Attacks on Landry hit new level of desperation

For the increasingly-desperate opponents of Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry to keep him from triumphing in the governor’s race, it’s pinning their hopes on making a thousand cuts – even if the “wounds” aren’t real.

Just over a month prior to the general election, Landry continues to have a commanding lead in the contest, much to the chagrin of other candidates and their backers. Party regulars among Democrats behind Democrat former cabinet member Shawn Wilson and the party’s white populist rump pinning their fading hopes on independent trial lawyer Hunter Lundy see Landry as the most dangerous to their agendas, while other Republicans and their supporters see these candidates’ chances of getting into a runoff with Wilson and therefore an easy win going up the road.

So, to varying degrees, they have formed an unofficial conspiracy to try to stop Landry. Their problem is his agenda is popular and his background, often successfully through the powers of his office providing a conservative foil to Democrats Pres. Joe Biden and Gov. John Bel Edwards, has inspired confidence among many voters that he best can start the process of ejecting liberalism from Louisiana governance.

The strategy rests upon trying to dig up so many little, if not microscopic, things that can make Landry look bad that his candidacy dies from a thousand cuts. Within the past month, Landry found himself subject to an ethics investigation over failure to file a document about donated travel and struck by a negative advertisement about a campaign donor in trouble for allegedly deceptive legal practices.

The timing isn’t coincidental. The trip, where Landry hitched a ride with a longtime friend with no business with the state to a conference, happened a couple of years ago, but only now came to the attention of the state’s Board of Ethics. That panel populated with members with antipathy towards conservatives (Edwards appointees from lists compiled by private college leaders, who as a whole don’t exactly lean to the right of the political spectrum) then voted to file charges over failure to file the document – Landry essentially to himself – to be heard in the near future.

It comes now because few would have known about trip, and the person after not seeing a form filed held onto this until right before the election – most likely somebody with connections to Republicans not a fan of Landry’s. Of course, the Edwards allies on the Board, given the information, would run with it.

The ad by the GOP Treas. John Schroder campaign came from sharp eyes culling the nearly 3,000 donors in the last quarter to Landry’s campaign. But it’s no more than a wild attempt to create guilt by association where the campaign can’t control who gives to it and Landry’s office has no role in determining whether the donor violated legal ethics or the law.

The latest involves a political action committee of very shadowy origins, but which few records about it points towards the Republican former gubernatorial appointee Stephen Waguespack, which ran the ad over the weekend principally on the web. It accused Landry of giving an alleged donor preferential treatment in prosecution.

Except that this accusation appears entirely fabricated. So much, in fact, that a state court ordered cessation of its circulation. Typically, the judiciary allows wide leeway in vetting the contents of campaign ads over the very narrow grounds for injunctions, so to take this step indicated a very blatant disregard for truth in the ad’s contents.

But that wasn’t the point of its creators, who surely would have known the real facts of the case and that Landry’s campaign never received a penny from the accused given media coverage if it – also two years ago – and transparency about donors. They likely knew it legally would get shot down quickly because of its extreme departure from the truth, and they chose a cheap path to thrust it into public view. Their end goal merely was to have it discussed that could create an anti-Landry impression.

This all reeks of desperation, but also shows off the competence behind the Landry team and Landry’s campaigning skills. Over the past two decades, all too often leading conservative candidates have been hit with negative ads at best circumstantial, at worst ridiculous, where the campaign belatedly if at all responded either with ads or other communications countering the narrative or with legal action. The Landry campaign’s swift dismantling of this particular narrative means the incident will have close to zero, if not zero, impact on the race.

Yet it doesn’t mean further attempts won’t be made. That’s to be expected as Landry’s juggernaut to the state’s highest office seems to continue with few brakes.