's Sunday Journal, that Cao is running a racially divisive campaign by trying to scare white voters into thinking that he is cut from the same cloth as William Jefferson, the New Orleans Democrat who had represented the district for nine terms. Cao defeated Jefferson in a hurricane-delayed election in December 2008 even as Jefferson was awaiting trial on corruption charges, of which he was ultimately convicted in August 2009. That November, Jefferson was given the stiffest sentence -- 13 years in prison -- ever meted out to a member of Congress, but he is free at home in New Orleans, wearing a monitor on his ankle, pending his appeal.