Okay but identify the villains

Here is a brief article in the Guardian US about efforts to organize workers in Louisiana's seafood processing plants.  Perhaps this is an overly optimistic account but it says here the local workers are succeeding at finding common cause with the "guest workers" brought in on H-2b visas.

Formed in 2017 as an offshoot of organizing being done by the National Guestworker Alliance and the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice the Seafood Workers Alliance has hundreds of members in 15 different plants throughout Louisiana.

The organization has focused heavily on suing employers and building alliances with local communities so that workers can help push back when they face abuses in the workplace. They’ve built deep ties in particular with the African American community. Often, low wage employers have attempted to pit low wage African American workers against Latino workers, who many saw as coming to Louisiana to take their jobs.

Through combined struggle, the workers have learned that, while their struggles are different, their problems both with local employers and enforcement are similar.

“Look, we understand now that when they say deportation that’s incarceration for black people,” said Alfred Marshall, a middle-aged African American activist with Stand with Dignity, also a project of the New Orleans Workers Center for Racial Justice.

“When they say undocumented, we know that there are over 50,000-60,000 people in New Orleans who have outstanding warrants on them that can’t even go get a job because of the fear they have,” said Marshall.

“The language they use is different, but the problems are the same and now we understand that better than ever.”

The employers in this industry thrive on exploiting the H-2 program which subjects foreign workers to horrendous abuses and depresses the wages and working conditions of the Americans they are forced to compete with.   Here is an extended Buzzfeed feature from 2015 on the appalling conditions imposed on guest workers in Louisiana and elsewhere. 

Each year, more than 100,000 people from countries such as Mexico, Guatemala, the Philippines, and South Africa come to America on what is known as an H-2 visa to perform all kinds of menial labor across a wide spectrum of industries: cleaning rooms at luxury resorts and national parks, picking fruit, cutting lawns and manicuring golf courses, setting up carnival rides, trimming and planting trees, herding sheep, or, in the case of Valdez, Gonzalez, and about 20 other Mexican women in 2011, peeling crawfish at L.T. West Inc.

A BuzzFeed News investigation — based on government databases and investigative files obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, thousands of court documents, as well as more than 80 interviews with workers and employers — shows that the program condemns thousands of employees each year to exploitation and mistreatment, often in plain view of government officials charged with protecting them. All across America, H-2 guest workers complain that they have been cheated out of their wages, threatened with guns, beaten, raped, starved, and imprisoned. Some have even died on the job. Yet employers rarely face any significant consequences.

Many of those employers have since been approved to bring in more guest workers. Some have even been rewarded with lucrative government contracts. Almost none have ever been charged with a crime.

In response to these outrages, the Department of Labor tightened some of the rules intended to protect against some of these abuses. This was immediately opposed by Senator Bill Cassidy and then-Congressman Charles Boustany. They both frequently boast of the "friends" they have in the industry.  Over the past few years, enforcement of the new rules has been de-funded and other restrictions on the guest worker program selectively modified by the Trump Administration although courts have ruled the DOL does retain enforcement authority should it choose to exercise it.

In any case, it's good to see the organizing efforts of both foreign and native workers in Louisiana meeting with some measure of success. That is, if the situation is as rosy as that Guardian story implies.  In not mentioning our industry-friendly Republican Senators or our insane President, they seem to have left some important villains out of the narrative.

The drug war is toxic

Lamar has an interview out this week with Ethan Brown about last year's Murder In the Bayou. They don't talk about the Boustany thing which is a good decision because, while I do still wonder why nobody decided to follow up on that, it isn't the central issue in the book where there are plenty more enticing threads to pull on.

That milieu, the psychology of that place is rife with, as Brown puts it, “institutionalized corruption.”

Jennings is situated directly off of Interstate 10, in between Houston and New Orleans and in the center of one of the biggest drug corridors in the country.“This specific area is sort of a drug tunnel. It’s a major trafficking route,” Brown said. “That creates a big problem in and of itself. The second thing is: The drug war is so inherently corrupt that it leads to (this).”

It also helps to explain why all of these murders remain unsolved.

“It seems like there’s a feeling that this thing is an impossible mess. You can’t trust anyone. The witnesses are crap. There’s a lack of physical evidence,” Brown said. “On the other hand, you start looking at this, and it leads to power. It leads to people in the Sheriff’s office, people who are prominent in the community.”

And this drug interdiction gambit as a proverbial "aorta of corruption" is not unique to Jeff Davis Parish.  It happens all over the place.

The FBI raided the offices of the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff's Office and the Hammond Police Department on Thursday, seizing computers, cellphones and case files in simultaneous searches stemming from a broadening U.S. Justice Department investigation of a federal drug task force.

The daylong raids closed down two government buildings in Hammond as agents conducted interviews and carried out at least two search warrants related to a nearly year-old inquiry into a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration task force accused of stealing cash from drug dealers, selling confiscated narcotics and tampering with witnesses.

Two former members of the New Orleans-based task force — both of whom worked for the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff's Office — are facing federal charges, and one pleaded guilty earlier this year to state drug conspiracy charges.

I do still hope there is follow-up with regard to the Boustany allegations. But it also seems like there's a lot more to be uncovered that goes well beyond just that matter. 

So are we gonna follow up on this now?

The election is over. Our state's political press corps should have plenty time to go back to Jennings and investigate Ethan Brown's leads on Charles Boustany now. There are actually several threads in  Murder In the Bayou that anyone interested in sussing out police and political corruption should be pulling on.  But the Boustany angle was handled with particular delicacy by a cautious herd of reporters. Anyone who has read the book understands it deserves better than that.

Anyway, now that we're past that, there's no excuse to hold back.  Seems like Boustany would prefer if everyone just dropped the subject now.  

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - Republican U.S. Rep. Charles Boustany of Louisiana has dropped his defamation lawsuit over a book that alleges the he was a client of prostitutes who were later killed.

Boustany sued the author and publisher of "Murder in the Bayou" in October, when he was in a tight Senate race competition. Boustany lost the race in November and ended his lawsuit this month. Boustany lawyer Jimmy Faircloth confirmed the lawsuit dismissal Tuesday.

"He felt as though it would probably be best for all concerned for him not to proceed with the lawsuit," Faircloth said.

Might be a good time to start asking why. 

Rigging the Election Guide Part Two: The #lasen swamp

On Election Day 2016 there are over twenty candidates in the race to replace retiring U.S. Senator and noted disgrace to humanity David Vitter. Only two of them can qualify for the runoff, of course. And at this stage, everything we've seen in the polling indicates that one of them will be the dripping mound of animated smarm known as John Neely Kennedy. Kennedy is a despicable person. But he's got the highest job approval and name recognition among this field. And he's the only candidate who has successfully run for statewide office. As difficult as it is to stomach, he's always had the clearest path to the runoff among Republican candidates. So the game really is about who squeezes into that other slot.

Louisiana political convention tells us that spot should go to the strongest Democrat.  In fact, that is still the most likely outcome Tuesday. But it isn't a lock.  Early in the year Democratic poobahs were busy figuring out how to replicate their series of happy accidents winning strategy from the 2015 governor's race. 

Handwerk said the party’s current inclination is to attempt to mimic the gubernatorial race — to come up with a strong, possibly lesser-known candidate to rally behind early while Republicans battle each other for a spot in the runoff.

Yeah that didn't happen. This is the case because of a split among Democratic power brokers initiated by the increasingly exasperating candidacy of Caroline Fayard.

The Fabulous Fayards

Why is Fayard in the race? At first it seemed okay. For a while, a popular parlor game involved figuring a way to game the abnormally large field into a double Democrat runoff. This became an especially tantalizing  prospect after David Duke jumped in.  The now infamous Raycom poll even had Duke polling at 5 percent. If that's a reliable number (it probably isn't) it was thought the presence of Duke and other fringe candidates might have captured enough of the Republican vote in the Year of Trump to deny even Kennedy a runoff spot. But that was always a long shot and the math never really worked out.  Duke is still running as a spoiler. But he's probably there to spoil somebody besides Kennedy. More on that in a bit.

Early polling showed Fayard didn't have the numbers to compete. Her campaign was always light on substance anyway. To illustrate this, I refer you to political consultant Lamar White's endorsement of her in this September 2 blog post. The points on which Lamar makes his argument for her are these.

1) She is relatively young. 

If she is successful, at 38, she would be the youngest woman ever elected to the United States Senate. All told, 116 different people have been elected to the Senate in their thirties; not a single one of them was a woman.

2) She hold a prestigious degree.

Caroline is an Ivy League graduate; she finished at the front of her class at one of the top five law schools in the country.

3) She's worked with and for powerful people.

She’s worked at one of the most successful financial institutions in the world (and even at the White House). She’s taught law at Loyola in New Orleans, and as a lawyer, she’s worked on some of the biggest environmental damages cases in American history. Last year, she helped her brother launch a new airline company. A friggin airline company.

LOL "A friggin airline company," exclaims a breathless Lamar there.  Does Donald Trump have one of those?  Also the "successful financial institution" was Goldman Sachs.

4) Caroline represents "a new generation of leadership in Louisiana" whatever the hell that means.

At no point does Lamar say anything specific about what Senator Fayard's agenda is for a tenure in the US Senate. What constituencies does she represent?  Who will she fight against? Lamar doesn't say.  All that matters to him here is the personal profile. The post most reminded me of an old Gambit cover story by Jeremy Alford where then rising star Bobby Jindal was celebrated for his "Geek Appeal" rather than substantively analyzed for his policy agenda. As if to drive home the geek cred point, the post is accompanied by a podcast where Lamar interviews Fayard. See, she's cool. She'll come on this website and chat with us.

Lamar is a friend so I don't want to be too harsh here. I hope if he reads this he takes it as constructive criticism.  But in recent years, especially, he seems to base more of his political pronouncements on his personal knowledge of the individual candidates. Too many of his endorsements can be summarized as "I've met candidate so and so and they were very nice to me."  That's great. But it's not helpful to most readers. If anything, this personality based approach represents the opposite of "new generation" style politics.  It's just a repackaged version of good ol' boy networking. (Fayard is not an ol' boy, though, so I guess it's #woke.)

Anyway back to the race. Once it became apparent that she wasn't an early contender, it made more sense for Fayard to drop out, endorse Campbell, "unite the party" so to speak, and let the Democrats claim their default runoff spot. That didn't happen, though. It's a curious thing. Again, I'm not sure why Fayard stayed in the race. But I'm pretty clear on the effect of her being there. And her behavior in the meantime has ranged from plain embarrassing to downright suspicious.

And the Fayards are a suspicious lot to begin with. I've pointed you over to AZ for some background on this previously.  Calvin and Caroline Fayard have played dubious roles profiteering off of the BP settlement and Wisner trust disputes.  Caroline likes to call this "taking on BP" in her campaign ads. It's nothing of the sort, of course. Hilariously, she won't even endorse the state's attempt to sue the oil and gas industry over coastal erosion. But we've covered that already too.

Here is a more recent AZ post reminding us that Calvin Fayard was among the brigade of Uptown New Orleans aristocrats who, during the post-Katrina aftermath, barricaded themselves in their mansions behind their own guns and private security while taking verbal pot shots at the "demographics" of the city. This is from the Vanity Fair article Jason quotes.

Some of the city’s richest residents stepped into the breach, taking security into their own hands. In New Orleans’s upscale Uptown neighborhood, well-heeled and well-armed property owners, sometimes with security guards to assist them, kept possible looters at bay, carrying firearms openly in their neighborhoods and looking after neighbors’ homes and valuables—even keeping a close watch on friends’ irreplaceable art collections. Attorney Calvin Fayard—one of the region’s major political fund-raisers for the Democratic Party, and the owner of the so-called Wedding Cake House, one of the city’s grand mansions—would remain at home and on guard with a coterie of like-minded friends. Some would use their powerboats to rescue the marooned. Their neighbors would dine on gourmet food from nearby specialty stores. Some would bathe in their stagnant swimming pools. One or two would take the opportunity to fly by helicopter to the office to shred potentially sensitive business documents—to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands, should law and order break down altogether.

You might remember some of the other members of this A-Team.  Here is Ashton O'Dwyer in 2005 being interviewed from his stronghold.

In rich white enclaves like Uptown, residents are wary of sounding racist. But with their deep business and family connections, they say they are determined to ensure the new city will be very different than the old one, which for so long has been associated with crime, poor schools and corruption.

"Whatever you do, don't put people back in the city who are criminals and who are incapable of, or unwilling to, help themselves," said Mr. O'Dwyer, a volatile, white 57-year-old lawyer.

"What was once unacceptable in polite, respectable society has not only become commonplace over the past 30 years of Negro rule in this city, but it has become acceptable and I am not going to stand for it any more," said the fifth-generation New Orleans resident. "If we return to the same old, same old . . . I'm outta here."

And this is Jimmy Reiss. 

The new city must be something very different, Mr. Reiss says, with better services and fewer poor people. "Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically," he says. "I'm not just speaking for myself here. The way we've been living is not going to happen again, or we're out."

So these are the Fayards.  This is the world they come from.  And here is how they've applied these values to their political activities.  Caroline was a contributor to former Louisiana Congressman Richard Baker. Baker famously declared after Katrina that God had "cleaned up public housing" in New Orleans. That's pretty well in keeping with the Fayard ethos as laid out above. But there's more.

Much has been made in the news (even today, in fact) of the Fayards' close associations with the Clintons. In 2008 Calvin Fayard was a big time fundraiser for Hillary associated with a group calling themselves "Hillraisers." You may recall that after Hillary lost the nomination to Barack Obama, some of these people had a difficult time reconciling themselves to that fact. Fayard was among them.  Here he is at a McCain/Palin fundraiser aimed at courting disappointed Democrats. Fayard and his "liberal Democrat" friends were especially awed by Sarah Palin.

John Coale, an attorney in Washington, D.C. who is married to Greta Van Susteren, has worked with John McCain on tobacco legislation, and includes Nancy Pelosi among his friends, estimates he single-handedly brought in "50 percent" of the people who attended the fundraiser. He, too, was upset at how "Obama and Howard Dean and the crew" handled the situation as Clinton faced misogyny. He also questioned Obama's fitness for the job: "I've met with Obama three times… I think he was full of platitudes then and he's still full of platitudes now."

"I'm a liberal Democrat," Cole continued. "Sarah Palin just reinforced the reason I'm for McCain. I think she probably has more experience [than Obama], but I think it's appalling the way she has been treated," referring again to perceived sexism.

Calvin Fayard, another lawyer in New Orleans, said he "came away a lot more comfortable" with Palin after meeting her. "She struck me as being very energetic, very knowledgeable, and at least in touch with the rest of the world."

Oy! Here is an NYT account of the same event. 

More than 1,000 people paid $1,000 each for tickets to the main fund-raiser. Nearly 250 people who contributed $25,000 got dinner beforehand with Mr. McCain. 

The reception for former Clinton supporters, which also was attended by Rick Davis, the McCain campaign manager, was spearheaded by Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, a former telecommunications entrepreneur and “Hillraiser” who brought in more than $100,000 for Mrs. Clinton’s campaign; Calvin Fayard, also a former Hillraiser and longtime Democratic donor from Louisiana, and Miguel Lausell, a former senior political adviser to the Clinton campaign from Puerto Rico.

The Hillraisers and the PUMA movement they spawned went on from their infatuation with Palin to other such luminous achievements as spreading (possibly initiating, actually) the disgusting racist "Birther" movement against Obama which, in turn, became a primary vehicle by which Donald Trump entered our national political discourse.  So it turns out we have Calvin Fayard, who is now spending his own money and calling in political favors from within the Landrieu-Carville orbit to push his daughter's Senate candidacy, to thank for a lot of things.  Just keep all of that in mind as we look at how Caroline has conducted her campaign, particularly where it concerns her David Duke fixation.

Usually we talk about David Duke's maneuverings with special attention to his grifting.  Sure, he's a deplorable white supremacist. But the actual reason he even shows up above ground is because he has a nose for money.  The most likely reason Duke is in the Senate race is because one way or another someone is paying him to be there. Recall that when his name first came up as a possible candidate this year, Duke was rumored to be entering as a challenger to US Rep Steve Scalise. At the time we speculated that perhaps some Democrat leaning jokers were attempting to highlight Scalise's controversial association with Duke by placing the two of them together on a ballot much the same way they once tried to run a porn star against David Vitter. At the last minute, though, Duke suddenly found himself running for Senate.  What happened there?  Did he find a more generous patron? 

On the other hand, Duke's motivation for running could be as simple as Duke thinking he could pull in a few extra donations or online followers by attaching his brand to Donald Trump. That's reasonable. Not doubt he has benefited from doing just that.

Similarly, Caroline Fayard has benefited from attaching her brand to David Duke.  Remember, Duke has never polled any better than 3 to 5 percent. But Fayard, has treated him as though he were her principal opponent. From the moment Duke entered the race, Fayard leaped at the opportunity to make the fringe candidate who deserves nobody's attention the center of her campaign. She was the most aggressive at throwing herself into the national media circus Duke inevitably generates.  Here she is on the Maddow show back in August soliciting donations.   All of the candidates tried some version of this, of course. But Fayard has themed the bulk of her advertising and fundraising appeals with the Duke bogeyman.  

The Fayard campaign's most reprehensible use of Duke was a disgusting attack on Foster Campbell that distorted his words and one photograph into an easily disproven lie that Campbell is in some way allied with Duke. Once the lie was exposed, Fayard was roundly shamed for it in the press. Here, for example, is Stephanie Grace giving her the whatfor.  The Alliance For Good Government even withdrew its endorsement of her.  A lot of the people her campaign had drawn into its corner began to feel like they had been used.

But then Fayard doubled down. Refusing to back off from the absurd assertions of her ads, she continued running them. Even more shockingly, she stood by them in person during the second debate at Dillard. Had Duke himself not been on the same stage ranting about Jews, Fayard's bald faced lie would have been the evening's low point by far.

There are people who insist, though, that Fayard's internal polling shows her morally indefensible strategy is working.  Even if they're correct (and we'll know soon enough) that won't necessarily put her in the runoff.  It will keep Campbell out, though.  I hope they're real proud of that "win" if they get it.

Given her, lack of experience in government, her poor positioning in the polls and her campaign's lack of substance, we've often asked why the heck Fayard is even in this race. Her behavior over the final weeks of the election suggest her sole purpose may be to deny Campbell a slot in the runoff.  I don't know enough to say why that is happening.  But I've tried to make it clear that the Fayards aren't exactly trustworthy.  And if it turns out they have friends of friends in common with friends of friends of another candidate well... a lot of these people have friends is all I'm saying. The Fayards are friends and neighbors with wealthy plutocrats who wanted New Orleans ethnically cleansed after Katrina.  That Caroline wants us to think of her now as the anti-Duke is a staggering insult.

Buying in/Buying out

David Duke doesn't have any friends, of course.  But, as we said, he does like money. Cue Clancy. 

Clancy DuBos, a political commentator who has covered Mr. Duke for decades, dismissed the media attention as “cheap headlines and click bait.”

“He’s not in this to win the Senate, he’s in this to make money,” he said.

I continue in my disappointment that no one else has asked about his angle in those terms. It's a natural thread to pull on given what we know about Duke.  He is and always has been a hustler. But he's only one of twenty something candidates here which makes him a hustler among hustlers. So while we're asking why Duke might have been bought out of a congressional race and into the Senate race, we should ask about some of these other transactions as well.

Duke isn't the only Republican angling for the hard core Trumpista vote.  And this has to be frustrating as hell for sandwich magnate John Fleming. Back when he announced his candidacy, on December 7, 2015 (a day that will live in infamy) Fleming had to figure he would be the most extreme right wing nut in the game. Fleming has devoted his tenure in Congress to making a name for himself as a petulant Tea Party insurgent. He has frothed frequently against Obama's health insurance reforms. His hard stance against reproductive rights is so out of touch with reality that he shared an Onion article about an "Abortionplex" thinking it was actual news. Most embarrassing to him and to the entire flood prone state of Louisiana was his vote against relief for victims of Hurricane Sandy.

And still Fleming can't corner the market on reactionary assholery.  Not with Duke hanging around. And not with Rob Maness flanking him among Trump supporters as well. Maness is more flamboyantly pro-gun and pro-life than Fleming but adds just a bit of the populist skepticism of Republican establishment policies with regard to war and Wall Street that puts him slightly more in tune with Trump's schizophrenic messaging than Fleming is.

The Fleming campaign actually attempted to buy Maness out of the race last month. Not unusual, that. What was unusual was Maness' choice not to take the money and instead run to the papers with the story. What is he getting that is better than whatever Fleming offered?  It's hard to say.  We did notice that he's had a few TV ads running paid for by something called "Warrior PAC."

Warrior PAC, which is being run out of California, is backing retired Air Force Col. Rob Maness. It has raised $10,000 from Bo Reily of the William B. Reily Company in New Orleans and has roughly that same amount in the bank. PAC director Robert San Luis said via email that Reily has also paid for polling. 

You may know the William B. Reily Company as Reily Foods, a century old New Orleans based grocery distributor. It owns several well-known brands most notably Luzianne tea, CDM coffee, and Blue Plate mayonnaise... which is amusing to those of us who have been in the habit of pronouncing Maness's name the way New Orleanians sometimes say, "Mah-nezz."  It's also funny to think that Maness didn't sell out to the Sandwich Man because he already had too much Mayonnaise money.

But here's the other thing about the Reilys.  They're not just a prominent New Orleans family. They are a Prominent New Orleans Business Family. To get a sense of this, please take a minute to peruse this January obituary of Boatner Reily III The CV portion of it really gains momentum toward the end. 

Reily also served on the New Orleans Aviation Board.

He attended Metairie Park Country Day School, Woodberry Forest School in Virginia, Yale University and Tulane, from which he graduated in 1950. He was a captain in the Rex organization for 10 years and reigned as Rex in 1982.

An avid runner, he started the Rex organization’s “royal run” around Audubon Park on Mardi Gras morning. In that inaugural run, he wore running shoes painted gold and decorated with colorful ribbons.

Reily was a major contributor to Tulane. The Reily Family Foundation contributed to the Tulane Hospital and Clinic for the construction of the Reily Foundation Pavilion, which opened in 1991, and was a major contributor to the Reily Student Recreation Center.

Cowen said he met Reily when Cowen was interviewing for the president’s job at Tulane.

“He asked incredibly perceptive questions and was extraordinarily kind in the delivery of those questions and listened with great intent,” he said.

Cowen said he often met with Reily in the first years of his tenure leading Tulane. “He provided great insight to New Orleans, its culture and the university,” he said.

He called Reily, the Reily family and its foundation “one of the pillars of Tulane University for generations. They’ve been incredibly generous philanthropically and with their time.”

Rex captain, GNOF founder, Tulane benefactor, personal friend of Scott fucking Cowen. That's all very pleasant.  One more thing about that, though.  While it's certainly believable that these blue bloods and their scions would be enthusiastic Tea Partiers, they prefer to identify as patricians.  The Reilys just don't have all that much in common with the typical Maness voter. In fact, they're actually a lot more like.. the Fayards. But we'll come back to that.

First let's note that one candidate actually was successfully bought out of the race.  His name is Abhay Patel. He dropped out on October 20. See, during the course of the campaign, Patel happened to make a friend.

But during campaign appearances, Patel had an opportunity to visit with (US Rep. Charles) Boustany. He found that he and the Lafayette Republican shared many of same pastimes – they both are avid readers who enjoy talking history – and both see the world through a similar political prism.

"Though we are not in the position we hoped to be in, I am committed to working tirelessly to ensure that we elect a conservative Republican to the United States Senate," Patel said of his endorsement of Boustany.

“I found him a very bright, very articulate young man,” Boustany said in an interview, recalling their first encounter at a Jefferson Parish GOP function.

“Abhay Patel’s passion and knowledge for conservative values, small government, and the Constitution have impressed me over that last several months. His campaign has been focused on ideas and substance rather than platitudes and lip service," Boustany said.

Patel, a lawyer, said he and Boustany talked about creating a committee that could advise Boustany on who to recommend for federal judges and prosecutors in Louisiana; what kind of positions a conservative lawyer would take.

How sweet. They got along famously. I hope Boustany kept the receipt.

Boustany in the Bayou

Oh yeah. Hey, by the way, Charles Boustany is also a candidate here. Did you forget?  He's not out of the running by any stretch. In addition to Patel's backing, he also enjoys the endorsement of the Times-Picayune as well as the always influential Jefferson Parish Sheriff Newell Normand. Stephanie Grace even gave him something of a compliment during the final debate when she described him as the "policy wonk in the mix."  Of course, if the policy you are wonking about involves protecting his friends' right to exploit virtual slave labor, or voting 60 times to repeal Obamacare, it's difficult to see that as a positive.

Boustany has two paths to the runoff. One of those would be going through Kennedy.  And he has tried this. His direct attack on Kennedy, this ad featuring an adorable pug and Kennedy's all around sliminess, was the best produced by any campaign. But, as we said at the outset of this post, Kennedy's slot is pretty well entrenched. If Boustany can't edge him out of the runoff, then Plan B is edge out everyone else. How would someone like Charles Boustany go about accomplishing that?

Well, first of all, let's remember that the seemingly mild mannered bespectacled Boustany is actually something of a heavy.  This is where Ethan Brown's Murder In the Bayou is instructive. I say this, not so much because of the book's allegation that Boustany may have been a client of some of the murdered prostitutes in Jennings. I can't really speak to the veracity of that. Having read the book, though, I'd say his connection to the Boudreaux Inn and its operators is more than just circumstantial.

We don't have time to get too far into it here but I do recommend the book. It's disappointing to see the political press brush this off. Their oft-repeated mantra that Brown's chapter on Boustany is "unsourced" is flat out untrue. Brown cites testimony by witnesses interviewed by the task force investigating the murders, ex-employees of the motel, a high profile drug dealer he interviews, as well as, yes, some anonymous sources.  But even anonymous sources are.. you know.. sources.  Unfortunately the media herd tends to steer clear of stuff like this while they're in campaign mode. Maybe they'll come back to it at some point.

What Brown clearly shows, in any case, is that Boustany field rep, Martin Guillory, was running the motel during the peak of its infamy and that he was familiar with the victims and several of the suspects. It's also obvious that Guillory was more than just a bit player in Boustany's world. And that's really the point here.
Boustany's power base in Southwest Louisiana is tied up with a decades-old system dominated by corrupt and brutal Sheriffs along the I-10 drug route. Brown's book focuses on Jeff Davis Parish but the problem is more widespread. Not only is it conceivable that the Congressman's political operation would connect to these criminals somewhere along the line, it's actually more difficult to imagine that it wouldn't.

Boustany is tough and shrewd. He's also backed by people who are themselves tough and shrewd. Newell Normand is one example. Sheriffs like this guy, I guess. He's also the only candidate who we're pretty sure has successfully manipulated the field. It's interesting that Patel can be bought out by Boustany but Maness can't be bought out by Fleming. Duke, perhaps the most corrupt person in the race, apparently can't be bought out by anybody.  Meanwhile the Fayards who just happen to be in the same category of plutocrat as the Maness-backing Reilys are stubbornly running interference against Foster Campbell.

It would be a stretch to tie all of that together into one conspiracy.  That's not really what I'm trying to say. It's just that sometimes the maneuverings of different but similarly interested parties accidentally work toward the same purpose. In this case, it is pretty neat the way all of that lines up in a way that could clear Fleming and Campbell out of Boustany's way, isn't it?  He might not make it, but Boustany certainly is an interesting character. Watch out for that guy.

Any of these guys could lose

In case you missed this week's Senate debate, here is that.



I wrote an itty bit about the Senate race on Tuesday and I'm sure there will be more before election day. (We also got into it a little on the last Hunkerdowncast.) But here are just a couple of quick notes on the debate to keep things short.

First, we already knew this was a lame field. But it took seeing (some of) the candidates interacting on stage together to show just how weak each is in his or her own way.  Holding aside each candidate's fundamentals in terms of geographic or ideological base, name recognition, etc. and just looking at them as campaigners, they're all pretty bad to downright terrible. All things being equal, any of them could lose to any other. Anyway, here's the quick and dirty.

1) Caroline Fayard, as she has for much of the campaign, looked unready. Her responses sounded, not only like she was reciting a script, but also like she was nervously rushing to get through it. The saving grace there is that anything she says is wholly devoid of substance anyway. Her position on the state's lawsuit against the oil and gas industry continues to be weak tea. When she wasn't mumbling around about the futility of legal action, Fayard said she plans to assemble "a coalition of the willing" to fight coastal loss. That she would describe a project by invoking George W. Bush's phrase used to sell his Iraq invasion to doesn't instill much confidence. We don't know which staffer wrote that for her. We hope whoever it is is paid well.

2) Foster Campbell is, of this bunch, the candidate who comes nearest to getting the key issues right. He's the only candidate who backs the coastal lawsuit. In fact, he's the only one willing to fully accept the science on climate change being caused by human activity. (Although, we'd love to hear him try to say the word, anthropogenic out loud.)

But there's a reason Campbell has never been a successful statewide candidate.  He's a crappy campaigner who can't fend off even the most obvious attacks.  During the direct question part of the debate, sandwich magnate John Flemming attacked Campbell with a standard "guns and fetuses" type question tying Campbell (perhaps unfairly) to national Democrats' positions on abortion and gun control.  Foster could only boast of owning 36 shotguns in response leaving voters to determine whether they think that's a pointless dodge or a disturbing image.

3) Charles Boustany is boring.  This may work for him as much as it does against him.  For one thing, it helps him present as the least amateurish among the rough edged doofuses populating this very weak field. Because of this he can talk convincingly about his ability to "get results" without anyone remarking on the fact that those "results" mean the regular package of deregulation and favors for oil and chemical companies or trade and immigration policy that favors employers who rely on virtual slave labor.  It also might work to minimize the damage done by his having been linked to a salacious murder and prostitution scandal in Jeff Davis Parish. Voters may have difficulty processing that association if they aren't convinced the candidate has much of a pulse to begin with.

4) John Fleming is trying to corner the Generic Tea Party market. But that's not easy for him to do if he can't bribe Rob Maness out of the race OR draw enough support to keep freaking David Duke from qualifying to appear in debates. By the way, has Fleming considered trying to buy Duke out?  We're pretty sure he will take the money.

5) John Neely Kennedy is the smarmiest, phoniest, most despicable person, not only on that debate stage, but possibly in the entire state of Louisiana. He's a textbook example of what happens when a social incompetent tries to do politics. This is the only person we know of capable of inserting himself into the Boustany prostitution scandal and looking like the grosser person in the process. He is Louisiana's Ted Cruz.

During the debate Kennedy railed against "bureaucracy and regulations" before rattling off a list of regulations he would propose in order to reign that in. I suppose that is not surprising from someone who spent the better part of his tenure as Treasurer demagoguing against rather than honestly trying to solve the state's perpetual budget crisis.   In the process he has made enemies of just about everyone.  But he asks us to mistake that for a sign of personal integrity.

His ads are laden with this sort of condescension. This one got attention for a bizarre "love is the answer but you ought to keep a handgun" riddle. But it's the incoherence of the policy assertions that really serves as Kennedy's signature.  In the ad he says, "I believe gubmint tries to do too much," one breath before saying government "needs to enforce its immigration laws." Here is one where he threatens to bomb the hypothetical goats belonging to anyone who might join ISIS. That none of this makes any sense is evidence that he doesn't think the voters are very smart.  Maybe that's a fair assumption, but it's the obviousness of the insult that causes him to miss. 

His delivery is overlain with an affected folksy manner that sort of calls to mind an absurdist version of Ross Perot. He smacks his lips disgustingly and blinks approximately 50 times a second. All politicians are shameless liars. But the ones who voters can viscerally sense are lying every time they open their mouths are the most profoundly talentless. Only a hack as tone deaf as John Kennedy could produce a line as unfunny as his much talked about "week killer" bit.  The more Kennedy appears on TV, the less people are going to like him.

Of course that might matter more if any of his opponents weren't as glaringly weak as each is.  Any of them is bad enough to lose to him.  

Tuesday Night Debateball

(Some of) Your 2016 Louisiana U.S. Senate Candidates take the field tonight in Ruston. The debate is carried by LPB and you can (probably) stream it here. I suppose this means we should note a few recent developments in the race this week to get ourselves hyped up.

First of all, there is this JMC poll out. More than anything else, it appears to show a little Campbellmentum.



There are people (real people... seriously reputable people.. not just me) out there who have been speculating for months about the possibility of sneaking two Democrats into the runoff somehow. Theoretically, this still might might be ever so slightly mathematically possible if we assume enough of that 16% undecided vote are Democrats.  It's hard to know just what the electorate will look like in this crazy year. But we do have this tantalizing take on the scenario via this week's Gambit cover story.

That outcome would be a nightmare for the GOP, and the chances of that nightmare becoming a reality increase as front-running Republicans play it safe on the issues in order to protect their respective bases around the state. For example, all are pro-life, pro-gun, pro-oil, anti-Obama, anti-Hillary Clinton, anti-union and, of course, pro-Trump — though some may be less enthusiastic in their support of the GOP presidential nominee after his latest pronouncements.

  The same could be said of the leading Democrats, except there are only two of them to divide the 40-42 percent of the electorate that reliably votes "D" in national elections. On the Republican side, at least four major candidates — plus at least two more with 5-8 percent of the vote on average — will be competing for the other 58-60 percent of the vote. Add to that another 5 to 8 percent gobbled up by the 15 or more also-rans and it's easy to see how "jungle" is an apt political metaphor in Louisiana this year.

One thing else to consider here is this particular national election could skew the electorate slightly more Dem than usual given waning enthusiasm for Trump among "moderate" (I know, I know, just go with it) Republicans combined with the much stronger and more professional "ground game" operation on behalf of Hillary and the general understanding... even among Trumpistas... that the election is pretty much over at this point.   Given all of that, it is conceivable that the Democrats get a significant edge in turnout. Consider also that the Republicans who do turn out are likely to be  Trump true believers who split more of their vote somewhere along the Duke-Flemming-Maness end of the field and you can still sort of see that Double D runoff happening.

Of course it's a long shot.  For what it's worth, JMC's own analysts  don't think it's worth mentioning in their narrative.  According to them, the demographic trends don't look favorable for Fayard.

Four candidates now have a viable path to the December runoff. Democrat Foster Campbell essentially has clinched one of the runoff spots, while Republicans John Fleming, John Kennedy, and Charles Boustany are competing for the second runoff spot.

Foster Campbell is essentially a lock for the runoff because his lead among black voters has expanded from 33-24% to 48-18% over Fayard; if undecided “leaners” are included, his lead among this demographic expands to 52-18%

Meanwhile, as for the Republican front-runners, there's a bit of news about them this week as well.  Hillariously, NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune endorsed Boustany. Their editorial board writes that Boustany  is "poised to play a significant role in reforming the Affordable Care Act."  Actually he wants to repeal it and has boasted of the 60 times he voted to do just that. They also praise his work to "stop China from unfairly subsidizing shrimp to undercut U.S. producers."  But they don't mention his work to help his friends in the Louisiana seafood processing industry to "compete" with imports via the use of virtual slave labor.  But oh well.  Of course, we all remember last year when the T-P endorsed David Vitter for Governor. Maybe they just like candidates who prefer a certain kind of lifestyle.

Speaking of David Vitter, today's Stephanie Grace column is about the similarities in style and strategy between last year's failed Vitter campaign and this year's John Kennedy operation. 

But with Kennedy facing tough competition from fellow Republicans Charles Boustany and John Fleming for a spot in the December runoff, he's clearly hoping the plan that helped Vitter ward off GOP rivals Jay Dardenne and Scott Angelle will work for him as well.

The strategy that Vitter's affiliated Super PAC used, its executive director Joel DiGrado explained at a post-gubernatorial election discussion at LSU’s Manship School of Mass Communication, was to make sure that neither of the other Republicans emerged as the single alternative in voters' minds. So when one seemed to be rising in the polls, the group would target that person for attack.

“Every week, we had to reassess who we’re beating up,” said DiGrado, who likened the exercise to playing “whack-a-mole on a balance beam.”

Kennedy also has an affiliated Super PAC, called ESAFund, It's ostensibly independent even though most of its money came from Kennedy's state campaign fund, and it just so happens to be run by Vitter's former campaign manager, Kyle Ruckert. And it too is running harsh attacks against fellow Republicans, with an obvious eye toward keeping either of Kennedy's main GOP rivals from edging him out or joining him in an all-GOP runoff, when he'd clearly prefer to face a Democrat.

This, of course, is the part of the plan that worked for Vitter. His Super PAC's brutal attacks against Dardenne and Angelle may have kept either from catching up to him at the polls.

But being a big aggressive asshole to Dardenne and Angelle came back to haunt Vitter in the runoff when both of those guys were all too eager to hit back at him. Even at the height of his power, it was pretty much a given that Everybody Hated David Vitter. But they were also afraid of him. That worked for a long time. Until it didn't.  Everybody may hate John Kennedy too before this is over but I don't think anybody is all that scared of him.

Anyway, happy debating, kids.

Update: Sorry. I missed this little intrigue today between fringe Trumpista Rob Maness and The Man Who Would Be King Of All Fringe Trumpistas John Flemming. 

Louisiana Senate candidate Rob Maness said Tuesday he was asked to drop out of the race and throw his support to GOP opponent John Fleming in return for significant funding in a future race.

Maness told The Advocate that he met Paul Dickson over coffee at Abita Roasting Company in Madisonville on Monday afternoon. There, Dickson, who identified himself as the person “running the John Fleming PAC” and a decision maker with the Louisiana Committee for a Republican Majority, offered support to Maness’ future political endeavors, he said.

“He told me that he would provide opportunities for my future, if I left the race for Senate and endorsed John Fleming. But, if I didn't do it before (Tuesday night’s statewide televised) debate, I'd be finished as a politician,” Maness said. “Although I'm not naive, the unethical threats and power play by the thugs behind the John Fleming campaign against me was shocking even by Louisiana standards.”

It's certainly a believable story. But then again, Maness is kind of a nut so who knows? Also, isn't there usually a private investigator filming surreptitiously whenever these little coffee shop meetings happen?  Maybe a tape will turn up.

Mysteries of the #LASEN cosmos

There are more candidates running for Senate in Louisiana this year than most voters would probably care to contemplate.  Astronomers estimate the actual number may be too high to bother trying to count. The interesting thing about that, though, is that when we break out the higher mathematics necessary to describe such an election, we approach a universe where every candidate cancels some other candidate out.

“The Fleming-Maness mini-primary won’t matter unless one of them breaks away,” veteran campaign strategist Roy Fletcher said about the two major GOP contenders for the party’s super-conservative wing, U.S. Rep. John Fleming, of Minden, and retired Air Force colonel Rob Maness, of Madisonville.

That goes a long way in explaining the past week’s narrative when Fleming’s campaign touted a poll showing him up to 14 percent, nipping on the heels of the establishment Republican candidates – U.S. Rep. Charles Boustany, of Lafayette, and State Treasurer John N. Kennedy, of Madisonville.

It’s a gambit that seemed to pay dividends when Fleming was included but Maness, who polled 4 percent, was left off the stage in the CABL/LPB debate that will be televised statewide on Oct. 18.

Maness might cancel out Fleming. David Duke might cancel out Maness. The two Democrats might cancel each other out. The front runners.. are there front runners? Is it possible that nobody comes out of this black hole alive?   Actually, we're saving that for a different post.  Today we learned more about what some of the lesser candidates are doing to try and defy gravity.

Troy Hebert is one such lesser candidate.  His strategy appears to involve pretending to sue people.

U.S. Senate candidate Troy Hebert, no party, said he filed a lawsuit today in state court to block one of the televised Senate debates because he said the criteria to participate was "unconstitutional.

Hebert, former commissioner of the Louisiana Office of Alcohol and Tobacco Control, sent members of the media a news release and a copy of an unofficial petition seeking a preliminary injunction. But as of early afternoon, the suit had not yet been filed, according the the clerk's office for the 19th Judicial District. 

Hebert called a press conference to talk about his not yet lawsuit which he used as a platform to talk about how badly "the system is rigged" against "the 'lil man'" which is probably true although Hebert's own standing as the "'lil man" is dubious.  Even so, despite this being an obvious stunt, he does raise an interesting point.

Last week, the good government nonprofit Council for a Better Louisiana announced it had set its criteria for its Oct. 18 Senate debate which will air across the state on Louisiana Public Broadcasting stations. Candidates had to have raised at least $1 million and polled at at last 5 percent in an independent poll.

In a way, Hebert is suing (if he actually files a lawsuit) to protest the notion of a "money primary" where candidates are determined to be viable based on the clout of their donor list.  If he were at all sincere, it might be a laudable windmill to tilt at.  Although, the Supreme Court has already ruled that money is speech so it's hard to figure he's got precedent on his side there.

What's really interesting about this is that it isn't even the only lawsuit announced by a Senate candidate today. 

Rep. Charles Boustany, R-Lafayette, has sued the author of a book that contained allegations he was involved with prostitutes in Jefferson Davis Parish who were later murdered, according to his attorney, Jimmy Faircloth.

Boustany, a U.S. Senate candidate, filed the defamation suit against Ethan Brown and the New York publishing company Simon & Schuster Monday (Oct. 3) in state court in Lafayette. Brown's book, "Murder on the Bayou," cited several anonymous sources who said they had knowledge that Boustany was a client of three sex workers in Jennings. Boustany has vehemently denied the accusations and blasted his chief competitor in the Louisiana Senate race, state Treasurer John Kennedy for peddling the story to the media.

Boustany must think he is Hulk Hogan or something. Pretty sure S&S has the resources to withstand the nasty SLAP lawsuit. It probably won't get very far anyway. But that's hardly the point. Boustany, like Hebert, is just posturing.

You have to feel bad for Hebert, though. The cosmic mysteries being what they are and all, it's pretty amazing that a U.S. Senate candidate can't even announce a lawsuit on a given day without it being overshadowed by a different candidate's lawsuit. What are the odds, right? Astronomical, I'm sure. But that's another consequence of having so many people in the race. In the same way the vastness of the universe increases the probability that life exists on other planets, the size of the field increases the chances of something like this happening. Still, in either case, the evidence of intelligent life anywhere is yet to be discovered.

QOTD

Tyler Bridges wrote up Charles Boustany's connection to Ethan Brown's book for the Washington Post. In the part where Bridges interviews the DA, they hit upon what ought to be the new town motto for Jennings.

“If you don’t get involved in illegal narcotics, Jennings is a wonderful place to raise a family,” said District Attorney Michael Cassidy, as he dug into a lunch of fried catfish and boudin, a local sausage served in a natural ­casing. “The ones living that ­high-risk lifestyle, their friends and family did not realize they were in danger.”

Also, in an earlier version of the story, boudin was described as being served in a "plastic" rather than "natural" casing. Wa-Po doesn't note the correction for some reason.  Nor do they address the question of whether you can put quinoa in it. 

The old Murder in the Bayou bump

Boustany is making a move all of a sudden.

U.S. Rep. Charles Boustany has closed the gap on state Treasurer John Kennedy in Louisiana's U.S. Senate race, according to a telephone survey released Wednesday (Sept. 21) by longtime pollster Bernie Pinsonat.

The results show the Republican congressman from Lafayette riding popularity in his home district to a statistical tie with Kennedy, a fellow Republican who had maintained a double-digit lead in early polls conducted by candidates and some partisan groups.

Kennedy still leads the pack at 17 percent, followed by Boustany at 15 percent, within the poll's 4.4 percent margin of error.

The polls were always going to tighten, probably in this precise way.  Still, it's interesting that this comes right on the heels of Boustany making what most would consider some decidedly negative headlines. 

When you’re still trying to make a first impression on voters outside your congressional district, let’s just say that it’s not good thing when your name comes up in a new book about the suspicious deaths of eight prostitutes, released by a major publisher less than two months before Election Day.

It’s particularly not a good thing when that book is sensationally titled “Murder in the Bayou,” and it contains a chapter describing how a now-former aide ran the quaintly named hotel, the Boudreaux Inn in Jefferson Davis Parish, where the prostitution ring was centered. And when, by the way, author Ethan Brown quotes unnamed sources alleging that you were a “well-regarded client” of several prostitutes who were later killed, even as he acknowledges that there’s no reason to connect you to any of their deaths.

On the other hand, maybe just being in the news is good enough for Boustany.  Especially if it puts him in direct contrast with Kennedy who.. to put it mildly.. comes off a bit smarmy.  For example, here is Grace's accounting of the way Kennedy handled the news about Brown's book. 

Indeed, Kennedy’s campaign manager admitted to sending around a news report about the book’s contents, and Kennedy himself issued an artfully — and widely quoted — statement that denied spreading details even as it managed to do just that.

“I want to be very clear that my campaign played absolutely no role in creating this story alleging Congressman Boustany’s sexual relationships with prostitutes that were later murdered, his staff’s alleged involvement in running the bar and hotel where this illicit behavior took place, or publishing the book 'Murder in the Bayou' written by Ethan Brown and published by Simon and Schuster,” the statement said.

I guess that's good for a snicker. But it's probably not going to endear anyone to Kennedy. Which is a problem since he's not especially well liked as it is.  In fact, if I had to guess at what's happening with this race right now, it's that people are looking for reasons to vote against Kennedy if they can.* They certainly have no shortage of alternative candidates in that case.  Anyway, it would explain why a scandalous accusation against Boustany might actually damage Kennedy instead.

By the way, Ethan Brown will be at Octavia Books tonight talking about Murder In The Bayou if anyone wants to check that out.  The event starts around 6. 

*Note: According to the poll, Kennedy actually has a 62 percent approval rating. Which is pretty darn high. But how solid is it, really?  In recent years he's set himself up as The One Guy Who Hates Whoever Is Governor Right Now.  That works well at times but I think.. and this is just a gut feeling.. that people find him hard to like. 

Vitter's shadow

Some of the more compelling sport to be had during last year's governor's race was watching how many Republicans were willing to be seen at David Vitter campaign events. The supposition at the time was that a Governor Vitter would be in position back one of them as the successor to the Senate seat he would vacate. Turns out Vitter is leaving anyway. But not exactly by the way he had hoped. 

At the time, though, the Senatorial aspirant most conspicuously present at Vitter events was usually Charles Boustany. 

In the book, Murder in the Bayou — which will be released by Simon & Schuster’s Scribner imprint next week — investigative journalist Ethan Brown cites three anonymous sources claiming Republican Rep. Charles Boustany was a “client” of some of the murdered sex workers known as the “Jeff Davis 8.” The book also reveals that the motel where some of the victims did their sex work was run by Martin Guillory, a field representative for Boustany who goes by the nickname “Big G.”

Boustany, who is now running for U.S. Senate in Louisiana, denied the allegations to the author through a spokesman. Guillory, who ran the Boudreaux Inn from the late 1990s through the end of 2004, told the author he’d met “one or two” of the sex workers, as well as Frankie Richard, their pimp. But Guillory said he was unaware of any criminal activity taking place at the motel.

Between 2005 and 2009, the bodies of eight women were discovered in the canals and swamps surrounding the small town of Jennings in Louisiana’s Jefferson Davis Parish. The victims, whose murders remain unsolved, became known in the national media as the “Jeff Davis 8.”

The angry Senators

One thing every candidate running for Senate in Louisiana seems to agree on is voters are angry.

It’s the third Independence Day in a row that will mark the unofficial kickoff to major campaigns for elective office in Louisiana. This time around, the candidates are noting an angrier tenor among voters — harsher questions, fewer smiles. Maybe it’s vitriol from the presidential race, or fear from a series of terrorist attacks, or an economy that has rebounded only in parts of the country.

“It is all tied together,” Fleming said, pointing out Brexit, in which indignant British voters chose to exit the European Union. The vote upended political leadership in the United Kingdom and threw international financial markets into chaos. The Brits, like many Americans, are unhappy with their government leaders and are taking their frustrations to the ballot box.

“The American people feel like Washington is completely disconnected from them, just the same way the people of Great Britain feel disconnected,” Fleming said. “That’s the same feeling we’re seeing here in Louisiana.”

“I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. All I can think of is we have a really slow recovery” from the recession, Kennedy said.

Maybe this is a leap on my part but one imagines this is similar to what Senate and congressional candidates are experiencing "on the ground" in races across the country this year. It makes for an interesting contrast with the Presidential election where the only viable candidate certainly inevitable winner is an avatar for every status quo element voters on both the right and left are so angry about.

What an interesting contrast the new President and Congress will likely have in their perceived mandates come next year.

Facebookgate

What did Boustany know and when did he know it?

A conservative group that promotes government accountability asked the Office of Congressional Ethics to investigate the unintentional broadcast of U.S. Rep. Charles Boustany’s staffers talking about the congressman’s Republican opponents in the race for the U.S. Senate.

“This isn’t the biggest crime ever committed,” said Matthew G. Whitaker, executive director of the Foundation for Accountability & Civic Trust. “But we’re especially sensitive when congressmen use their official resources for campaign purposes.”

Using congressional offices for campaign purposes is expressly forbidden in the House rules. “As the Ethics Manual recognizes, this is a “serious matter” and the citizens deserve to know whether taxpayer-funded resources have been misused,” the complaint stated in its request for an investigation.

Actually, it's more what didn't he or his staff know. As in, they didn't know what that one button on Facebook does.

The fact of the recording isn't even the issue, according to this supposed watchdog group. Instead it was the fact of a campaign conversation happening in a congressional office. Which, surely, is a thing that never ever happens on any given day of the week.  Anyway, as they say it, "isn't the biggest crime ever committed."  Neither, by the way, was last week's congressional gun vote sit-in but they complained about that too.

FACT is a Washington, D.C.-based group that has filed several complaints against congressmen, the most recent being against members who used the gun control protest on the House floor last week to raise campaign funds. Whitaker had been an U.S. Attorney in Iowa and a 2014 Republican candidate for U.S. Senate from that state.

Recall that a big feature of that event involved House members broadcasting from the floor via Periscope. So it turns out that FACT is quickly becoming the live stream police for our nation's capitol. Maybe they should get one of these. 

The patent application explains that “[the transmitter] can be located in an area where photography is prohibited and [the infrared signal] can include encoded data that represents a command to disable recording functions. In some embodiments, a transmitter can be located in areas where capturing pictures and videos is prohibited (e.g., a concert or a classified facility) and the transmitters can generate infrared signals with encoded data that includes commands temporarily disabling recording functions.”

Somewhat off topic observation here but, wow does the future ever suck. 

Kiddie table

Seems like the conflict here is between accommodating candidates (and thus voters and, basically, you know, democracy) vs accommodating the logistical preferences of the luncheon clubs who put on these forums and press pools who cover them.   You'd think the preference should be to err on the side of the former but, well, not so much.

Is Louisiana’s U.S. Senate race, like this year’s Republican presidential primary season, going to feature a kids’ table?

Maybe, based on how a recent candidate forum before a group of business associations went down.

No fewer than 11 candidates have indicated they plan to seek retiring U.S. Sen. David Vitter’s seat this fall, but the National Federation of Independent Business, the Louisiana Restaurant Association and the Louisiana Retail Association invited just four to participate in a lunchtime forum this week. One of the candidates, Democratic Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell, had a conflict, so only three Republicans, state Treasurer John Kennedy and U.S. Reps. Charles Boustany and John Fleming, got to make their pitches.

On the other hand, this really kind of a tempest in a teapot built around one mid-day business forum in late June. We only know about it at all because Caroline Fayard wasn't invited and decided to make an issue of it. No doubt, there will be plenty opportunities to see your favorite candidates in various combinations during the coming months.  I do hope they manage to get the whole ensemble together for a few of those. 

Hey what's this button do?

Charles Boustany: Louisiana's first Facebook Live candidate.

U.S. Senate candidates who were criticized by the staffers of fellow Republican candidate Charles Boustany in an unintentionally broadcast Facebook Live stream fired back Wednesday with one raising ethical questions.

“It is very disappointing that Congressman Boustany would break congressional ethics rules by mixing his taxpayer-funded office with his political operation. Congressman Boustany has a lot of explaining to do,” said Matt Beynon, spokesman for the Senate campaign of U.S. Rep. John Fleming, R-Minden.

It is unclear where the conversation took place and who exactly was involved. The flub has hit the national media.

Unfortunately for us, the bit of gossip the broadcast treats us to isn't especially juicy. Some smack talking about Kennedy and Fleming, mostly. But still it's good to know the congressman has his Geek Appeal team up and running. 

Update: Oh look here's Grace also unimpressed. 

So call the whole episode an amusing diversion, and a bit of a window into how campaign strategists think. But between the high budget drama in Baton Rouge and the over-the-top presidential contest, it’s going to take something a lot more dramatic to get people to start focusing on this race.

Charles Boustany is still running against Obama in 2016

This week Governor Edwards reinstated a waiver of federal work requirements for food stamp recipients. Bobby Jindal had recently allowed the waiver to expire but with economic conditions worsening in Louisiana this would have been an especially bad moment to penalize people for being poor when work is scarce.

But since penalizing the poors for being poors is a favorite Republican passtime, a lot of them are upset. The Advocate went and talked to some of them about it. One such Republican venting his frustration that we aren't doing enough to humiliate the less fortunate was U.S. Senate candidate Charles Boustany.

U.S. Rep. Charles Boustany, R-Lafayette, also issued a statement on the waiver, though he criticized the Obama administration for granting the waiver that Edwards requested.

“We simply must require work for welfare. President Obama may not like work requirements, but they honor our values and work ethic, and they send a clear message that welfare should be transitional and temporary, not a way of life,” he said.

Is that really how he wants to do this? We just went through a statewide election last year where the Republican failed to gain traction with voters simply by saying "Obama Obama Obama" every five minutes. The President will only become less relevant this year as his term in office draws to an end. But okay. Let's see if Boustany is still on that theme in November.

Charles Boustany's moral compass

On Monday, Rep. Charles Boustany made his long expected official announcement that he is running for David Vitter's soon-to-be vacant Senate seat in 2016.

At Monday’s announcement, Boustany touted his efforts to fight “Obamacare,” protect the domestic seafood industry from cheap foreign imports, secure local clinics for veterans and protect the oil and gas industry from new taxes.

He spoke of the need to fix the nation’s health care system, reform welfare and rewrite the tax code, describing himself as “a conservative problem solver” who can help restore the nation’s “moral compass.”

Regarding that "protect the seafood industry" thing, you may have noticed today reports like this one about what's keeping those foreign imports so cheap. 

SAMUT SAKHON, Thailand (AP) — An Associated Press investigation found enslaved migrant workers and children ripping the heads, tails, shells and guts off shrimp at processing factories in Thailand.

AP journalists followed and filmed trucks loaded with freshly peeled shrimp going from one peeling shed to major Thai exporting companies. Then, using U.S. customs records and Thai industry reports, they tracked it globally. They also traced similar connections from another factory raided six months earlier, and interviewed more than two dozen workers from both sites.

U.S. customs records show the farmed shrimp made its way into the supply chains of major U.S. food stores and retailers such as Wal-Mart, Kroger, Whole Foods, Target, Dollar General and Petco, along with restaurants such as Red Lobster and Olive Garden. AP reporters in all 50 states went shopping and found related brands in more than 150 stores across America.

So you can see why a Senator out to "restore the nation's moral compass" might be keen to, at the very least, protect domestic seafood production from slave-based competition.  Boustany has some funny ideas about how he might go about doing that, though.  He elaborated on them a bit earlier this year in a T-P op ed.

Today, there is a statutory cap on the number of visas issued per fiscal year – 33,000 from October to March, and 33,000 from April to September. As the economy slowly improves, the need for these visas is increasing and surpassing the number available. Unfortunately, between onerous new rules promulgated jointly by Homeland Security and the Department of Labor and what appears to be manipulation of the process employers must complete to attract these workers, the program is in chaos. This year, the cap was opened for applications on April 1, and all 33,000 visas were spoken for within a few days.  Amazingly, my friend Frank told me that he's resorted to bailing prisoners out of jail to do the backbreaking work of processing Louisiana seafood.

Boustany is pleading on behalf of "my friend Frank" whose seafood plant needs access to more guestworkers like these.   

Each year, more than 100,000 people from countries such as Mexico, Guatemala, the Philippines, and South Africa come to America on what is known as an H-2 visa to perform all kinds of menial labor across a wide spectrum of industries: cleaning rooms at luxury resorts and national parks, picking fruit, cutting lawns and manicuring golf courses, setting up carnival rides, trimming and planting trees, herding sheep, or, in the case of Valdez, Gonzalez, and about 20 other Mexican women in 2011, peeling crawfish at L.T. West Inc.

A BuzzFeed News investigation — based on government databases and investigative files obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, thousands of court documents, as well as more than 80 interviews with workers and employers — shows that the program condemns thousands of employees each year to exploitation and mistreatment, often in plain view of government officials charged with protecting them. All across America, H-2 guest workers complain that they have been cheated out of their wages, threatened with guns, beaten, raped, starved, and imprisoned. Some have even died on the job. Yet employers rarely face any significant consequences.

Many of those employers have since been approved to bring in more guest workers. Some have even been rewarded with lucrative government contracts. Almost none have ever been charged with a crime.

So Boustany's "moral compass" directs him to help his friends compete with overseas slavers by helping them to hire slaves of their own.  Curious. 

Mitch is not gonna run for Senate

Mitch Landrieu has all sorts of options for life as a former mayor.  He can become President Hillary Clinton's first ever National Resilience Czar or some such.  He can go to work for any number of consulting groups or think-tanks promoting neo-liberal urban policies all over the country.  He can take up permanent residence on the cot backstage at Aspen. Closer to home, he sit on one of the tourism promotion boards or, knowing him, create a new one all his own to chair.

Any of these options should prove at least as lucrative and certainly a heck of a lot easier than becoming a US Senator. He says he doesn't want to do it. But that won't stop pollsters from throwing his name in with every survey between now and the final day of qualifying.

Although Mitch Landrieu told LaPolitics last week he’s not interesting in running for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by David Vitter, a new statewide poll shows the Democratic New Orleans mayor ahead of four Republican candidates who have either announced a run or are expected to.

The survey, conducted by Gulf Breeze, Florida-based Market Research Insight on Dec. 2-4 with 600 likely voters, shows Landrieu leading the pack with 30% of support. Trailing him are Republicans Scott Angelle at 24%, Charles Boustany and John Kennedy at 15% each, and John Fleming at 5%. The other 11% of respondents say they’re undecided.

Well now we're gonna need a new Senator

You may think it's as simple as going down to the pound and adopting another one but, no, there's all sorts of stuff to put up with.  For example, we now have to put up with a full year of Charles Boustany saying things.

BATON ROUGE — U.S. Rep. Charles Boustany is making it clear he intends to run for the U.S. Senate next year, after Republican David Vitter announced he won't seek re-election.

Boustany released a statement Monday (Nov. 23) saying Louisiana deserves a senator "who can lead in times of challenge, offer conservative, workable solutions to complex problems and bring unity in times of division."

Boustany has to be relieved that he doesn't have to run against David Vitter after spending the gubernatorial campaign working to get him elected. Same goes for John Kennedy and John Fleming.  Those guys might be vulnerable to attacks from Scott Angelle (who is also likely to run) should he decide to tie his opponents to their unpopular friend Vitter. Everyone knows how Angelle feels about Vitter now. 

That's assuming Vitter will even be relevant anymore next year which he may not be. Meanwhile, expect more rumors that Russel Honore might run right up until he decides not to. The same can be said for Mitch Landrieu although, he will probably decide three different ways before not qualifying.  John Georges is probably already polling his own name just in case.  And, as always, there's this.

Did somebody say "Open Senate seat?"

— Biscuit ForLA (@Biscuit4LA) November 22, 2015

Anyway, it's almost time to start politickin' again.  Better gas up the party bus.

Everybody dreads Vitty

Everybody hates David Vitter. On the occasions when they aren't also in debt to or afraid of him, they will come out and tell you so. Otherwise, they fall in line.

It was really interesting on Saturday night, watching which Louisiana Republicans made sure to show up at the Vitter after-party to pay tribute.  Congressman Charles Boustany, for example, who very much would appreciate Vitter's blessing to run for his Senate seat should Vitter become Governor was the first one in the room. State Treasurer John Kennedy who enjoys a brand among fanboys in the media as a "principled independent" also made an extra special effort to be seen on camera at the Vitter party. I wonder what sort of favor he's trading.

I hope the Treasurer would have the presence of mind to keep the receipt.  Many have found out the hard way that Vitter is not always to be trusted.

If history is a guide, expect Vitter in particular to be a barroom brawler. In each of his races, he has run against something — former Gov. Edwin Edwards and the state Democratic Party when he won elections to the state House in the 1990s; the past and the status quo when he defeated former Republican Gov. David Treen in a special congressional election in 1999; and Washington and national Democrats in his two Senate victories.

This time, as Vitter showed Saturday, he will be running against “the politicians in Baton Rouge,” even though Jindal is a Republican and Republicans hold majorities in the state House and Senate.

John Treen has never forgiven Vitter for his unrelenting attacks against his brother in that 1999 election, after Vitter and David Treen, at Vitter’s initiative, agreed not to attack each other. Keeping that deal was important for Treen, who was known among Democrats and Republicans alike for his honest and honorable approach to politics.

Vitter, however, went on the attack, according to John Treen and two others who were part of that campaign, in fliers with different messages to white and black voters that the Treen campaign found far outside the bounds of fair play.

“To distort my brother’s record, I thought, was despicable,” John Treen said, adding that his brother, who died in 2009, never fully recovered emotionally from the defeat. “The idea that someone made a deal and broke his word got to him.”

In other words, "David Vitter killed my brother!"  Holy crap, John.  People really do not like David Vitter. Treen is far from the only person with these kinds of hard feelings.

But he's also out of politics and doesn't really have anything to lose or to trade.  These guys, on the other hand... 

During the primary, Vitter and a super PAC allied with him savaged his two Republican rivals — Public Service Commissioner Scott Angelle and Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne — with attack ads. Both men cried foul.

“Sen. Pinocchio,” Angelle called Vitter.

The opening image on the Dardenne campaign’s website Sunday morning continued to consist of the words “SENATOR LIAR” stamped over a grainy photo of Vitter. “The more David Vitter spends on television ads the less truth they contain,” reads the opening line of the top link on the Dardenne website.

Angelle and Dardenne obviously are in position to help tip the scales of this election now. Despite their strong language during the primary, and despite the obvious fact that the two of them, like most humans, can't stand David Vitter, it isn't clear what, if anything they're actually going to do.

Dardenne has already said during one of the debates that he will not make an endorsement in the runoff.  On election night, Angelle told supporters, "You will hear from me again."  On the surface that looks like Dardenne is abstaining and Angelle might come out and attack Vitter some more. The horse trading game is funny, though. Yesterday, on the parallel internet, Lamar shared this quote from one of the great treatises on Louisiana politics, A.J. Liebling's Earl of Louisiana. 

It is unusual for a candidate to win first time around, and if one does he arouses a certain amount of resentment as a spoilsport. After the first primary, each beaten candidate and his backers trade off their support to one of the two men who are still alive, in exchange for what he will bind himself to do for them in the way of legislation, patronage or simple commercial advantage. Naturally, the runoff candidate who looks more likely to win can buy support at lower political prices than the other fellow, but by trying to drive too hard a bargain he may send the business to the underdog. Many a man has beaten himself that way. A Louisiana politician can't afford to let his animosities carry him away, and still less his principles, although there is seldom difficulty in that department.

Everybody may hate Vitty.  But he's made a career out of making sure that they, at least, fear him.