Episode 4: Kathleen Blanco and the Katrina Blame Game

Kathleen Babineaux Blanco: a carpet cleaner’s daughter from New Iberia turned school teacher turned stay-at-home mom turned…Louisiana’s first female governor. In 2003, her focus was on education reform, juvenile justice, and economic development. And halfway into her first and only term, it looked like she had a good chance at re-election. But that all changed with Hurricane Katrina.

Sticky Wicket: Louisiana Politics Versus the Press, hosted by Laine Kaplan-Levenson, is an award-winning miniseries out of WWNO New Orleans Public Radio and WRKF Baton Rouge that takes on four historic clashes between Louisiana politicians and the media. Turns out, these relationships have always been love/hate in the Pelican State.

The series is a collaboration between WWNO, WRKF, and the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities (LEH), which funded the project as part of the Democracy and the Informed Citizen initiative of the Federation of State Humanities Councils. Democracy and the Informed Citizen seeks to deepen the public’s knowledge and appreciation of the vital connections between democracy, the humanities, journalism, and an informed citizenry. Sticky Wicket complements four Democracy and the Informed Citizen feature articles on Huey Long, Jim Garrison, Ernest “Dutch” Morial, and Kathleen Blanco that ran in the summer, fall, and winter 2018 issues of 64 Parishes magazine.