Such was the Republican wave Nov.
4 that, had one not known the date, upon hearing Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu’s reflective, almost
elegiac in content, remarks as the vote
nearly had come in, one would have thought it was Dec. 6 and she was
issuing a concession speech.
GOP gains nationally were on the
high end of Congressional picks, including taking control of the Senate, and
even the gubernatorial contests that they were expected to have small net
losses turned out to be a net gain. It won’t be known for days, but hundreds of
state legislative seats in net will turn over from Democrat to Republican as
well.
The wave manifested itself in her
contest for reelection by having her pull only 42 percent of the vote – a bare
16,000 votes ahead of her runoff competitor Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy with mid-major Republican
candidate Rob Maness pulling over 200,000 votes. Only in Louisiana with its blanket
primary system could an incumbent with such a terrible total against major
party competition be in any contention to hold onto to the seat – as if. Those
numbers alone make her a politically dead woman walking, yet it gets worse.
For one, there’s little
opportunity for her to scare up more votes to make up ground. Turnout in this
contest was about 200,000 more than the last time she ran in an off-year
election, 2002, which represents a 5 percent increase in turnout percentage,
even as her vote total increase ran a percentage point behind that. For
another, she roughly doubled up Cassidy in campaign expenditures, and, when all
is said and done with both money reported and not, probably more was spent independently
for her than for Cassidy as well. If she couldn’t spend her way to leading
Cassidy by at least 100,000 votes on the basis of that, she’s not going to make
up nearly 200,000 in a runoff.
Nor do the runoff dynamics favor
her. While she
showed resiliency in 2002 when that runoff turnout declined by less than a
percentage point, she was at 46 percent in the general election then and
probably held her own with her base in the runoff. Her worse initial performance
this time means she has to improve dramatically with dynamics that already make
it easier for Cassidy to hustle his voters – and most of Maness’ – back to the
polls.
Another indicator of her, and
Democrats’, weakness in the state in this election as a whole was that her quality
colleagues running in House contests, in the Fifth District Monroe Mayor Jamie Mayo and in the Sixth District Prisoner #03128-095, each only
settled for around 30 percent of their districts’ votes. This means they won’t
boost turnout much for her next month.
And perhaps worst of all, that
the GOP already has bagged the Senate takes away perhaps her biggest selling
point this cycle, that she was an experienced senator who could leverage that
to get stuff for Louisiana. But she’s a nothing now in a Republican-run chamber,
and on every issue where she claimed she broke from national Democrats to
benefit the state, now she cannot seriously argue that she would be more
effective than Cassidy on those issues when he sits with the majority that has
the power to do those things. Why go lite when you can have the real thing?
That turnout was higher
demonstrates that any more than just a trivial number of Republican supporters
are unlikely to yawn and stay home the first Saturday in December since the
Senate is settled. More than anything, these results show a critical mass of
Louisiana voters simply want her out of office.
In short, the result was a
disaster for her. She’ll hang in because there’s always that live boy or dead
girl possibility, but you might as well start forming the second line to her
political funeral.
3 comments:
Now that the Senate has a Republican majority, we need David Vitter to stay in Washington, be a committe chairman and a leading part of that majority - much more than we need him running for Governor.
Let's all encourage him to do so.
As far as I can see....there will be no difference in Congress. The only positive that will be there is a Republican control that will be able to muzzle the socialist in the White House so that he will not be able to destroy this country further.
After the next two years....who knows.
Mary won't be hurting for anything. She can live at her Washington DC mansion and make millions as a lobbyist or consultant. She'll just no longer have the prestige of being called "Senator".
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