While state general election
results confirmed that Republicans remain Louisiana’s majority party, the
behavior of some of its leading elected officials shows it has yet to learn how
to govern in the fashion the state deserves and needs.
When the dust settles after Nov.
21, the GOP almost certainly will have extended slightly its legislative majorities
and should continue to maintain an iron grip on the Board of Elementary and
Secondary Education. However, it may not replicate its sweep of statewide
elective offices, and most vexingly the one most likely to flip would be the
most important, governor.
Although endorsements typically
sway few voters, in this apparently close race they could make the difference.
And so the failure not only of third-placed gubernatorial candidate Republican Public
Service Commissioner Scott Angelle
to endorse second-placed Republican Sen. David
Vitter in the runoff, but also the endorsement by fourth-placed Republican Lt.
Gov. Jay
Dardenne of the first-placed Democrat state Rep. John Bel Edwards could prove
costly to the GOP retaining the governor’s mansion.
Angelle throughout the campaign tried
to present himself as an ideologically conservative candidate, yet now he stays
silent in a contest where voters have a clear ideological choice between
Vitter, who scores a lifetime
92 in the American Conservative Union Congressional ratings that denotes
near-perfectly consistent conservative ideological voting, and Edwards, who on
the Louisiana Legislature Log’s legislative
ratings scored a lifetime 30, indicating solidly liberal and populist voting
behavior. If, as the tone of his campaign demonstrated, Angelle attached such
importance to issue preferences, inexplicably he does not do his utmost to
advance the candidacy of the runoff participant that expresses his alleged
issue preferences.
One explanation presents itself:
that next year Angelle
wishes to run for Vitter’s Senate seat regardless of who wins the runoff, meaning
he would endorse his potential future opponent. Even so, his unwillingness to
endorse Vitter shows Angelle seems more driven by political opportunism than by
genuine concern over the state’s future. If in the coming years Angelle appears
on ballots, particularly conservative voters should consider that when someone
asserts to have a conservative ideology but passes on supporting an obvious advocate
to that agenda against an obvious opponent of that agenda, then this shows he
does not really mean what he claims.
Dardenne made few ideological appeals
in his campaign, but his Edwards endorsement borders on the unfathomable for someone
who trumpeted on his campaign website his party affiliation, the only major candidate
to do so. His trail of Twitter posts
shows he realizes the unmistakable differences between the GOP’s conservative
platform and Edwards’ voting history and campaign promises, and he can’t be so naïve
as to think having Edwards at the helm would not produce gubernatorial rule significantly
injurious to what he claims as his agenda. Therefore, he must lack in a
different way genuine commitment to conservatism.
To sell out in this fashion his
reputed principles for whatever reason demonstrates, as with Angelle, an essential
inability to provide the fortitude necessary to promulgate conservative policy.
Thus, with Vitter available as an alternative, conservatives who did not vote
for them chose wisely.
Louisiana has experienced a long
history of poor leadership because too many of its politicians put personal feelings
and ambitions ahead of what they knew was best for the state. Despite
Republican gains of the last decade, because of this tendency only bits and
pieces of conservatism have made their way into the state’s governing policy,
retarding the state’s progress. An Edwards gubernatorial win facilitated by
action or inaction of vanquished GOP rivals would continue this lamentable
trend of irresponsibility and lost opportunities.
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