Fall LA races becoming duller by the moment

Of the two marquee state races on Louisiana’s ballot this fall, one has been decided and the other looks like it might as well be.

Not that races for federal office seem very competitive, made a bit less interesting without a Senate contest this cycle. All five congressional Republican incumbents running at best face token opposition, and even the newly-constructed second majority-minority district in operation probably only for this election cycle has Democrat state Sen. Cleo Fields possessing more than $600,000 to play with, having spent relatively little to this point, while his considered main opposition, Republican former state Sen. Elbert Guillory, has yet to file any campaign finance reports. Unless Guillory, who has demonstrated fundraising prowess for his political action committee, mounts a serious campaign, there’s no way anybody can overcome Fields in a district favoring him.

But it was anticipated that competition could be intense for the two offices on statewide entities up from grabs this cycle, the Supreme Court and Public Service Commission, in both cases District 2. For the Court, that is a new one with a redraw of its map that echoed the congressional map in creating a second M/M district. It slices up northeast Louisiana, meanders across and down the state’s border southward, and into Baton Rouge.

It attracted Democrat First Circuit Court of Appeals Judge John Michael Guidry, who previously ran for the Court over a decade ago and around whom business interests have gotten behind; Democrat Leslie Chambers, chief of staff for the Louisiana Housing Corporation who trial lawyer interests rallied behind; and Democrat Second Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Marcus Hunter, who from his Monroe base provided an alternative to the other two based in Baton Rouge.

Well, sort of in Chambers’ case. Because the Court, reviewing as the last resort a suit by someone with a connection to Guidry filed against both Chambers’ and Hunter’s qualification, the latter on the basis that he had falsely attested to having filed state income tax returns for all of the previous five years, and the former on that basis plus questioning her residency. The Fourth Circuit ruled Hunter could stay on the ballot because he received communication from an intermediary alleging the filing was made, while Chambers directly tried to file hers late but received no such confirmation.

The Court – leaving aside the question why the candidates didn’t bother to try to file tax returns well past those deadlines until just before qualifying – refused to hear the appeal from Chambers and overruled in the case of Hunter. Essentially, the Court’s per curiam opinion noted that it was the responsibility of the candidate to know a filing had occurred successfully, or otherwise an attestation that there had been such when it hadn’t was false and disqualifying.

This puts Guidry on the Court and removes this race from the ballot. Given the imputed judicial philosophies involved, Guidry’s default win was about as good an outcome as conservatives could have had.

They have no such worries for the PSC race. There, Republican state Rep. Jean-Paul Coussan seems ready to lap the field. His month-old finance report showed him gulping up hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions and, after having spent some, still sitting on nearly a half-million bucks. By contrast, his Democrat opponent, Nick Laborde, reported raising fewer than $4,000 and spent a chunk of that but apparently on campaign communications on a contemplated run for Baton Rouge Metropolitan Council.

Laborde will receive default Democrat votes, perhaps as much as 25 percent of the electorate, so the only real chance to keep Coussan from a general election win comes in the form of Republican former state Sen. Julie Quinn. But her report showed she entered the campaign just before qualifying and had raised and spent nothing.

Quinn, who rose through the Jefferson Parish political scene, was a well-regarded conservative legislator but retired after just a term-and-a-half, possibly as a result of a messy divorce and one concerning her then-romantic partner GOP former parish Pres. John Young. After that, she moved away from that political base to Baton Rouge and remarried, where she has maintained political alliances – netting her some high-profile endorsements from figures within the state GOP – but otherwise didn’t resurrect her political career. That lack of real base in the district combined with no demonstrated campaign resources makes it unlikely she successfully could challenge Coussan.

Thus, maybe while Guidry’s race officially is over, Coussan’s might be headed that way, it would seem joining a bunch of sitting GOP congressmen and congresswoman and Fields.