QOTD

Rob Maness who apparently hosts a radio show

But his tone changed abruptly when the caller, who identified himself as "Flaming Liberal," said that even Cruz had asked Moore to step down. "If you're to the right of Ted Cruz, you're an extremist," he said.

"Whoa, you just called me an extremist, brother," said Maness, a retired Air Force colonel who went on to outline his military background, including top-secret clearances.

"I've done everything this country has ever asked me to do. How dare you call me an extremist," he said. "I'm the most investigated, stable man that the country could have ever given the keys to nuclear weapons to, so you can blow me! You can blow me and get out of here if you're gonna talk like that and call me an extremist."

Could we have given him the keys to a nuclear weapon? How did we pass up the chance to do that?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Always flank to the right

In a little noticed event a few weeks back, the pile of Koch-ish SuperPac money in Rob Maness's possession launched a series of strange radio ads threatening Steve Scalise for not trying harder to use the Cromnibus vote to scuttle Obamacare.

A group calling itself Senate Conservatives Action is sponsoring the ad and similar ones against Boehner and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy in their respective districts. The group’s affiliate, the Senate Conservatives Fund, spent nearly a half-million dollars on behalf of Senate candidate Rob Maness, who got 14 percent of the primary vote then quickly endorsed Cassidy against Landrieu in the runoff.

Now it’s suggesting that someone might come after Scalise the next time he runs.

“Tell him to stop cutting deals with President Obama and start fighting for us,” the announcer says, as he helpfully repeats Scalise’s office phone number. “Let him know that if he doesn’t start listening, you will work to bring him home.”

The ad appears to be part of a concerted, if tone-deaf, effort to keep Scalise in line. Also surfacing this week was a story about Maness — who’s trying to stay in the game by founding a new super PAC and who (wink, wink) just happens to reside in Scalise’s district — on a website founded by the late conservative provocateur Andrew Breitbart. 

Who knows what Maness is up to. The dude is a nut.  But it's interesting to see that someone thinks the "running room" in the First Louisiana Congressional District is to the right of Steve Scalise.  Today, Maness released a statement about Scalise's little David Duke problem.  Naturally, he blamed Obama.

"As Congressman Scalise has already conceded - attending this event was a mistake. I think we are all currently taking him at his word that this was an isolated incident that happened some 12 years ago," Maness said.

He added that if that's true, "this is clearly an orchestrated attack designed to distract" from the real issues, including "fighting back against President Obama's executive amnesty, correcting a weak and feckless Foreign Policy and stopping the massive expansion of government growth and spending."

Kingpin

Here are some sunny quotations from this morning's Advocate.

While Vitter didn’t directly note his own role in ousting longtime adversary Landrieu, others have clearly noticed.

“He’s become the kingpin in Louisiana politics,” (Charlie) Cook said. “I think that he will dominate state politics for a good while.”

Ooof.  Well, maybe. We were just throwing this around on Twitter and noticed that this bit..

Word among most political observers is that Vitter was key to clearing the Republican field for the state’s 6th District congressman and in orchestrating Cassidy’s campaign. One of Vitter’s top aides, Joel DiGrado, served as Cassidy’s campaign manager after Cassidy parted ways with a consultant to Gov. Bobby Jindal. 

Isn't all that impressive given this.

@skooks he has all the money, but notable that field wasn't cleared for Cassidy to walk in without defeating Republicans in primary.
— Karl's in Charge (@karlschott) December 9, 2014

Rob Maness existed.  We're pretty sure that happened.  Also, Vitter didn't do anything to get Garret Graves elected so he doesn't control everything, apparently.

On the other hand, neither do any Democrats.

Samuels, the political science professor, said the gubernatorial run won’t be a slam dunk for Vitter, though he is currently seen as the front-runner in the race.

“Republicans will have a fight among themselves,” he said. “I don’t think the Republicans are going to concede the Governor’s Mansion to David Vitter.”

He said under Louisiana’s unusual “jungle primary” setup that pits all candidates, regardless of party, against each other from the start, it’s possible that two Republicans could face each other in a runoff — splitting the state’s GOP base in an unpredictable scenario.

“The Democrats may not have a candidate to make the runoff,” Samuels said. “The real question is what do the Democrats do.”

Also, if the answer to "what do you do?" is we sit around and wait for the indictments, then that's how you know you've already lost.
 

Now what happens?

Well the polls aren't even closed on the 2014 primary and already it's time to start wondering what it all means for 2015.

But you’ve got to wonder if this is also an opportunity for the mayor himself. As tired as most everyone must be of politics by now, next year is an open governor’s race, and the campaigning is already well underway. While Mitch Landrieu has not said he’ll be a candidate — and indeed, when asked during his own re-election earlier this year, he said he’d finish out his four-year term — many Democrats see him as the party’s last best hope to reclaim power in Baton Rouge. If he’s weighing his options, as many politicos believe, what better way to test the waters than to get out there and start meeting voters?

Of course, Landrieu’s not the only potential governor with a big stake in the state’s U.S. Senate contest. Louisiana’s other senator, David Vitter, has his fingerprints all over the campaign of Mary Landrieu’s lead opponent, U.S. Rep. Bill Cassidy. Vitter worked hard to clear the field of other big-name Republicans (although tea party candidate Rob Maness ran anyway, and may well force the election into a runoff). He provided a longtime top aide to run Cassidy’s campaign. He appeared at events with the congressman.

So this whole Senate business is also a proxy war in the next round of Governor-making.

By the way, looks like a late night tonight. Apparently the long ballots are harder for the computers to read or something.  So more time for partying. 

This ain't Columbus Day

You can stop that after 40 seconds if you want to. [YOU DON'T HAVE TO NOW. I FIXED IT] But vote.. you know... if you want to.

Here are some Election Day links for you.

Voter suppression is still very much in style.

The Crosscheck list of suspected double voters has been compiled by matching names from roughly 110 million voter records from participating states. Interstate Crosscheck is the pet project of Kansas’ controversial Republican secretary of state, Kris Kobach, known for his crusade against voter fraud.

The three states’ lists are heavily weighted with names such as Jackson, Garcia, Patel and Kim — ones common among minorities, who vote overwhelmingly Democratic. Indeed, fully 1 in 7 African-Americans in those 27 states, plus the state of Washington (which enrolled in Crosscheck but has decided not to utilize the results), are listed as under suspicion of having voted twice. This also applies to 1 in 8 Asian-Americans and 1 in 8 Hispanic voters. White voters too — 1 in 11 — are at risk of having their names scrubbed from the voter rolls, though not as vulnerable as minorities.

If even a fraction of those names are blocked from voting or purged from voter rolls, it could alter the outcome of next week’s electoral battle for control of the U.S. Senate — and perhaps prove decisive in the 2016 presidential vote count.

What's the matter with Kansas now?

Of the various Kansas races, it is the Pat Roberts–Greg Orman Senate matchup that has captured the attention of poll-parsers and odds-makers from coast to coast, because it presents them with an alluring double uncertainty: Not only is the race itself too close to call, but if the independent Greg Orman wins, we don’t know which party he will line up with. In fact, we know remarkably little about Orman’s politics generally, because he didn’t come up by conventional partisan means; he moved sideways into public life after a successful career running a private equity firm. Over the years he has had dalliances with both R’s and D’s, and today he presents himself as an anti-politician, assailing (as he put it in a TV debate a few weeks ago) “partisans of both parties” who refuse to “roll up your sleeves [and] start solving problems.”

As races come down to the wire all over the country, it seems ever more possible that the fate of the Senate lies in the hands of this one unknown figure, who could conceivably deliver control of that august body to either side. The possibilities have beguiled the science-minded men of the consensus, who for weeks have speculated back and forth on this or that possible scenario, with the enigmatic Orman always hovering over the outcome.

Who is benefiting from the new age of unlimited money?

Republican dark money groups are outspending their Democratic counterparts by an incredible margin, according to data from the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation.

During this cycle, conservative groups that do not disclose their donors have spent more than $94 million, while liberal dark money groups have spent more than $28 million.

Does that mean the Republicans will take the Senate?

Republicans have a 76.2% chance of winning a majority.

Whose fault is this?

Oh good lord. If the Democratic Party wants to know what's wrong with the Democratic Party it isn't the "professional left" or the "emoprogs" it's the institutional Democrats who run to press and whine like infants every time the Party looks like it's about to lose an election --- even if it was entirely predictable and is completely reversible 2 years later

But, of course, everyone will blame "the liberals."  Even though "the liberals" are more likely than anyone to turn out and vote for the terrible Democratic candidates who hate them. Worry instead about the voters you haven't reached. 

BILL MOYERS: This, to me, is this fundamental question facing Bernie Sanders. How do you get your message directly to those who need it most? And you know who they are. They're conservative working people, who don't realize that their party has been sold all these years to the financial and business interests that are rigging the rules against them. How do you reach those people?

BERNIE SANDERS: Well, believe me, I wish I had the magic answer. You're asking exactly the right question. There are parts of this country, Bill, where the only information people get is on radio. You got Rush Limbaugh. 95 percent of talk radio is extreme right wing. You got Fox Television, which does an extraordinary job of deflecting attention away from the real issues.
The idea that you have these working-class people who are voting for candidates who refuse to raise the minimum wage, who refuse to provide health care for their kids, who want to send their jobs to China, who want to give tax breaks to corporations, it blows my mind. And that is the issue that we have to figure out.

BILL MOYERS: But is there no way to make a concerted effort to reach out conservative working people, people who share, I think, a populous bias in behalf of government by, and for the people. Wouldn't you bolster your credentials as someone willing to really shake things up, get beyond this distracting tedium of left and right and horserace mentalities that you're asked about all the time on the radio. Is there a way to make a campaign out of that?

BERNIE SANDERS: This is something that I'm thinking about hard. When they ask Tea Party people, and I've seen some of the polls, do you think we should cut Social Security? You know what they say overwhelmingly? No. Should you cut Medicare? No. Tea Party working-class people will be shocked to know that the people who founded the Tea Party, the Koch brothers, want to eliminate Social Security, Medicare, the concept of minimum wage. In other words, the ideology of the Koch brothers, who put the initial money in to found the Tea Party, is very different from the average, working-class person. And you're saying how do we reach out to get to work in coalition with those folks is something that we have got to do.

Here is the important point about that.  It is 100% the Democrats' own fault. Democrats lose elections like this one because they defend a half good/half bad health care law when they should be pushing for a better one. Democrats lose elections like this one because they brag about having "saved" the corrupt financial industry at a time when they should be running against income inequality.

People are angry and pretty much hopeless.  The moment calls for insurrection. But the Democrats fail to deliver that.  Meanwhile, the Republicans offer a false version of it spiked with fear and ignorance.  Maybe you think you're morally superior or whatever.. but it's hard to blame voters for either choosing the latter out of spite or tuning out altogether.

The good news is, it probably doesn't even matter who controls Congress for the next 2 years.  They don't even do anything.  Here's an amusing John Oliver segment on state legislatures, where the real.. and often terrifying... action is these days.



So, you know, remember to buy local in the future.

To that end, today's ballot (preview your sample ballot here) is full of local stuff.  In Orleans Parish, there are three city charter changes, and seventy million judicial elections to contend with on top of the fourteen proposed state constitutional amendments.  You'll probably need help navigating that stuff.  Here are some links that will help with that.

The League of Women Voters publishes a guide to all candidates, amendments, and propositions here.

This year, The Lens, spent a great deal of time focusing on the judicial races. Here is their comprehensive guide to the candidates.

Jules Bentley wrote this amusing guide to every race in Orleans, Jefferson, and St. Bernard.  I don't necessarily agree with his recommendations, although I do admire the spirit in which he makes them.

PAR puts out, by far, the most useful of all the guides to the constitutional amendments. That document includes a detailed explanation of each along with the prevailing arguments for and against.

I tweeted out an..um.. alternate version of this explainer last night.  I've been asked to put that together in a list so sorry but here is that. 


Anyway... WHO IS GOING TO WIN?  Luckily, I know some of the answers to that too.

First of all, we have to make some Congresspersons. Obviously Cedric Richmond is well on his way to becoming District 2 Congressman For Life so there isn't much to say about that race.

This week, TPM named botth the LA-05 and LA-06 races among their list of "Six Most Interesting House Races To Watch"  Which is weird because the New York Times recently declared Louisiana politics officially uninteresting anymore.  They're probably both a little bit right.

For example, the 6th District race is absolutely nuts and pretty wide open to boot. If fate were to somehow deal us a Lenar Whitney vs Edwin Edwards runoff, it will be the sort of stuff we tell to our grandchildren.. or to Edwards' children, I guess.

Sadly this isn't going to happen. Instead, Edwards will end up in a runoff with one of the other 70 Republicans running. Judging from the bizarre run of last minute attacks against him, this will probably be Paul Dietzel But who knows?  Anyway whoever it is will beat Edwards.  So it's an interesting race but not a really interesting race.

Same thing in District 5 where the goddamned Duck Dynasty people are trying to see if they can just randomly name congressmen from now on.  Interesting because Vance McAllister won his first election running with the DD endorsement but also against Bobby Jindal's refusal to accept the Medicaid expansion. Now he's running against DD absent any issue that might actually matter to people this time around.  So it's interesting in that it might serve as a referendum on Duck Dynasty. But not for any other reason.

Anyway I think McAllister makes the runoff vs Jamie Mayo who is just kind of there as part of the furniture.

As for the local races, I don't think I can make a call on those. My guess is Sens and Marullo win.. which I'm sure will lead to much tooth gnashing.

Finally, I don't think the Louisiana race will determine the balance of power in the Senate.  The GOP path to victory looks like it comes via wins in Alaska, Iowa, Colorado, and North Carolina tonight. Many people disagree with me! Especially about North Carolina but just you watch.

There's also a slight chance that Kansas Independent Greg Ormon finds himself elected President Of Everything but I don't think that's going to happen.

The upshot is Louisiana will have a runoff to decide its Senator and that runoff won't matter to anyone at all.  Which is fine because these candidates are terrible people. This is an actual transcript of their first debate I made in case you need evidence of this.  I guessed some numbers on this earlier.. where did I put.. oh here it is.

Mary: 45%
Cassidy: 42%
Maness: 10%
Other 3%

Anyway, have fun pushing the buttons out there today.

What's in the early vote trick-or-treat bag?

Mary Landrieu's electoral prospects?

The early voting period for the November 4 election ended Tuesday. From Mary Landrieu's point of view, the turnout looks good but probably not good enough.

The Secretary of State's office reports that just over 236,000 ballots have been cast for the Nov. 4 election. In 2010 -- when Vitter was at the top of the ticket -- only 125,000 people voted early.

Still, the 2014 early voting numbers don't compare to early turnout in 2008, when Landrieu was last on the ballot. In that election -- which featured President Barack Obama for the first time -- over 292,000 people turned out to vote early.

It's difficult to interpret 2008 as a benchmark.  It's the last time Mary Landrieu was on the ballot. But the turnout was obviously driven by Barack Obama's presence. Contrary to what is implied by Bill Cassidy's commercials, Obama is not on the ballot this year.    

On the other hand, the 2010 midterm was such a snoozer in Louisiana that it doesn't fit the bill either.  2012, the election I've been looking at to get a set of upper-end aspirational turnout numbers for Democrats, is different as well. That was a Presidential year with no Senate race on the ballot.  But, since it also saw the highest turnout numbers of all, it deserves some attention.  (You can find all of these turnout numbers at the Secretary of State's website, btw)

So we've got 2008: Mary and Obama running together; 2010: Neither Mary nor Obama; 2012 Obama but no Mary; and 2014 Mary but no Obama. Lots of variables there, including the general trend toward more early voting in each election.  It's a confusing game to play at and it might even be pointless... eh but okay here we go.

The T-P has already done the work of comparing this year's numbers with 2008 and 2010. Statewide, the early vote total in 2012 was 356,603.  So that's:

2008: 292,213
2010: 125,054
2012: 356,603
2014: 236,088

I'm going to try and compare apples to apples without getting too complicated. First let's look at the expected drop in turnout that happens between every Presidential election and its following midterm.

The difference between Presidential year 2008 and midterm 2010 was a 57% drop in early vote turnout.  But compare Presidential year 2012 to midterm 2014 and the drop is only 33%. This suggests that Landrieu is succeeding at driving the turnout up this year.

But it's also true that more people are opting to vote early each election cycle as they get more and more used to the process. Let's assume the two Presidential elections, where early turnout increased by 22% from 2008 to 2012, provide a fair baseline for this expected natural growth in early voting.
If we, then, compare the two midterm elections (2010 and 2014) we get an eye-opening 88% increase in early turnout.

The difference between 2010 and 2014 has to be significant.

Even more significant will be placement. Landrieu is counting most on juicing the turnout in Orleans Parish. You probably noticed these signs around town last week.



Here are the early vote turnout numbers from Orleans Parish for the elections under discussion.

2008: 16,912
2010: 9,733
2012: 30,304
2014: 23,152

You can play around with those numbers if you like but here is what I find most significant. Remember the statewide drop in early turnout from 2012 to 2014 was 33%. In Orleans Parish it was only 23%.  This suggests that Mary is getting people to vote where she needs them to.  There still may not be enough of them, of course.  But the answer to the main question here is, yes, the early vote push was effective.

This is different from saying it will help Landrieu win, of course.Take a look at this New York Times feature on the Louisiana elections published this week.  

The main political event this year, the Senate race, could not be further removed from the Edwards era. No one here at the harvest festival was particularly excited about Senator Mary L. Landrieu, a three-term Democrat, or Representative Bill Cassidy, the Republican challenger who will most likely face Ms. Landrieu in a runoff. A few said they might vote for Rob Maness, a hard-right Tea Party favorite and retired Air Force colonel who is also running, though most acknowledge his chances are slim.

“They used to say that the biggest sin in Louisiana politics was to be boring,” said R. Michael McHale, a lawyer in Lake Charles. “Now Louisiana’s become more like Washington. To a certain extent, elections aren’t even about Louisiana anymore.”

The degree to which that last observation is true will be the key to this race. The idea that you can win a statewide election in Louisiana with an unappealing nerd of a candidate running on a generic nationalized platform feels wrong.

The polling right now suggests that Cassidy defeats Landrieu in a runoff. But still one's instincts hew back toward the notion that, when they really have to decide whether or not they want to make the "weird dude" their Senator based on cable news talking points that have little if anything to do with  Louisiana, voters are going to balk.

Earlier this week I wrote that Mary and Cassidy are making different assumptions about what voters think a Senator is for.  Here is more on that from the NYT piece. 

Roughly $40 million has been spent on the Senate race here by campaigns and outside groups, and television is saturated with a wave of nasty ads that have exasperated the fact-checkers. But it is not the most expensive race in the country, nor is it remarkably nastier than the rest of the paint-by-numbers Senate campaigns this year.

Mr. Cassidy is running a generic if effective Republican campaign, tying Ms. Landrieu to President Obama, to Harry Reid, and to Washington in general. Ms. Landrieu could be described as the standard-bearer for an older style of Louisiana politics, with a bring-home-the-bacon campaign. But even she is relying for her survival on millions of national ad dollars and a typical Democratic constituency of black voters and women.

Do voters care that Mary Landrieu, whatever her faults, at least presents herself as Louisiana's Senator rather than just the Democratic Senator from Louisiana?  Or are they more interested in voting against the effigy of Barack Obama her opponents seem to be running against instead of her? 

Probably the answer is the latter but tune in Tuesday just in case.

 

Exploding voters

Not quite exploding pie but... ok nobody gets that joke anymore.  Today is the last day for early voting.  According to the T-P, the turnout has "exploded."

About 17,430 city residents have cast ballots during early voting, which ends today, said Sandra Wilson, registrar of voters. That's more than four times as many early voters as the last midterm election in 2010, when 3,278 cast early ballots, she said.

The big early voting turnout may be a good sign for Democratic incumbent Mary Landrieu as she fights to keep her Senate seat. African-Americans, who vote overwhelmingly Democrat, have much higher early voting rates than whites, and maximizing voter turnout in New Orleans is seen by many as key to Landrieu's electoral hopes.

If we include yesterday's count, the total is now 18,066 in Orleans.  That's an impressive 60% of the early vote turnout during the 2012 Presidential election. It's still probably not going to be enough for Mary.  Although, this surprise late entrant might muddle things up on the Republican side.

Wilson speculated that the sharp rise is due in part to the intense interest in the senatorial race between Landrieu and David Cassidy, the Republican front runner.

Last night Mary Landrieu debated Rob Maness and one additional empty space where Bill Cassidy might have been.  It was uneventfully on-script. 

Mary made a point of name dropping every Republican she is friends with and telling us how magically delicious petroleum is.  (Consider putting some on your scrambled eggs or in a soup, she said.  We already know how much you love it on seafood.)  

Maness talked about how "the free market" will help us "find solutions" on "the table."  The Colonel also said "war is a racket," while simultaneously talking up his military record. Apparently he did secret things in "countries I cannot name." So he was a covert racketeer, we suppose. Next he said that "politics is a racket" so now it makes sense why he is even running.   Rob Maness is an interesting fellow.

Anyway, Hillary Clinton is stumping for Mary this weekend, in case that is the kind of thing that gets you excited.  Go out and vote today if you plan to vote early. 

A lot will depend on what people think a Senator is for

WWLTV dropped a Senate poll on us this morning which shows us pretty much what everyone expected it would show.

The Suffolk University poll, conducted for WWL-TV, USA Today and Gannett Louisiana newspapers, shows the two frontrunners in essentially a statistical dead heat, with 36 percent of those surveyed saying they would vote for incumbent Sen. Mary Landrieu in the Nov. 4 primary. 35 percent chose Rep. Bill Cassidy and 11 percent chose Tea Party-backed candidate Col. Rob Maness. 18 percent were undecided or chose other candidates.

"It's an amazing race right now and it looks from the polling that Sen. Landrieu's best shot to make a real showing is in this November election," said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, which conducted the poll. Suffolk surveyed 500 voters across Louisiana Oct. 23-26. The poll has a margin of error of +/- 4 percent.

If, as expected, the race goes to a Dec. 6 runoff between the two frontrunners, those polled favored Cassidy 48 percent to 41 percent, with still 11 percent undecided.

The conventional argument is that Maness's support all accrues automatically to Cassidy in a runoff.   Although one wonders how many of them will bother to show up at all. The fact that Maness polls as well as he does now is a reflection of just how unlikable Cassidy is, even to the conservative voters he is courting.  People think the dude is weird.

Fan outside LSU game holding up sign with Bill Cassidy's picture that says, "Dude is weird. He's just weird." pic.twitter.com/Qwfh6aUAmL
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) October 25, 2014

So you have to figure on a lot of  Maness-iacs ^(TM) staying home in December. The question for the ones who do show up will be, what do they actually care about? 

Notice the issues these pollsters focus on in their analysis.

"Two years ago when we had a nationally popular president, you didn't have the ISIS situation, we didn't have the Ebola threat and what's been going on and there were many other news events that have hurt him," Paleologos said. Obama has a 60 percent unfavorable rating and a 36 percent favorable rating in the poll.

Those polled also showed little love for those in congress, with 64 percent giving them an unfavorable ranking. Paleologos says it's actually higher in some places.

"That tells us there's a big frustration with Washington, D.C. and the solutions of Washington and of course in Louisiana you've got issues like Obamacare that don't poll well. It's perceived as sort of a national program that's hurtful."

Ebola, ISIS, Obamacare, all the generic stuff in the national news right now. If these are the issues on the minds of Maness voters, and they aren't excited about Bill Cassidy, my guess is a lot of them will stay home.

Mary Landrieu's campaign, on the other hand, is about none of these things.  Instead she, along with every big name and news organization endorsing her, has emphasized her constituent services record and her powerful Senate Energy Committee chairmanship. 

I don't know what the Maness voters are going to do in the runoff.  But I don't think it's too far fetched to guess that those who are interested in the Louisiana-specific issues will be more motivated to stay in the game than those who are just playing the run-of-the-mill Obama protest game.  It still might mean that Mary doesn't have the numbers she needs. But it's hard to argue with the formula.

Early voting is still available today and tomorrow, by the way.  See the Secretary of State's website for information on polling locations.

A thing to mark down on your calendar

Bobby Jindal is going to make a decision.

Gov. Bobby Jindal would not respond Tuesday to the flurry of GOP congressional candidates grading his governorship, often with below average marks, repeating what he called his accomplishments and saying the only accurate grade was “incomplete.”

Jindal also told a news conference that he was not interested in any other future office but president of the United States. He specifically ruled out running for the U.S. Senate or U.S. House.

“If I were to stay in politics it would involve the 2016 running for president. There’s no other elective office I would seek,” Jindal said, adding that a decision a presidential run would be made, probably, after the holidays.

As to that business about being "graded" by fellow Republicans, it's a thing that's been coming up in candidate forums.  Jindal is currently very unpopular (on account of his having been an exceptionally crappy Governor). President Obama is also unpopular in Louisiana (on account of... other reasons.) So it's become fashionable.. although pointless.. during the debate season to ask candidates to rate both of these lightning rod figures on "a scale of 1 to 10." This has caused Republicans standing for office to squirm a little.

Senate candidates Bill Cassidy and Rob Maness gave Jindal a "7" and a "5" respectively after each hemmed and hawed a bit about how Jindal has "taken some licks." 

Yesterday, Garrett Graves awarded Jindal a perfect 10 "on coastal restoration."  Graves and Jindal spent much of the past year working to shut down the SLFPA-E lawsuit against oil and gas companies responsible for ripping apart the Louisiana coast. So the "10" there is as much an act of self-congratulation.. if you can call it that.

The only Republican not too worried about Bobby Jindal is Congressman Vance McAllister. Although, the Jindal people are pretty peeved at him.

Delivering stump speeches that roast Republican party officials may have finally caught up with Congressman Vance McAllister, R-Swartz.

The bad blood, however, dates back much further than the ongoing contest in the 5th Congressional District. GOP leaders backed McAllister’s opponent in last year’s special election, after the incumbent bucked Gov. Bobby Jindal’s stance on Medicaid expansion. And they implored McAllister to resign earlier this year after a video was released of him kissing a married aide.

Asked if the party would wholeheartedly support McAllister if he makes the runoff against Monroe Mayor Jamie Mayo, a Democrat, Louisiana Republican Party Executive Director Jason Doré said it would be a “tough decision.”

So, in addition to Jindal's announcement that he's running for President, let's all keep an eye out for that state Republican Party endorsement of a Democrat too, right?