Recently the invaluable The Hayride’s editor Scott McKay published
some musings about next year’s governor’s election. In it, he admitted that he suffered
disturbed sleep over the possibility that an outsider non-conservative candidate
could win that contest.
He sketched a scenario where somebody not ideologically
conservative like wealthy businessman Jim Bernhard – in the past rumored as a
candidate for statewide office and who briefly fronted Louisiana’s Democrats –
would get in the contest as an independent, use a theme of government dysfunction
(part a consequence of the state’s populist history and political culture, part
a reflection of events over the past three years where Democrat Gov. John
Bel Edwards has insisted on continuing this despite electoral and societal
trends heading in the opposite direction) and declare himself the antithesis to
that, dump a lot of money in the race, and find a way to win, acing out a
conservative.