Stupid boring race between another pair of nothings? You betcha! But we kind of have to pay attention nonetheless because we might be talking about the next Governor here.
The election was called to pick a successor to Mitch Landrieu, who resigned as lieutenant governor in May to become mayor of New Orleans. The winner will hold the office for about 14 months and will have to seek re-election next year, but would be considered the favorite to win the full four-year term starting in January 2012.
If Gov. Bobby Jindal decides to pursue national ambitions and steps down, the lieutenant governor would ascend to the job as governor. Besides being first in line of succession to the governor, the only defined duty of the office is to oversee the Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, the state's chief tourism promotion agency.
Consensus media opinion has it that Jindal is all but guaranteed to either run for President, or Senate, or beg whichever Republican wins the Presidency in 2012 (if that happens) for a job in Washington. I agree that he probably wants one of those things. I'm not so sure any of them will be available to him, though. State budgetary disasters like the one Louisiana is facing this year have a way of chewing up Governors. We'll see what Jindal's prospects look like when or if he comes out the other side of this mess.
So far the Governor's strategy during the crisis time appears to be spending as much of it as possible on the out-of-state speaking circuit. But there's a letter writing campaign underway aimed at getting him to stop that.
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