With former officeholder Tom Schedler resigning
over alleged personnel improprieties earlier this month, the post has become
vacant. The Constitution requires an election later this year to fill out a
little more than a year of the term.
My Advocate
colleague Mark Ballard writes
that he knows of around 20 people expressing interest in the job. That it is an
open statewide seat and occurs in an election cycle when almost all state
offices and many local ones do not also have elections to determine their
occupants will stimulate competition. With many not having to risk their current
positions perhaps a dozen potentially viable candidates therefore may declare
for it.
This brings up the quandary of Democrats over the past decade or so. Simply, barring unusual circumstances, they cannot compete in a statewide contest. Thus, the question becomes whether they want to support a Republican-In-Name-Only in the hopes that such a person if winning would see eye-to-eye with them, or risk that a fully committed leftist, if not winning, would not skew voting results that could usher in a genuine conservative.
That strategy some
in the party promoted for the governor’s race in 2015. But that would have
backfired, as an unlikely combination of events put a die-hard liberal,
Democrat Gov. John Bel
Edwards, into the governor’s mansion. And the party may have wanted to do
that for the 2017 special election for treasurer, made necessary when its
former occupant GOP Sen. John Kennedy made
his way to Congress, through the vehicle of Republican state Rep. Julie Stokes.
However, Stokes’ successful quest to put her cancer into remission prevented
her from pursuing that office, and a perennial candidate who disagreed with the
party on several issues entered instead.
Stokes, having acquired a reputation as too eager
to grow government by repeatedly
supporting Edwards’ fiscal agenda, seems willing to take a shot at this
office and might serve as a Democrat stalking horse. Perhaps even more rested
and ready to play that role is former state Rep. Bryan Adams, who after the
election of Edwards showed a similar tendency to buck the GOP on people and
issues, but finding his influence reduced in the Republican delegation as a
result escaped
to become a state assistant fire marshal.
But Democrat state Sen. Gary Smith also
may throw his hat into this ring. Having rejected overtures to run
against Kennedy in 2016, he currently is one of the two most centrist senators
among Democrats (the other being state Sen. John Milkovich).
Not voting at the far left of the ideological spectrum, he might provide a
reason for Democrats to abjure a proxy.
The contest dynamics would favor that strategy even
more. Although Democrats do disproportionately worse in turnout during
congressional election years than for presidential contests, they do the worst of
all for unlinked special elections, so they should have a bit better shot in
2018 than last year. Also, of all state elective offices, this one has the
least ideological content to it, providing the most potential to dampen
conservatives’ natural advantage. And, the office, while many of its occupants
over the past century did shoot for some higher office, has no track record at
all as a launching pad for successful future candidacies so, in that sense, the
stakes are low for a party.
With a number of its legislators term-limited in
2019 and realizing with this special election an opportunity to extend their elective
careers, likely Democrats will find at least one credible candidate to gun for
the job and the party’s Trojan Horse strategy will have to wait. After all, anything
can happen; just ask Edwards.
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