LOUISIANA used to be famous for its colourful, populist Democrats. In the 1930s, Governor Huey Long promised to make “every man a king” (his main legacy is the art-deco capitol building in Baton Rouge; its walls still contain the bullet holes from the volley that killed him). In 1991 Edwin Edwards, a flamboyantly corrupt governor, defeated David Duke, an ex-Klansman, with bumper stickers that read “Vote for the Lizard, not the Wizard”.

These days, the Pelican state’s Democrats are more sober, yet endangered. Senator Mary Landrieu, a Democrat, faces a run-off election against Bill Cassidy, a Republican, on December 6th. If she loses, as seems likely, it will be the first time since Reconstruction in the 1870s that Louisiana does not have a white Democrat in Congress (assuming that Mr Edwards, who at 87 is running for the House of Representatives, also loses).

When Ms Landrieu was first elected in 1996, Democrats were still fairly strong in Louisiana. Bill Clinton won the state with 52% of the vote, and Ms Landrieu joined another Louisiana Democrat, John Breaux, in the Senate. But since then, the state has turned red. In 2012 Mitt Romney defeated Barack Obama here by 17 points. Ms Landrieu’s political longevity owes much to her family (her father was mayor of New Orleans in the 1970s; her brother is now), her political abilities (she is a forceful centrist) and a solid dose of luck.

That now seems to have run out. According to Pearson Cross, a political scientist at the University of Louisiana, Democrats such as Ms Landrieu have held on in Louisiana for longer than in other parts of the Deep South by appealing to a coalition of black voters, who are concentrated in New Orleans, and rural whites, especially French-descended Catholic Cajuns, who unlike Protestants in Mississippi and Alabama have tended to back Democrats. Alas for Ms Landrieu, black voters tend to stay at home during mid-term elections, especially run-offs. And white voters–Cajun or not–have largely deserted the Democrats. In the first round of voting on November 4th, Ms Landrieu won just 18% of the white vote.

Ms Landrieu used to have a useful reputation for grabbing federal taxpayers’ cash to create jobs in her home state. After Hurricane Katrina, for example, she threatened to block every one of George Bush’s nominees for important jobs until Uncle Sam gave Louisiana $6 billion to repair the levees. In 2009 she did not agree to vote for Obamacare until she won a $300m sweetener that Republicans dubbed the “Louisiana Purchase”.

Yet her latest attempt to show off her clout ended in humiliation. To help her win re-election Harry Reid, the Democrat who will remain Senate Majority Leader until January, allowed a vote on a bill she had sponsored to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, which would bring oil from Canada to Gulf coast refineries (and so boost the Louisiana economy). The vote was for show, since Barack Obama had promised to veto the bill. But it never came to that: it was defeated in the Senate by one vote.

Ms Landrieu’s best hope now is that with control of the Senate not in any doubt, Republicans will stay home. Or that some of the mud she is flinging at Mr Cassidy will stick. At an event in New Roads, a small town north of Baton Rouge, Ms Landrieu spent most of her time questioning whether Mr Cassidy actually did the part-time work for a local hospital that he was paid for (in his previous career, the congressman was a doctor). He says that the allegations are a slur, although he has not produced any evidence that he actually turned up. Still, Ms Landrieu should know that Louisiana voters are remarkably tolerant of rogues. These days, it is Democrats they dislike.