And then, the way they like it in Louisiana, there was time for just a taste of politics during the parade. Dodging the candy that revelers tossed Mardi Gras-style from the floats rolling down Parkerson Avenue, Republican Woody Jenkins and Democrat Mary Landrieu got a workout Saturday as they hurried up and down the parade route, shaking every hand they could reach in the crowds that lined the sidewalks.
Jenkins and Landrieu are both sweating out the final three weeks of a sprint-to-the-finish race to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. J. Bennett Johnston Jr. And, with their eyes on the battle for the Senate, both party hierarchies in Washington are sweating right along with them.
Louisiana is one of four Southern states where the retirement of longtime senators is forcing Democrats to defend difficult terrain, even as they drive to seize Republican ground elsewhere.
Facing the threat that Democrats could capture Republican seats in states such as Colorado, South Dakota, Oregon and New Hampshire, the GOP is counting on offsetting gains in these four Democratic-held seats to preserve its Senate majority.
"If Republicans can pick up two, three or four of these Senate seats, there is no way the Democrats can take back the Senate," said Atlanta-based GOP pollster Whit Ayres, who is working in several of these races.
In the first months after their Sherman-like advance across the region in 1994, Republicans were favored to win all of these seats. Today, as the national currents have shifted, the two sides appear much more evenly matched.
The Republican prospects are strongest in Alabama, where polls show GOP Attorney General Jeff Sessions holding a 9-percentage-point lead over Democratic State Sen. Roger Bedford in the race to succeed Sen. Howell T. Heflin.
Democrats have the upper hand in Georgia, where Secretary of State Max Cleland, a disabled Vietnam War veteran, has held a steady lead over Republican business executive Guy Millner for the seat now held by Sen. Sam Nunn.
On the bubble are the races in Louisiana and in Arkansas. In Arkansas, polls show Democratic Attorney General Winston Bryant clinging to a narrow lead over freshman Republican Rep. Tim Hutchinson for the right to succeed Sen. David Pryor. The latest Louisiana survey - released last week by Baton Rouge-based Southern Media and Opinion Research - showed Landrieu, holding a slim 47 percent-to-41 percent lead over Jenkins, but with his support more firm than hers.
In each of the four Southern states where Democrats are defending open Senate seats, at least a plurality of voters - from a low of around 45 percent in Georgia, to about half in Arkansas and Alabama, to some 60 percent in Louisiana - describe themselves in surveys as conservative.
But across the South, the gale-force ideological and anti-Washington winds that pummeled Democrats in 1994 have plainly diminished. Polls show Clinton comfortably leading Republican nominee Bob Dole in Louisiana and Arkansas, running ahead in Georgia, and remaining competitive even in Alabama.