The one statewide special election, for Secretary
of State, topped the ballot. But U.S. House of Representatives seats, a couple
of Supreme Court posts, and a spot on the Public Service Commission also were
up for grabs.
The jobs on the state’s top court and the PSC promised
great continuity. Perhaps buoyed by his recent decision to buck his fellow
commissioners by voting
against the wasteful Windcatcher project, PSC District 2 Republican Commissioner
Craig Greene drew no
challengers, just a year after he won the place in a special election.
GOP Associate Justice Jeff Hughes also will walk back into another decade-long term without opposition. The Republican majority on the Court will continue as the only challenger who signed up against incumbent Associate Justice Greg Guidry was another Republican, Richard Ducote, who ran for an Orleans Parish Juvenile Court judge position over three decades ago and since has won a few high-profile cases as well as amassed sanctions in multiple states.
But candidates for Secretary of State received a
last-minute surprise. Expected to qualify and who did were Republicans former state
Sen. A.G. Crowe and state Reps. Rick Edmonds and Julie Stokes and Democrat Department
of Justice administrator (who had served in similar positions in the Department
of State) Renee Free.
Then right at the end of qualifying Republican
current Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin jumped in. Ever since taking over after
the resignation of former Secretary Tom Schedler, Ardoin had insisted he wouldn’t
run for the permanent job.
This makes more certain that only one from the GOP
will make a runoff against Free, and that person almost certainly will go on to
win. Ardoin seems unlikely to pull that off, with such a relatively late start
and no natural constituency outside of a few insiders in state government.
However, he will draw a nontrivial share of the
vote and most likely disproportionately from the Republican candidate considered
the most moderate and insider of the bunch, Stokes. This makes it less likely
that Crowe and Edmonds, considered more insurgent contestants, will split the
vote in a fashion to allow Stokes to make the runoff, and increases chances that
one of them will survive to defeat Free.
And while the congressional races ended up
supplying contests that will be no contests in favor of incumbents, the Fifth
District tilt will add a layer of intrigue to next year’s gubernatorial race. Rumor
had it that Democrats would desist from opposing incumbent Republican Rep. Ralph Abraham, on the basis that Abraham
is mulling a run for governor. Without a race, Abraham could raise fewer
dollars for his federal campaign account and couldn’t really spend these leveraged
into a gubernatorial campaign.
That actually wouldn’t discourage greatly Abraham
from effectively indirectly spending federal campaign cash on a state contest. He
could have used the tactic pioneered by former Sen. David Vitter for governor in
2015: have an ally form a political action committee in support of a candidate
but entirely separate from the campaign, accept funds for it including from the
candidate’s federal account, then spend it promoting the candidate and his issues
or bashing opponents and their issue preferences on any kind of contest.
Still, having to resort to this would have created
less efficient campaigning. But Abraham won’t have to as he had three sign up
against him (one
arrested for impersonating a peace officer right after qualifying) that
included a Democrat, so he can start running ads designed in a way not only to
raise his name recognition (his sprawling district covers three major media
markets) but also to promote issues with both federal and state policy components
to them. Then he has a head start should he choose to go for it next year.
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