Blanco, she recalls ...

900,000 people would fill the Cajundome, when set up for a basketball game, about 64 times. A city of 900,000 residents would be about eight times the size of Lafayette. The states of Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming don't even have 900,000 residents.

At 9 a.m., Jan. 10, Kat Landry walked into the Secretary of State's office in Baton Rouge and began a race against the clock and the calendar. Filing with the office, she made her efforts -- at the time limited to T-shirts, bumper stickers and a Web site -- official. There are debates on what percentage of Louisiana's registered voters are needed to recall a governor, but Landry is going by one-third, which would be some 900,000. To ensure victory, she is aiming to overshoot to 1 million signatures. If she succeeds, Gov. Kathleen Blanco will be recalled from office. In that case, Blanco would be the third U.S. governor to be recalled successfully (along with the 1921 North Dakota recall of Lynn J. Frazier and the 2003 recall of California's Gray Davis). If Landry can reach 900,000 signatures, Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu would fill Blanco's office temporarily until a special replacement election could be held.

Landry has been a resident of Louisiana her entire life. She currently lives in St. Martinville, where she is looking after her aging parents and helping with their estate. Before moving home, she worked as a departmental secretary at McNeese State University in Lake Charles. Looking to start her own business, she has filled one room of her house with merchandise. Yet, in light of her ambitions of enterprise, Landry decided to devote the better part of her post-Katrina year on her political efforts. Her start-up group RECALL (Responsible & Effective Citizen Action for Leadership in Louisiana) is her first foray into the political spectrum. With the soft voice of a former secretary, she is steadfast in her mission: getting Blanco out of office.

"I realize we have a lack of leadership on the part of the governor," Landry says to explain her commitment.

Like so many across the world, Landry watched the constant coverage of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. Like so many Louisiana citizens, she was well aware of past political shenanigans, faulty leadership and troubles that plagued Louisiana's governor's mansion administration after administration. But, watching the wake of the storm, she says she never realized it was this bad.

"The political aftermath that I witnessed really shocked me because our governor seemed more concerned with her political future than the future of the citizens who were being affected," Landry says.

As levees failed, flooding the city of New Orleans and trapping its citizens on rooftops, Landry was appalled to see officials accusing one another or defending themselves against bad reputations.

"Our elected officials seemed to immediately turn to an accusatory status, accusing other people of being the problem rather than actually trying to address the issues of what was happening to the citizens. It seemed like immediately it was all about 'Where's my voter base and when are they coming back?'"

After Katrina, Landry and her best friend sat down and pondered if what they were contemplating was the right move for a wounded state. She weighed out the money -- out of her pocket -- it would take to get the ball rolling with stickers and T-shirts. She fretted over the time it would mean away from her family. For Landry, it was not an easy decision. Yet in the end, it was one she had to make.

"I realized we had to do something and that our state and our people were worth the effort," she explains.

Momentarily, after Hurricane Rita struck, she re-evaluated her efforts, second guessing if she had made the right choice. Because people had lost so much, perhaps she thought, the recall wasn't the most important goal.

But as more time went by, Landry says she saw the administration fail to address the devastation in Cameron Parish, Pecan Island and other places in the state. The lack of aid made her more convinced that the recall was needed to get Blanco's ear.

"I believe that this governor does not have a real understanding of the issues concerning our citizens, and that's very harmful to everybody," she says.

Landry's days and nights since have been devoted to the recall. She often wakes up at 6 a.m. and works until midnight. From the moment she wakes, she's either on the phone, doing interviews or using her computer to push her petition. In the months that followed the start of RECALL, Landry would make appearances on talk radioand be followed by CNN for a package that was to air on Anderson Cooper 360 (the segment was bumped by coverage of a mine collapse). Her efforts may be featured on Wolf Blitzer's The Situation Room.

"People want to hear where the progress is and how things are going and how they can help," says Landry. "We've been working non-stop, but like I say, that's a good thing. We're very happy about that cause its worth it."

Landry stands firm behind her laundry list of reasons why she says Blanco should be plucked from office. Other than political posturing in the time of crisis, she says Blanco failed as a leader and didn't seem to understand who she should surround herself with or who she should go to in an emergency. Blanco, to Landry, lacked the understanding of the governing process and didn't show respect to other leaders.

When leaders asked residents to return to an unfinished city, Landry was appalled.

"I wouldn't ask my family to come back to devastation. I would be working on the infrastructure in those communities. I would be meeting in the leadership in those communities.

"To me, as a citizen, the most important issues were housing for citizens --decent housing for our citizens -- and protection. And our citizens had to beg for a special session, then they didn't address those issues that were most important to those doing without a roof over their head."

Now she says the recall process will show the rest of the country there's more to the citizens of the state than what has been portrayed on the media and show citizens they can have a positive effect on leadership.

"This is a very positive movement. It's a movement for change from the old politics to the new governing system that actually is concerned and works with our citizens," she says.

"I think it's very doable. I think we can do it. Our citizens want change and they want something productive and they are willing to do what it takes to get it."

While Landry has visions of upheaval and people taking the controls of government dancing in her head, state Democrats don't share her views.

"In all honesty, I feel that it's a complete and total waste of time," says Stephen Handwerk, a member of the Lafayette Parish Democratic Executive Committee and the Progressive Democrats for Louisiana and the host of Meet the Democrats on Acadiana Open Channel. "It's taking our efforts and using them to divide us and focusing on things that aren't helping anyone. We still have people that are homeless. We still have people that don't have enough food to eat. We still have kids that are not in school. I think it's a complete and total waste of time."

For Handwerk, the recall should have been scrapped because there is an election coming in 2007. He says Landry's efforts, if successful, will only mean a brief abbreviation, perhaps a year and a half, of her term. Handwerk says by the time the recall is verified and a special election held, the state could have just waited for her term to end, thereby saving money.

Arguing the recall has no shot, he cites the lack of a fight back from the Democratic party because the effort is not being taken seriously. He also says that those who were working with Blanco in the days following the disaster haven't come out against her and that Republicans who initially spoke up for her job in the next election have backed off. As he puts it, who wants the job?

"Not that I am blindly partisan to the point where I will be a cheerleader to anyone who has a D beside their name," says Handwerk. "I'd like to counter and say, 'Who could have done better?'"

Though in essence fighting to first push Landrieu, another Democrat, into office then elect a new governor (a governor she does not have a preference for as long as they are strong leader), Landry's timing doesn't bother her.

"Our elected officials so many times now seem more concerned with their next election than what they are doing day to day, and we simply cannot afford to wait two more years for effective leadership," she says. "We want to send the message to all officials that we expect them to dedicate their time, talent and money, just like our citizens do in community after community, and that it's their responsibility to serve the public as a whole not, just as a select few."

When Handwerk talks of the Blanco's work surround Katrina, he relates tales of Houston residents stuck in traffic for eight hours as Rita approached. The 92 percent evacuation of New Orleans, while it could have been better, he says was respectable.

"We are talking about the largest natural disaster ever to face this country just with Katrina alone," says Handwerk. "Then add on top of that Rita, which affected us and our friends to the west. We literally have two black eyes now, and to get into something like this?"

Handwerk puts his partisan hat back on to criticize the Republican-led Congress and George W. Bush's promises of rebuilding -- yet, he says, there is no rebuilding action in New Orleans.

"If that's the case, someone on our side said, 'Well let's work on recalling Sen. (David) Vitter, Congressman (Charles) Boustany and all of the others that influenced this entire situation.' But you know what, we've got more things to focus on right now and that's to take care of the immediate need of making sure people have a place to sleep at night, that they have food to eat and that their kids are taken care of. We want to rebuild. We want to make better what we have in this state.

"People want to shift the focus from where it really needs to be, on the tough matters of how do we recover, to a matter of pointing fingers," says Handwerk.

Despite her Republican party membership, Landry vows her efforts are not about party lines.

"This isn't about party, it's about people. I don't care if you are Republican, Democrat or independent, I have got people that I know that are in every category that I love that are very capable and care about their community," says Landry.

When it comes to recalls, Pearson Cross, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Louisiana who teaches state and local government, says the road is long and hard. Unless met by a wealthy financial backer, who is willing to spend 50 cents to $1.75 per signature ($450,000 to $1.5 million) to employ petition takers across the state, Cross says Landry will face an insurmountable peak. Even former governor Edwin Edwards, facing a recall in the early 1990s, escaped the clutches of the petition.

"It is very unlikely that the recall effort will have any kind of success. The problem is that even if public discontent with Kathleen Blanco was even higher than it might be, gaining all the necessary signatures is really prohibitive in Louisiana," says Cross. "This particular recall effort would require roughly 900,000 people to sign a petition. By contrast, in California, when they recalled Gray Davis, the legal requirement there was also 900,000. It's one thing to get 900,000 in California, it's another thing to get 900,000 in Louisiana."

Both Cross and Handwerk call out the danger of a recall election. For Handwerk, the cost will sting an already shorted state, especially when considering the cost of clerk of courts office validating petitions submitted via e-mail. Cross drives home his point of devaluing elections by referencing that in the recent California recall, which put Arnold Schwarzenegger into the office, far fewer people voted for him than the governor he replaced.

"It seems to me that you are taking an unknown in this case, you are really casting the dice," he says.

Cross warns a recall is dangerous because it seeks to undo an election, which he says is a slippery slope.

"The founders didn't institute a direct democracy for a particular reason -- and that was the people are fickle. And the governor who was doing a really good job before the natural disaster, all of a sudden isn't? Well, that's not really the truth, is it? It's problematic. It's a direct democracy expedient in a republic that's mostly based on a representative democracy and it's dangerous to some extent," he explains.

When Landry filed with the secretary of state's office, she joined the ranks of other Louisiana citizens who weren't satisfied with their governors and strove to have them recalled. The last recall effort in Louisiana was during Edwards' final term (1991 to 1995). Even against the governor known as "The Crook," the effort failed like every recall attempt in the state before it.

However, Landry has something previous attempts didn't have. She's been fortunate to receive time from a variety of media in a period when Louisiana is getting national attention, which undoubtedly has made citizens more aware of our leaders' follies. But the real boon to her drive is the Internet.

Landry's initiative is the first recall effort in Louisiana to take place during the fully emerged Internet age. In the first week her Web site, www.recallgovernorblanco.com, went up, she received 70,000 hits. As of press time, she hasn't tallied up the signatures she has received, but Landry does know that 900,000 Web surfers have visited her site. Thousands upon thousands have e-mailed their support and hundreds have told her they will take some of the legwork, or at least finger work, off her hands and forward and push the petition. Even Don Hayes, a friend of Landry's confined to a motorized wheelchair, has dedicated to go door to door with petitions. Landry reports military in Iraq, as well as displaced citizens in other states, have downloaded petitions and sent their praise.

"We have a tremendous amount of support, 'cause we all see the need for leadership in this state," says Landry. "Without the Internet, without the Web site, without the ability to communicate in that way to our citizens, I don't think this effort would have been possible."

Although he says the effort will come up short, Cross concedes the Internet will play a significant role in Landry's drive. In his view, technology has changed the way the political game is played and easily puts like-minded voters together. Even if Landry doesn't reach 900,000, Cross says she will succeed in other ways.

"I think you'll see this kind of thing more often. But again, in Louisiana, I think personally this is another and new way that people play politics," says Cross. "I mean, it's going negative, basically. She may (Landry) say, 'Oh, I'm sure we will have the number of signatures, and it's all working just great.' But for her to succeed, she doesn't really to need to recall Kathleen Blanco. The longer the recall petition is on and the more people who look at and everything else and the more credence the press gives it, the more it succeeds in being a kind of negative campaign tool to cement in voters' minds that there's something wrong with Kathleen."

The recall's suggestion that Blanco is a poor governor, Cross says, doesn't jive with other recalls. The movements are usually spurned by a public malfeasance in office or a dereliction in duty. Cross uses the example of James E. West, the mayor of Spokane, Wash., who was recalled in 2005 after it was learned he traded jobs for sexual favors from gay men. The last successful recall of a governor was in 2003, when California's Davis fell after being accused of lying about the budget, breaking promises to raise taxes, being tied into California's high utility rates and other blunders.

"My sense is that most voters would not sign a recall petition unless they were strongly convinced that actual wrong doings were involved ... complete malfeasance or public bribery, something like that," says Cross. "I think that's when you tend to get recall efforts.

"In this case I certainly don't think that's there at all," he adds.

Cross adds that coming out of year one, Blanco's constituents seemed to like her, and were, for the most part, happy about the job she had done.

Landry disagrees. She says she was not impressed at the time and thought that even then her communication skills weren't the best. At the same time, she says she can see why, with her years of experience, people voted for her.

"It seemed to me that the times I have seen her that she doesn't understand a lot of times the questions that are posed to her. She doesn't seem to understand the issues themselves, and I don't mean that in an ugly way. I really don't," says Landry. "I just don't think she had the skills to really perform the duties of her office."

Cross shakes off Landry's criticism of both Blanco's pre- and post-Katrina work and questions if voters should immediately judge a governor beset with two huge natural disasters.

"You have two acts of God in the space of a couple months, and then all of a sudden, people are accusing you of being a terrible governor?

"Course," Cross adds, "who said politics was fair?"