LAST SUNDAY, in New Orleans, Louisiana, a few hundred people marched in opposition to gubernatorial candidate David Duke. Only a few hundred, and only in New Orleans. No one marched in Poughkeepsie, New York, in Gary, Indiana, or in Portland, Oregon.

Vocal public disapproval with Duke, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan who is now on the verge of winning Louisiana's Governorship, has been notably absent across the country. Only in Louisiana have voters expressed their discontent. Elsewhere, Duke's remarkable rise in the polls has turned few heads.

Who is David Duke? As a Klansman, he made hateful attacks against Blacks, Jews and Catholics. He denied that the Holocaust ever happened. And since his days under the white hood, he has been a consistent opponent of civil rights for minorities.

In four days, we will find out whether this man will be the next Governor of Louisiana.

No one can be sure that Duke will be turn out to be a hateful racist if elected Governor, but it's a pretty good bet. Putting this man in the governor's office is a risk we should not take. Anyone who has said the things David Duke has said should be thrown out of politics.

Beyond threatening the rights of Louisiana's citizens--particularly racial and religious minorities--Duke's vault from the Klan to success in the political realm poses a more widespread danger. His success could turn an otherwise fringe group of hate mongers into a national movement of racism.

THIS MOVEMENT, which represents the worst of the Republican party, has worked quietly but effectively in recent years in playing to racial stereotypes. In 1988, George Bush implicitly warned that if Dukakis were elected President, the streets would be ravaged by murderous Blacks like Willie Horton.

In 1990, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-S.C.) won his re-election bid with a commercial that depicted the hands of a white man crumpling a job rejection letter. The not-so-subtle implication is that Harvey Gantt, Helms's Black challenger, would destroy the hopes of the honest white man by giving jobs to less-qualified minorities.

And this year, in his fight with Congress over the Civil Rights Act, George Bush again tried to stir racial fears. He continually--and incorrectly--called the Act a "quota bill" that would require employers to hire unqualified job applicants.

Americans who were persuaded by the racial fear tactics of Bush and Helms constitute a potentially receptive audience for Duke's less restrained and more virulent attacks against minorities.

But it's not just racists and right-wing Republicans who are to blame for Duke's ascension to the threshold of political power. Liberals who should be rising in opposition to this kind of hatred have been markedly apathetic in the past few weeks.

There are a few ways to account for this apathy.

FIRST, LIBERALS MAY see a David Duke victory as a politically advantageous event in the context of next year's presidential race. A Republican Klansman in office is the stuff of some liberals' dreams. Such a victory, the thinking goes, would mobilize mass support for a Democratic candidate who would attack George Bush and his G.O.P. as racist and out of touch with American values.

George Bush, realizing how damaging Duke's success could be for his image in the upcoming election, has tried to distance both himself and the party from the Louisiana candidate.

But David Duke doesn't actually need to win the election for liberals to achieve this end. The fact that Duke is a racist Republican who could be the Governor of Louisiana is reason enough for Democrats to mobilize national support against Duke in this Saturday's election.