Send money or David Duke will eat your face

This UNO poll is only measuring favorables, not actually putting Duke on a list of candidates and asking respondents to pick one. But that doesn't mean the result isn't noteworthy.

Meanwhile, four out of five Louisiana voters have an unfavorable opinion of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, according to the survey, though about 13 percent of voters said they would consider voting for him in the upcoming U.S. Senate primary.

"In sum, this survey reveals that David Duke is extremely unpopular with likely Louisiana voters," according to an analysis accompanying the survey's results.

Still, at least some voters said they would consider casting their ballots for Duke, including 10 percent of Democrats and 15 percent of Republicans.

That’s not nothing! Not in a field of 24 candidates. If Duke can actually pull something close to 15 percent of the Republican vote, we might even be talking about a runoff between two Democrats. It almost makes you wonder who encouraged (paid) Duke to run in the first place. If Donald Trump were here he might even say the election is "rigged." But we know nothing like that happens in Louisiana.....

Anyway we're getting ahead of ourselves.  Before you rig an election,  you first have to make sure everybody participating gets paid. Campaign staff gotta eat too, you know.  Which is why it's so helpful for every candidate Republican or Democrat to have Duke to kick around.  The fundraising emails practically write themselves.

Two major Democrats are using Duke's presence to let their potential voters know just how different they are from him. Lawyer Caroline Fayard, responding to a Duke Facebook post linking her to Goldman Sachs and Black Lives Matter, released a radio ad that casts her as the "direct opposite" of Duke. Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell cited the grand wizard's candidacy in a fundraising tweet, apparently hoping the frightening prospect of a Duke victory would inspire donors to send a little something his way.

His fellow Republican candidates are in on it too. They may be keeping mum on presidential nominee Donald Trump's constant invective against immigrants, women, Muslims, and so on, but they seem downright eager to contrast their own professed open-mindedness with Duke's knee-jerk intolerance. No GOP rival has been more aggressive on this front than retired Col. Rob Maness, a tea party Republican who's taken to social media to call Duke a cowardly loser who's "full of hate."

Maness is in a more precarious position here. Prior to Duke's entry,  he was arguably the furthest fringe of an admittedly pretty far right field.  Now he's trying to distinguish himself as the more reasonable fringe guy. Good luck threading that needle.

Meanwhile, the boogeyman is out there.  If you think your candidate can raise a little scratch selling Duke repellent,  now is the time to make your pitch.