Baton Rouge Mayor Kip Holden not only can’t
win statewide office, but his
decision to run for lieutenant governor also will contribute to dooming
another candidate disliked by his party.
Democrat Holden confirmed
long-circulated rumors that he would make a try for the office in 2015, which
actually does very little in basically serving as the head of the Department of
Culture, Recreation, and Tourism (present occupant Jay Dardenne
did away with the formalities and did not fill that cabinet post in favor of
doing it himself). It certainly can’t hurt him, as his mayor-president term
will continue through 2016 and he could run for that again; indeed, what funds and
name recognition he has left over from inability to win this statewide office
he could use towards securing a fourth term at the helm of the consolidated
government.
And he assuredly will not win,
barring incredible fortune. Winning statewide as a Democrat is a tough
proposition, but it becomes impossible when one is a black liberal known most recently
for backing to success an increase in taxes to pay for a rapid transit system plagued
with mismanagement if not outright corruption, getting humiliated by
defeated attempts to raise
taxes for massive, if questionable in need, infrastructure projects, and whose
prime economic development strategy these days is to annex
unincorporated land in order to beggar potential growth competitors to
Baton Rouge. Even if the office he seeks
is picayunish, with its only real appeal being waiting around for the governor
to leave office one way or the other, and the scant actual areas of authority
of it have little to do with being a chief executive of a consolidated
government (with less power than a typical mayor), a majority of Louisiana
voters will turn their noses up at that record as an indicator of how he would
serve in the state’s #2 office.
But his running will affect the
chances of his major Republican competitors. For despite his electoral
shortcomings, Holden is guaranteed to draw a third of the vote, perhaps as much
as two-fifths, because the state’s small coven of white liberals will want some
place to go while a huge portion of black voters will join them. This makes him
a better than even money proposition to make the general election runoff, and his
presence definitely favors one of the two announced GOP candidates.
That would not be state Sen. Elbert Guillory and puts him at a
distinct disadvantage to former Plaquemines Parish Pres. Billy Nungesser. While neither have a
record of liberalism, neither also have built political careers as anything more
than moderate conservatives, so in sum if voters care about ideology relative
to an office the duties of which allow little of that injected into it, they
can’t find too much to distinguish the pair. Their primary distinction at this
point is that Nungesser has a whole lot of resources to build upon compared to
Guillory.
That would be about a $1.5
million difference, representing Nungesser’s
bankroll at the end of 2013, of which he had raised a third and loaned
himself the rest. That’s because at the end of the year Guillory actually had less
than zero in his campaign account. Worse for him, Nungesser has some
residual name recognition left over from the 2011 campaign, when he ran
competitively against Dardenne even if it
wasn’t the best-executed in history.
To try to counteract this
resource asymmetry, Guillory hopes to draw upon the other large distinction
between he and Nungesser; he’s black, Nungesser’s white. This gives him a
built-in advantage with black voters given past voting behavior and would be
crucial had a Democrat not run. If Guillory was forced to run a shoestring candidacy
compared to what Nungesser did in 2011 (about twice what he has raised for
2015) or this contest if, as last time, there were just two candidates, then he
was in a decent position to win.
However, with another black who
also is a Democrat in the race who will take at least 80 percent of that black
vote, that puts a big dent into Guillory’s chances. He most likely would be
aced out of the runoff given the scenario as it stands.
And that added more impetus to
Holden’s intent to run than any realistic chance he thinks he has of winning.
Even as Louisiana Democrats are getting routed of out any meaningful existence in
office at the state level, the only worse thing for them – and the national
party, no doubt keeping an eye on the most disturbing aspect of this contest to
its leaders – would be to have a black Republican in that office. Every black
statewide-elected official out there add invalidation to the myth that
Democrats by definition must represent best the interests of blacks everywhere
and the very existence of these nonconformists causes some blacks to question
blind allegiance to the Democrats. As long as Holden’s entry keeps Guillory
from winning, even if Holden loses big in the runoff, the party will see this
as more than satisfactory an outcome.
Also more important in Holden’s
decision calculus than actual chances of victory is with him presenting a black
face of the party, which when led
by whites its leadership had a history of shunning such candidates statewide,
front and center running for statewide office, this can help stimulate turnout
for other contests, as it seems unlikely that a competitive black candidate
will come forward for governor. That encouragement could get a few extra votes
to the polls that might turn some legislative or local contests in their favor.
Of course, Holden will say all of
the right things about how he intends to win, etc. Yet the reality is the move,
which undoubtedly will attract the usual suspect big donors to help to
accomplish these, is more about keeping at least one black Republican out of
office and getting other Democrats into other offices than anything else.
1 comment:
Holden is term-limited. EBR Mayor-President has a three term limit. Holden was elected in 2004.
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