Hurricane Katrina ended Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco's re-election bid, but the storm that flooded New Orleans and crippled the economy of the state's leading city has played surprisingly little role in the race to replace her. The four major candidates have focused instead on traditional issues: health care, education and the deplorable condition of the state's roads. "It's almost as if Katrina never happened, isn't it?" said Bob Mann, a former communications strategist for Blanco and now a professor at Louisiana State University. "It's bizarre that the recovery of New Orleans is a bigger issue in the presidential race than the governor's race. Who would have thought that?"

Mann said many voters are suffering from "Katrina fatigue," and candidates recognize that people in much of the state have moved on to other worries.

But the hurricane is never far from mind, in part because three of the major contenders - including the front runner, Republican Rep. Bobby Jindal - are from the New Orleans area. One candidate, Democrat Walter Boasso, is a state senator from St. Bernard Parish, where Katrina damaged virtually every structure.

Blanco, a one-term Democrat, had planned to seek re-election. But she was hammered by criticism of her performance during and after the storm roared ashore in August 2005. She withdrew from the race in March.

"I think Katrina would be a bigger issue in the race if she were running," said Pearson Cross, a University of Louisiana at Lafayette political scientist. "Now, the candidates are kind of agreed that we've got to rebuild the state. Everybody's in agreement with that. We've got to get more money from the feds. We've got to clean up our own house."

A dozen candidates are on the Oct. 20 ballot. In addition to Jindal, the other main contenders are: Boasso; Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell, a Democrat from northwest Louisiana; and New Orleans-area businessman John Georges, an independent. Boasso and Georges, both multimillionaires, are largely financing their own campaigns.

The election has seemed Jindal's to lose since Blanco dropped out. The Oxford-educated son of Indian immigrants made his first political campaign when he ran unsuccessfully against Blanco in 2003. Following that loss, he easily won an open congressional seat representing the New Orleans suburbs.

After Katrina, Cross said, many voters reconsidered the votes they cast for Blanco and questioned whether Jindal could have done a better job during the crisis, giving him a substantial lead that let him run almost as if he were the incumbent.

"I think there was real buyer's remorse. This election is a retrospective election, looking back at 2003 and saying, 'Wow, we made the wrong decision. Let's not do that again,'" Cross said.

Rather than describe specific recovery measures, the candidates often say Katrina offered a chance to rebuild Louisiana's troubled health care and education systems.

"There's an optimism that we can change things, but there's an anxiety that if we don't do it now, it's not going to happen," Jindal said.

All the major candidates talk about insurance relief for homeowners and the importance of protecting the coast from future hurricanes.

Georges says he will hire a "recovery czar" to run the state's rebuilding efforts. But none of the candidates are specific about how - or if - they would reorganize the Louisiana Recovery Authority, the agency created by Blanco to help guide the recovery.

In Louisiana's unique open primary system, all the candidates are running against each other at once. Any candidate who gets 50 percent of the vote plus one vote would win outright without a runoff - and some political watchers predict Jindal may do just that. A runoff, if needed, would be Nov. 17.