Next month, all candidates for
major office and/or who have an existing open campaign account with any
activity must supply the state with paperwork on their previous year’s campaign
activities, but Kennedy produced
his a month early with an impressive net haul of around $600,000 last year
to have cash on hand at year’s end of about $3 million. Even though he lists
himself as a candidate for reelection, the size of activity and voluntary
announcement early point to his real motivation of being governor.
Which, at this point, is dicey. Certain
niches already are getting filled, with that of the perceived Republican
moderate held by Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne
and that of very liberal sacrificial lamb pinned on Democrat state Rep. John Bel Edwards.
Kennedy, who has been all over the board ideologically in his past statewide
attempts at office but who has been a populist throughout and recently settled
on presenting himself as a conservative Republican, has a central problem in
that both the populist niche and conservative niche can be filled by a
better-known, better-financed, more ideologically consistent, and at least as
popular Republican Sen. David
Vitter, who early
polls put him comfortably in the lead.
The conventional wisdom is that Vitter
stands above the field as a conservative colossus, whose entrance into the race
would deprive any other professed candidate of the political right the air
needed to have a chance to win – especially Kennedy. Already, just Vitter
saying he may run is presumed to have
sent at least one potential candidate scurrying back to the safety of staying
put in his present posting. Vitter has declared that he
will be ready to announce his intentions later this month regarding this
race (in the same spirit, for the record I announce here that I may or may not
address whether I will run for governor sometime between now and the election).
But if this truly is the dynamic
at play, it doesn’t mean Kennedy has to sit back and wait for word of the
Vitter decision from up on high to be relayed down to him. As a federal
officeholder (and perhaps
exactly because of him), Vitter cannot use money in federal campaign accounts
for state office, so if he wants to get a jump on fundraising for governor, until
he declares and opens a state account personally he can’t scrape up a penny. It
can be done on his behalf through a special kind of federal account, but it is
less efficient and more cumbersome – but of which allies have taken advantage
on his behalf, gathering $1.5 million.
So by announcing prior to the end
of the month much earlier than the Feb. 15 deadline and reporting a nice tidy
sum with evidence it can grow much bigger, Kennedy is trying to discourage
Vitter’s entrance, leaving it up campaign professionals to guess whether he’s
serious or bluffing that he will run regardless of a Vitter entrance. It’s a
credible threat: in essence Kennedy has twice as much money as Vitter, and what’s
the point in raising so much if it’s just to win his current job again, which
he should be able to do for a fraction of what’s in his account? If Kennedy’s
ready to retire from that position, he has nothing to lose by spending it all
even in a losing gubernatorial effort, because he can’t take it with him (because
it must be spent on campaign-related things, his or somebody else’s, it conveys
little personal benefit).
Unlike Vitter, Kennedy doesn’t
have to forgo raising money directly, because he can claim it would go to
defending his treasurer’s spot. Conceivably, he could wait perhaps a
year-and-a-half before definitively entering the contest, using his ability to
vacuum up contributions as one barometer of his chances at the state’s highest
office. After all, early entrances are just means to enable fundraising and he
already can do that, or are to build name recognition, and he’s already got a
good bit of that which won’t grow much nor unambiguously more positively just
by saying he’s running for governor. He could survey the field as it develops
and has the luxury of deciding at a relatively late date whether to commit. Best
of all, this pronouncement actually could be a fact in ultimately discouraging
Vitter and opening that niche for Kennedy to attempt to fill.
This differs substantially from
Dardenne’s strategy, as all of this could apply to him as well, precisely because
he faces no competition for his assumed niche. But because Kennedy does,
perhaps his optimal strategy is to make Vitter commit early if he’s going for
it, then see if Vitter falters in consolidating the principled and populist
conservative wings of the GOP, leaving room for himself if that happens.
So, if Vitter deigns to tell the
world his plans by the end of this month as advertised, don’t expect if it’s he’s
in for Kennedy a nanosecond later to report he’s out. His vigorous fundraising
and early revelation shows he’s not likely to surrender just because Vitter proclaims
himself for governor rested, relaxed, and ready to go.
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