Talk now is cheap; next year Jindal will best Blanco

Tentative discussions have begun on who will run for governor of Louisiana next year. Chatter is fine, but it’s unlikely to change the basic scenario: Republican U.S. Rep. Bobby Jindal defeating Democrat incumbent Gov. Kathleen Blanco in a general election runoff.

Other names are mentioned, but in the end they either will be smart enough not to run or even if they did it wouldn’t change anything. Democrat State Rep. Cedric Richmond may talk about how blacks are disappointed enough in Blanco to support a run by the likes of him, but he knows he’s a relatively little-known figure outside New Orleans with next to no racial crossover appeal. Besides, in the shrunken New Orleans that will lose legislative districts in the 2011 reapportionment, for him to have any political future in that coming legiscide he needs to have an elective office as a result of the 2007 elections, and for now his current seat is safe.

Republican State Sen. Walter Boasso has only been in politics three years and in the statewide spotlight just a matter of months. Dummies don’t get to head large corporations and CEO Boasso can see the last thing he needs is to oppose a juggernaut like Jindal in Boasso's current politically unseasoned condition when so many other appealing alternatives exist. He can confirm his safe seat reelection in 2007 and, if impatient, can take a free shot at the U.S. Third District if current Rep. Charlie Melancon manages to hang on this year in 2008 whose Democrats may well put at the top of the ticket a guaranteed vote-getter for Republican candidates everywhere – or perhaps even aim higher at the seat of the lite version of this person, Sen. Mary Landrieu. If patient, he waits one or two state election cycles with plenty of time to establish himself as the Republican heir-apparent to the governorship.

Marginalized in the state Senate, Democrat Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell successfully but narrowly escaped to his current position. However, surely he knows the swap that he calls for of income (both personal and corporate) and severance taxes for a processing tax on oil flowing into the state neither is practical nor would enough voters trust the state legislature to follow through on it. Populism may live on more vigorously in Louisiana than anywhere else, but you simply cannot win a statewide race now based on it, especially when you have opponents like Jindal with far more credible platforms. Campbell will need to save his funds to try to hold onto his PSC seat the year after.

However, Campbell is proving an irritant for Blanco because his rhetoric, even if he doesn’t run, tempts her to veer even more sharply to the left to squeeze him out. This literally plays right into Jindal’s hands, who couldn’t quite convince enough voters last time that Blanco was a liberal in moderate’s clothing. Her tenure in office has opened a number of eyes on that account, and her dismal performance during and after Louisiana’s hurricane disasters of 2005 did so even more. Add to that her winning margin against Jindal in 2003 basically has left the state courtesy of the disasters, and with opinion of her down a more than a dozen points in the past 15 months well below the 50 percent positive rating that connotes any chance of winning reelection at all, says she’s in deep trouble.

Blanco said she is running and has nowhere to go but down if she doesn’t so she’ll want to go out swinging. Jindal says he hasn’t decided yet, meaning he’s only 99.44 percent sure that he will. Unless weird things happen, nobody else will matter by this time next year, and Jindal will just have to avoid doing anything stupid to become the youngest governor since … Huey P. Long.