Conservatives had as many reasons to register disappointment as satisfaction at the results of May 16 elections.
Sure, they might be pleased at the Republican Senate semi-closed primary election outcomes. That saw incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy draw just a quarter of the partisan electorate’s vote, an abysmal showing that had him become the first reigning senator knocked out in a party primary in 14 years.
This would boost conservatives’ morale because the result eliminated an unreliable, inconsistent conservative. Intellectually lazy analysis attributes Cassidy’s failure to make the Jun. 27 runoff solely to his vote to convict GOP Pres. Donald Trump on specious impeachment charges just after Trump left office in 2021, causing a backlash among Republican voters.
In reality, a series of mistakes by Cassidy cost him his job, all proceeding from a gamble he made after Trump narrowly lost reelection. After the new-majority Democrats took power just before the end of Trump’s term, Cassidy bet his political future that Trump was a spent political force and to gain more influence now in the minority he should repudiate Trump and, on a few major items, his agenda. Hence, after first saying impeachment was baseless, he then voted for conviction without ever explaining the flip-flop. He followed that in the next few months with votes for parts of Democrats’ far left agenda.
It wasn’t that Trump regained power and activated robotic Republicans to oust Cassidy. It’s that conservatives recognized Cassidy wasn’t a principled conservative and would go whichever way the wind blew to fulfill a moderate agenda, proving he couldn’t be counted upon ideologically to receive another six years in office.
Another result also should hearten conservatives. In the Supreme Court’s First District Republican primary – which effectively settled the entire contest since no Democrats ran nor did any other unaffiliated candidate sign up for the general election – District Judge Billy Burris defeated Appellate Judge Blair Edwards. Burris had backing from organizations advocating strict construction of constitution questions, much like decisions emanating from the current U.S. Supreme Court majority.
Edwards, by contrast, gained endorsements from organizations more attuned to judicial activism. It also didn’t help that she is married to longtime Democrat (now retired) Tangipahoa Parish sheriff Daniel Edwards, brother of Democrat former Gov. John Bel Edwards who especially in his last years in office tried to push the state in a sharply leftward direction, which to conservatives may have fostered guilt by association. The win for Burris was crucial in allowing the Court to keep a constructivist majority.
In the same neck of the woods, conservatism didn’t fare as well in the Public Service Commission District 1 GOP nomination race. The most conservative candidate, state Rep. Mark Wright, didn’t make the runoff, but former Jefferson Parish Pres. John Young who led the field would make a pretty good substitute for conservatives. However, his opponent state Rep. Stephanie Hilferty if winning the runoff and brushing past token Democrat general election opposition given her legislative record likely would turn out as inconsistent as Cassidy became.
But in the other PSC race, District 5, Republican Caddo Parish Commissioner John Atkins easily advanced, where he should dispatch Democrat nominee Shreveport City Councilor James Green. And conservatives probably can’t go wrong with the GOP runoff for the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education District 1 slot between and interim appointee Anh “Joseph” Cao and retired educator Ellie Schroder (whose husband was state treasurer and ran for governor last time out).
Yet counterbalancing all of this was that four worthy amendments to the Constitution failed. Two in particular were linchpins to fiscal reform efforts that would have reduced the size of government and aid in economic development efforts. While recent actions have improved the state’s economic climate from the days of John Bel Edwards, momentum forward is blunted by these outcomes.
For the conservative agenda, the election results weren’t bad, but they could have been much better.
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