Safe seat LA Democrats must go woke or broke

For Louisiana Democrats and safe seat elections, it truly has become go woke or go broke.

Going “woke,” or subscribing to far leftist conspiracy theories that many current government policies propagate systemic racism, oppress the poor, discriminate against people who want to be treated according to a sex identity category that differs from their actual biology, doom the planet to catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, etc. spells electoral disaster statewide and in most district elections. In statewide contests and a large majority of districts, a center-right electorate easily spots and defeats candidates who subscribe to and articulate these fantasies and instead almost always elect Republicans.

That has become increasingly true as state and local elections have become nationalized, a trend strengthened by closer association with party labels to candidate ideology and greater ease in the ability of national political agents to intervene in these contests. But in some districts, mostly majority-black and in all of which Democrats can win, nationalization has spurred on woke candidates.

The highest profile demonstration of this yet occurred in the recent state runoff election between Democrat incumbent Public Service Commissioner Lambert Boissiere III and leftist interest group administrator Davante Lewis. Boissiere is wrapping up his third term while Lewis only had run, and lost, previously for a local office.

Most of Boissiere’s challengers expounded a woke platform that in the purview of the PSC meant full-throated belief in climate alarmism and policy preferences attendant to that – which actually didn’t differ all that much from his. In his 18 years he has tried to goad power providers into greater use of renewable energy sources, but, unlike his challengers, didn’t display an overt hostility towards fossil fuel-based provision and against the big three providers that relied heavily on those sources.

This, it seems, wasn’t enough for out-of-state special interests wedded to the alarmist cult. Boissiere started off with a lot of built-up cash and collected a bit more up to the general election. Meanwhile, his opponents raised and spent much less. But just over a month before the election an entity called Keep the Lights On, fronted by employees of the alarmist group Environmental Defense Fund, formed and poured over a quarter million dollars to oppose Boissiere.

That helped to hold him under half the vote and sent him to a runoff against the leader of the rest of the pack far behind, Lewis, who to that point had spent under $40,000 or about a tenth of Boissiere’s spending for the year, collecting most from district sources, or residents in most of New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and point in between. Then, with Lewis into the runoff, it all changed.

Over the next five weeks, Keep the Lights on dumped at least $1.3 million, almost all of it from District of Columbia-based EDF organs, into opposing Boissiere. Lewis himself saw a dramatic pickup in donations, at least four times what he had received prior, mostly from out-of-state. Boissiere stepped up his fundraising, mostly from in-state sources including fellow PSC seat-holders, state Democrats, and PSC-regulated entities (Lewis vowed not to take any from these corporations), and perhaps doubled up on what he previously had spent.

Which meant Lewis and his political action committee ally outspent Boissiere probably three-to-one, and in a low-information contest that made all the difference where Lewis won handily. Simply, out-of-state special interests had the defining impact on this contest.

The great irony was that Lewis ran on the twin allegations that electricity rates had gone up substantially because of too much fossil fuel rather than renewable sourced provision. While Louisiana had one of the largest increases among states over the past year, that’s only because a year ago it had among the lowest prices and still was in the top 20 cheapest – and the rise in fossil fuels costs came largely as a result of Washington Democrats’ policies in the name of fighting an alleged climate emergency.

Worse, Lewis’ call for a rapid increase in the use of renewable sources would send residential retail prices skyrocketing much higher than the increases he criticized, hurting the poor the most. This, of course, is the hallmark of the big-money climate alarmists that sent him to victory: they can afford to pay substantially higher prices to ward off the fake apocalypse but not those who would bear economically the brunt of such foolishness.

Nothing will change on the PSC, because it has a majority of Republican climate realists who will prevent any dramatic policy changes in the alarmist direction (Democrat Foster Campbell can be expected to join Lewis on some of the wackiness, but they’re only two of five votes). What has changed is state Democrats’ ability to keep national forces out of state and local politics in an effort to try to maintain policy-making influence, which detonates their chances to win swing districts or statewide elections and further cements their minority party status.