It's Election Day Eve in Louisiana. The junk mail has all been collected, the robo-calls are still rolling in, and soon elves will be working in the pre-dawn hours to fill the neutral grounds with festive holiday signage. And yet we can't help but notice this election season is missing its usual magic. Normally by this time we're all busy looking over our sample ballots, arguing about major media endorsements, and placing our final bets on the results.
But today, for various reasons, we've got other things on our minds. Sure, football season is always a bit of a distraction but this week we've got light shows at the Superdome, a one-legged Saints coach who has handed administrative duties over to his vicodin pusher, a disintegrating offensive line, and mass panic in Baton Rouge.
Meanwhile, for spectacle, we've had to divide our attentions among a grandstanding Mayor and Police Chief playing Rambo for the cameras, the non-stop laugh riot that is the barnstorming Republican Presidential debate series, and, of course, the continuing hi-jinx of the self-important assholes currently #occupying Wall Street.
It's not like the candidates haven't tried, though. The Lieutenant Governor's race, at least, has been worth the price of admission in entertainment value. The final week's flurry of mudslinging and editorializing and general chicanery is summed up well in this Mark Moseley column. Previously we noted Billy Nungesser's questionable unauthorized appropriation of Drew Brees' image for his campaign. This week, Gambit also pointed out a list of local elected officials whose support Nungesser is erroneously claiming as well. So we'd like to thank Nungesser for at least taking the time to be as flamboyantly dishonest and disgusting as he has. The remainder of the candidates have, of course, been dishonest and disgusting but they all somehow lack Nungesser's panache.
Despite the slight comic relief, though, the elections remain dull for two important reasons. For one, everybody knows Bobby Jindal is going to be re-elected. As far as we're aware, the most serious candidate to even make a feint at opposing the Governor this year wasn't even technically eligible to participate.
For another, all of the statewide races are Republican-only affairs. Louisiana isn't exactly a stranger to one-party politics. There are still those among our number who were old enough to vote when the ballots were full of Ds instead of Rs and we understand the way ad-hoc coalitions can serve as de-facto parties within one inadequately descriptive capital letter. But as this Jeremy Alford piece illustrates, those cakes aren't fully baked yet. So it's difficult for the casual observer to look at this year's ballot and feel too... well excited isn't the word... assured, maybe? Probably this election is best understood not through the top-ballot match-ups but rather through the proxy battles that become evident as we go down the ticket.
Alford's article focuses on the big-picture fight for control of the state GOP between David Vitter, Bobby Jindal, and Jay Dardenne. Personally, we think this makes more sense as Vitter vs Anti-Vitter right now where Jindal and Dardenne may or may not be rivals for control of the Anti-Vitter faction. We have some ideas about how this could shake out over the next two years but we'll leave that for later. This year Vitter is backing Nungesser as well as Jim Tucker in the contested statewide races. If you're not happy about Republicans but are particularly disenchanted with Vitter, that may give you some motivation to vote there.
Jindal is sitting those races out but is devoting his large war chest to electing a more friendly to him legislature and a more friendly to charters BESE board.
Gov. Bobby Jindal's campaign, with no strong opposition as the Oct. 22 election nears, already has put thousands into the race. A new political action committee formed to influence the eight BESE races -- the Alliance for Better Classrooms -- reported last week raising more than $210,000, including a $100,000 loan from Baton Rouge businessman Lane Grigsby.
Grigsby's PAC is supporting Kira Orange Jones for the New Orleans area BESE seat. They produced perhaps the most ridiculous mailer of this election which features an unflatteringly photoshopped picture of Jones' incumbent Louella Givens and plays up the laughably irrelevant fact of her DUI arrest. Because of this and the fact that Mitch Landrieu won't stop calling our house in support of Jones, we are issuing a rare Yellow Blog candidate endorsement of Ms. Givens. Givens isn't the brightest of bulbs but she does support teachers and oppose privatization so she's got that going for her as well.
So despite the general disenchantment, you may as well go out and vote tomorrow anyway. While the big power players aren't necessarily in the forefront here, they are still very much involved even if their orders are being carried out by proxies.
And hey, that's also kind of how the Saints are operating this week too. We'll take a look at how that happened in an upcoming post.
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