Breaux candidate talk unrealistic; ploy to nudge Blanco out

The problem with a John Breaux candidacy for Louisiana governor is not so much in the legal requirement, but in the political risk that would take for state Democrats.

State Democrat leaders have recognized that Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s is a wounded candidacy unlikely to bring victory against at least two quality Republican challengers, Rep. Bobby Jindal and state Sen. Walter Boasso. At the same time, because of the strength of these opponents, if another quality Democrat is to enter, not enough of the electorate would remain to prevent a Boasso-Jindal runoff. Thus, only the “new” Democrat could remain in the race. This means Blanco would have to leave the contest.

While there is another alternative for the party at this point, new official Democrat entrant Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell is viewed as more of an impediment by the leaders than anything else. His currently one-note campaign whose refrain argues for elimination of income taxes in favor of a six percent oil processing tax does not have a lot of fiscal credibility, so these people would prefer that former senator Breaux be the Blanco alternative.

But here’s where the risk comes in. If Blanco somehow is convinced to leave it, for the next five months the GOP can take all sorts of shots at Breaux, and then only when he qualifies to run in August need they pull their ace out of objecting to the qualification of his candidacy which almost certainly violates the citizenship requirement of the Louisiana Constitution. (The argumentation used to try to justify Breaux’s state citizenship would make Dame Helen Mirren a citizen of Louisiana – and she can’t even be a U.S. citizen because she has a title of nobility.) Even in Louisiana it’s almost certain he would not be allowed to qualify.

Still, even if the chances were better than even that Breaux could qualify, the fact that there would be a non-trivial chance that by sometime in September that the courts could rule he could not, makes this a risk that Democrats and Breaux cannot afford to take – the party then being left bereft of any candidate except Campbell, who cannot win, not much more of a month out from the election at the most, and maybe much closer to it than that, leaving no viable electoral contingency plan.

It’s just not a risk state Democrats can take. Any Breaux candidacy is dead in the water, so any further mention of it must be viewed as an effort to get Blanco out in favor of another candidate, not to get Breaux in the contest.