John Maginnis: Hurricanes Cause Political Power Outages
Shreveport Times (excerpt)

Autumn's twin seasons in Louisiana, elections and football, rarely take a back seat to anything, but hurricane season knocked the wind out of both this year.

To provide for three elections (primary, runoff and general), the first vote was moved up one month to the first week of September. The same thing happened to football season years ago, as schedules grew from 10 games to 12. That seemed to work, except that it put the start of both seasons at the peak of hurricane season, in harm's way.

So when Gustav blew away the Sept. 6 primary, it was pushed back to Oct. 4, and the party runoff, if needed, to Nov. 4, and the final, general election to Dec. 6. Right back where we started.

Louisiana may just have to live with future storms' effects on its congressional clout, as well as on other power rankings, those of its college football teams, from LSU to McNeese State. Gustav-affected LSU fans, having endured a 10 a.m. season opener and a postponed second game, would have been inconsolable had school officials been forced to move the third game to avoid Ike. Instead, both the LSU and Southern contests went on as scheduled, though to the chagrin of some frazzled Baton Rouge officials and residents. They were rightly concerned about the effects of football traffic on streets with stoplights still not working and with mountains of debris protruding from curbs.

The games went on and all survived. Yet LSU fans harbor fears that the missed Sept. 6 game, a tune-up affair, will delay the development of its young quarterbacks and thus hurt its chances of defending its national championship or, at least, beating Alabama. A costly storm indeed.