Campbell PSC dynasty try off to amateurish start

If Democrat Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell wants to see dynastic rule of his position, his son Nick is going to have to do a lot better job, if not hope for a sea change in voter attitudes.

 Foster Campbell at the end of next year will end a half-century career in political office, the last 18 on the PSC. Although term-limited, it had become clear in his last 2020 election that voter patience with his cornfield leftist populism was coming to its end. In that election he faced longtime Ouachita Parish Police Juror Republican Shane Smiley, who spent around $10,000 or more than $700,000 fewer than Campbell, yet Campbell won only 53 percent of the vote. As he has in three elections since 2014, Campbell lost his home parish of Bossier.

For 2026, attention mainly has focused on the candidacies of Caddo Parish Commissioner John Atkins and state Rep. Larry Bagley, both Republicans at the western end of the district. But apparently testing the waters is Democrat Nick Campbell, Foster’s son and until recently colleague in his insurance agency, presently working for Democrat Rep. Cleo Fields. It’s not his first foray into the political world; he has been a party activist for a number of years and served as a delegate at the party’s national convention last year.

Now, he may want to go further. Apparently either Nick Campbell or his proxy recently sent out a survey by text message querying about the PSC contest. Yet if it serves as an introduction for him to the campaign, it was at best an inauspicious start.

The invitation came from a “GM Polling,” calling itself “a national research firm,” but using a Capitol Area phone number and utilizing SurveyMonkey as its platform, which typically professional polling outfits avoid. A web search found no “GM Polling” with a website nor even a reference to such an organization.

 The amateurism turned worse. The poll asked questions about likeability of top political figures, but mainly concentrated on the PSC election. It mentioned Bagley and another Democrat, state Sen. Katrina Jackson-Andrews, but for most of its queries embarked upon a push poll format. A push poll favors one candidate and attacks another by asking respondents to consider a supposedly flattering or unflattering statement about a candidate and then to answer whether it makes a difference in casting a vote. In this way, the favored candidate disseminates information about himself presumably attracting voters, while the disfavored one is associated with negative information.

 The push poll aspect featured Nick Campbell and Atkins, and its unprofessional nature became clear when Atkins was misidentified as “Adkins.” At the same time, it descended into self-parody with the question “John Adkins is a conservative Republican from a wealthy family and is out of touch with the problems of average people.”

 This is because Nick Campbell is a liberal Democrat from a wealthy family, by which the poll suggests we should impute means he is out of touch with the problems of average people. Foster Campbell is loaded with several hundred acres of property for farming, ranching, and timber – and, of course, with the subsurface rights that have made him a “shaleionaire.”

 If you think this makes the Campbells look stupid, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Another question claims that “Adkins has massive oil and gas holdings [Atkins runs a company dealing with that, timberland, and farmland … wait, doesn’t that sound familiar?] and it could be a conflict of interest since the Public Service Commission regulates part of the oil and gas industry.” Hasn’t either Campbell ever heard the aphorism “sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander?” Or, “don’t throw stones if you live in a glass house?”

 So, with this push poll all that the Campbells accomplished (and clearly Foster was approving of it because another question tells the respondent the current commissioner “strongly supports” his son’s candidacy) was to make Nick look like he’s out of touch with “average people” and that Foster could have spent much of his tenure subject to a conflict of interest and if elected his son would stand to encounter that as well – and in the process they can’t even get a major opponent’s name right. If they paid somebody for this degree of ineffectiveness, they should ask for their money back. Let’s say there are better ways to gauge voter receptiveness before launching a full-blown campaign.