Little things matter when running for political office

Little, idiosyncratic things can decide why people vote the way they do, and even decide elections, especially at the local level where issues often are deemphasized in favor of personalistic kinds of criteria.

For example, a friend of mine from the past who unfortunately not long ago went on to her reward, Elizabeth Rickey, ran for the Republican State Central Committee in 1988 when we lived at the opposite ends of House District 93. These are very low turnout elections and of course both of us voted for her and I also got my building manager, who had no idea of the contest, to do the same only at my behest. In a three-way race, she won by three votes out of 356. Later, she used her position on the RSCC to question very properly David Duke’s legitimacy as a conservative Republican which was instrumental in uncovering him as a fraud.

House District 5 is having a special election to replace retired Wayne Waddell. Two Republican candidates, banker Harold Turner and lawyer Alan Seabaugh are vying to replace him. Seabaugh ran in 2007 against state Sen. Sherry Smith Cheek for her job and by dumping a lot of his own money into the contest almost knocked off the incumbent insider.

On the surface, the candidates sound the same themes and rhetoric. But temperament also matters, because one would hope their elected representatives make sound judgments. Rash statements often leave an unfavorable impression.

Which is why I never forgot about a post to a college baseball fan message board in 2002. My brother sent me a link of where he had posted 10 reasons why his alma mater, Rice University, was going to win its upcoming super-regional (best two-of-three games) with LSU. This drew a vigorous response from username “Seatiger,” which started off by calling him a “moron” in the subject line and never got better. The name associated with that handle was Alan Seabaugh. I can’t with absolute certainty say it was this candidate Alan Thomas Seabaugh but how many Alan Seabaugh’s went to LSU, as did the candidate for his two degrees?

Of course, Jonathan was right and Rice swept the series with a pair of shutouts. While it appears Seabaugh’s judgment, if I have the correct one, is not so good about analyzing college baseball, that doesn’t necessarily correlate to his political judgment. Still, the intemperate nature of that note means if I lived in that district seeing that name on the ballot would have me head in another direction.

As undesirable as lack of calm temperament is in a candidate, outright flouting the law is another. One of the three Republicans running for the Bossier School Board District 12 slot, Katherine “Kay” Padgett Byrd, had a number of signs appearing in illegal spots. There’s a lot of gamesmanship in the placing of small signs on public property – a common tactic is for them to mushroom along divided roads right before election day – but it’s discouraging when there are blatant violations long before election day in residential areas.

The Unified Development Code for Bossier Parish that includes Bossier City in Art. 8 Sec. 2 Paragraph 2I states that in residential areas the maximum square footage for a campaign sign is nine. In three residentially-zoned places I witnessed signs of hers that exceeded that, and there may have been more. One of her opponents that I talked to said he was aware of this but her campaign was doing nothing about it.

After a couple of weeks, I contacted the Byrd campaign myself. I reached the candidate who said “somebody from Bossier City” told her the larger signs were permissible. I informed her of the presence of the regulation and urged her to investigate it. While sometimes these rules aren’t obvious, we should expect someone serious enough about wanting and capable enough to run government would have the initiative to find out about them, and, even if discovering them after the fact, to follow them.

Days later, as of press time, the signs remain up. Meaning the question that District 12 voters must ask is whether they want somebody elected who deliberately breaks the law in her campaigning. Recall Luke 16:10: if she does so with small matters like this, what does that mean for the far greater matters that she would face as an elected official? At least Shreveport mayoral candidate City Councilman Bryan Wooley, prodded by judicial proceedings, realized he was not being Solomonic by dividing illegally-large signs and removed them.

Jindal berm bet pays off with coastal restoration help

This summer, Gov. Bobby Jindal went all in when he pursued a controversial plan to respond to the calamitous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico this spring. Yesterday, he played the winning hand.

Jindal’s plan focused on the building of sand berms to catch oil. Some have been partially completed but most of the approximately 100-mile artificial barrier islands have not been built because of delays by federal government agencies to allow the permitting process to move forward. What has been built came under emergency permits, with the money provided by the operator responsible for the spill, BP.

Critics from when the work under the temporary permit began through the permanent permit application process argued that the berms would be ineffective in catching oil, they would be too fragile to last, they would be good only as long as the leak continued, they would be environmentally destructive in their building, and they diverted funds from better uses. Logically, these kinds of arguments failed because of the inappropriate prioritization they supported, and time now has revealed these assertions in fact as equally flawed.

Landrieu efforts low on substance, high on propaganda

While the uninformed and partisan breathlessly cooed over Pres. Barack Obama’s signing of legislation pushed by and an initiative taken by Sen. Mary Landrieu, in reality they got all worked up over propaganda exercises with no substantive benefit to the country or to Louisiana.

The ceremony involved the Small Jobs Business Act, which will end up creating jobs – but only in government. As has been reviewed in this space, the new law creates small business incentives that few of them can access and which last almost no time, in exchange for giving government greater control over lending to small business that will end up lowering lending standards and raising default rates paid for by taxpayers.

As Republicans pointed out, if Democrats Obama and Landrieu really meant to help small business, they would support preventing tax increases on almost half of all small business profit set to trigger at the end of the year. Instead, Landrieu, despite being chairwoman of the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, has expressed opposition to this and with the rest of Congress plans to hightail it out of town soon without making any effort to stop the tax increase from going into effect. After all, as Democrats have choked off any meaningful economic recovery with promises of greater debts, taxation, and regulation in the future, what’s a few more casualties among small business to them generally, or to Landrieu specifically?

Perhaps Congress will convene before its end after Democrats take a beating in midterm elections with a growing probability that they will control neither chamber of the next Congress and actually deal with the looming tax hike. But time already will have run out on them concerning the budget, which by law they should have completed by Oct. 1. Instead, it looks like a punt by the Democrat leadership on this as well, fearing to reveal a budget that produces more recessionary economic performance in exchange for empowering government.

Which makes Landrieu’s refusing to allow the nomination of a new head to the Office of Management and Budget, vacant after the abrupt departure of its former head who was one of the architects of the economic slowdown, until the Obama Administration moratorium on deepwater oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is lifted nothing more than a publicity stunt. There’s no expediency required on this matter so long as Democrats dawdle on the budget as a whole.

Further, it’s an empty threat. By taking this recess instead of working on the budget and eliminating the tax hike, this invites Obama to make a recess appointment that would allow his nominee to stay on the job until the end of next year (if he even lasts that long, given the downward trajectory of the Obama Administration). Obama shows no signs of wavering from his meritless, ideologically-driven path to suppress drilling so if the matter is important to him, he’ll just bypass the Senate.

So, properly understood, Landrieu’s efforts to pass useless, if not actually harmful, legislation while ignoring the real problem of the upcoming tax hike, and in making a symbolic gesture that will change nothing in the actual production of an on-time and sensible budget or in removing job-killing moratorium, are short on substance and long on propaganda.

TEA Party impact likely muted in upcoming state races

So with some state and a slew of local elections coming Louisiana’s way at the end of this week, how will the TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party phenomenon play itself out in these contests? The short answer is, not very distinguishably from traditional political dynamics.

Because a plurality of Americans sympathize with the economic conservatism goals of the movement, it is tempting to view it as less-structured but traditional mass-based political party that shapes the party’s leadership, responds to its appeals, and uses cues like party labels to make voting decisions. But it’s not; instead, it is an almost-totally decentralized regime rather than a formal organization whose very leaderless nature creates fluidity in deployment of mainly volunteer-based resources. In other words, it’s a number of like-minded people whose primary response to political stimuli is based not upon acquisition of power in order govern, but instead to evaluate candidates on the basis of issue preferences and to vote accordingly.

As such, preferences of economic conservatism such as reduced government spending and regulation with the commensurate reduction in its power over people’s lives, smaller deficit spending, holding the line on if not rolling back taxation and, overall, the sense that government has become too intrusive in dealing with people’s property rights drives their decision-making, not whether supporting a certain candidate maximizes their chances at governing and thereby increases their chances of receiving rewards bestowed by government. Understanding this is the key to realizing why it will not be a distinctive force in Lousiana’s state and local elections.

In order for the movement to coalesce, sharp ideological conflict had to illuminate the differences in issue preferences between the movement joiners and the power structure in government. That happened with the election of Democrat Pres. Barack Obama and an increased Democrat congressional majority. Obama ran a brilliant campaign designed to obscure his real agenda and to prompt himself to be viewed as an empty vessel into which voters could pour their best intentions and optimism about what they hoped he would do. But the hard leftism of his actual beliefs and their consequences quickly became apparent after he took power, aided by a Congress that now could legislate without consequence lacking any more a Republican president that could rein in its excesses.

In a matter of months and since, national Democrats’ agenda has become entirely exposed as fundamentally at odds with the beliefs of a majority of Americans. The swing to the extreme left sensitized and activated those who would join the TEA Party phenomenon and its energetic opposition to big government emanating from Washington, DC.

However, in Louisiana, few similar situations have manifested themselves. At the state level, at stake Saturday is perhaps the least ideological office and the one that has the least to do with government involvement in people’s lives, the lieutenant governor’s. There’s a contest for the obscure Public Service Commission and a number of judicial contests which by their nature tend to turn far more on personality than on issues. The kind of spark that activated the phenomenon for national office candidates barely exists in this environment.

Local contests, for municipalities and school boards, promise more potential for issues mainly pocketbook in nature to be relevant and for conflict between competing visions of how much latitude people should have in making decisions about what they earn and spend, but this often will be muted. Besides a sharp contrast in economic and property issues, the other precondition for TEA Party influence would be for its identifiers to make up a significant portion of the electorate in a jurisdiction. But because as we get to smaller and smaller jurisdictions, heterogeneity within them begins to disappear to create situations where TEA Party influence either is insignificant to the process or whose attitudes already are shared by a dominant majority of the electorate.

For example, in Shreveport the distribution of issue preferences among the public means, given the large Democratic registration and majority black registrants among the city’s voters, TEA Party sympathies are unlikely to determine who will win the mayor’s race. This dynamic increases in validity when considering some city council contests with similar demographics. However, there are others where influence might be wielded, where Republicans are expected to win.

Even so, the impact likely is to be slight. As the level of contest gets lower, economic issues in particular and ideology in general becomes diluted by more personalistic kinds of factors in making voting decisions. Organizational resources besides volunteer activism also become magnified in importance and traditional party or candidate organizations look much more like the overall TEA Party model at this level, negating any advantage that might convey.

In summation, for TEA Party influence to shape election contests, there must be clear ideological differences on economic issues and on amount of government power among candidates for that kind of office and the TEA Party adherents themselves must represent a critical mass within the jurisdiction without being part of a larger, overall dominant political culture in it. These are the case in federal elections in Louisiana, and are why Republicans are going to win every federal office in this election cycle with the probable exception of the Second Congressional District precisely because that district’s characteristics make it difficult to achieve the critical mass standard.

However, these conditions are present in almost no state contests and not often in local races on this ballot. This does not mean that TEA Party sympathies cannot substantially shape these kinds of elections – 2013 city elections in Bossier City, after many years of the city’s poor prioritization of spending led it to a 2009 budget meltdown, should produce a great test case – but that this time out in the main it should not be expected.

Lucky local govts need long-term thinking on largesse

While the consumption decisions of individual recipients of Haynesville Shale largesse might be described as any or all of intriguing, humorous, or boorish – dining out habits going from hot wings and light beer to shrimp cocktail and Budini malbec, driving choices from economy cars to souped-up pickups and boat-like luxury cars, lots more gold chains – it becomes more alarming when governments start approaching Beverly Hillbillies territory.

Such increasingly seems to be the case with school districts blessed with this bonus in places such as Red River, DeSoto, and Bienville parishes. Salaries have rocketed upwards as has sales tax receipts, with some leasing activity thrown in, to enrich these governments. For contrast, rookie teachers in DeSoto make more than a 20-year tenured professor in higher education.

Some jurisdictions have bumped these salaries with regular bonuses, while actually have permanently written them into salary schedules. There are worse things on which to spend, with the classic example being the drunken sailor behavior of Bossier City for the past decade-and-a-half that led to an ugly day of reckoning. But who knows how long this extra revenue will last? And with there being little relationship between teacher quality and pay (although this may change if the state moves to a realistic and effective evaluation system), it’s questionable whether these schemes best serve taxpayers.

Unfortunately, it best serves school board members. Happy teachers with padded pay stubs and their families tend to vote for incumbents. This same Santa Claus dynamic also discourages a potentially much better long-term strategy, suspending portions of sales taxes and giving smaller increases, in order to encourage economic development. Because boards are concerned parochially only with education, they have no incentive to look towards the greater economic benefit of the area and its citizens which in the long run would boost tax revenues. Even if all other geographically coterminous and enveloped local governments also suspended part of their sales taxes, likely school boards would not follow because they see their constituencies as educators, then children, with the people dragging the rear.

So, the next best thing would be to create a special fund into which the relative excess of revenues should flow. Salary supplements can be reduced with that not apportioned out put into these funds. Over the next couple of decades, if the shale activity lasts that long, a tidy sum can be accumulated and the interest earnings off of it can be there for supplements when activity does slow, or if it continues can be used for other education purposes. This will prevent trying to squeeze more tax revenues out of the public and might make the public more amenable to continuing funding any existing property tax levies; without such funds, more astute members of the citizenry might call for and succeed in getting the levies expired by a negative public vote since, they can successfully argue, shale money could make up the difference.

It’s what Bossier City should have done with its gambling windfall, but failed to do so. Let’s hope that not just school districts but all local governments so blessed have greater wisdom going forward on this matter.

Shreveport history possible, Fleming repeat probable

Qualifying for fall election contests brought some interesting races, which may produce historical events for Shreveport.

This space has reviewed the mayor’s contest and when the dust had settled nothing had changed about its dynamics. More than ever it is turning into a referendum on incumbent Cedric Glover and the question is whether controversial actions by Glover can blunt his reelection machinery and also the impulse locally for monoracial voting, particularly in the black community to vote for black candidates when matched against whites.

But history has a chance to be made regarding the City Council. Some of it takes the form of a rerun of it in District A that also distinguishes itself from most of the other contests in that it has no clear frontrunner. There, of its four candidates, current Commissioner Rose Wilson McCullough (the daughter of longtime fixture there Hersey Wilson, the first black elected to the then-Police Jury), former Caddo Parish Commissioner Michael Williams (protégé of the first black female elected to the then-Police Jury, Eddie Jones), and Dr. C.O. Simpkins (himself history, having been the first black candidate for a school board set in Louisiana in the twentieth century in 1952, a leading civil rights activist driven from town, then returning to make the mayoral runoff in 1990) match up among themselves, one of whom likely will win.

The other closely competitive race of these, however, is the one where new history may emerge. In District B, it looks to be a contest between attorney Sheva Sims and former Sen. Mary Landrieu operative Jeff Everson, both Democrats. The winner, given the dynamics of likely triumphs in the other races, will continue a Democrat majority on the Council, but if Sims wins, it also would create the first majority black Council.

District B almost a decade ago was designed to be a racial swing district. Barely having a registered white plurality in 2002, white Democrat term-limited incumbent Monty Walford narrowly won among a black Democrat and white Republican candidate, and was reelected in 2006 by only six votes over Sims in the by-then majority registered black plurality district. Now, an absolute majority of blacks registered in the district makes Sims the clear frontrunner.

Everson, who seems to be looking to duplicate current District E Councilman, now mayoral candidate, Bryan Wooley’s precocious win of four years past against more experienced politicians, has a harder task than Wooley then because of these numbers yet whose biggest ally to overcome them may be Sims herself. Her post-2006 quixotic political career most prominently includes her brief tenure as head of the now-defunct Shreveport YWCA board, during which she led to board to provoke a crisis with the city over program operations that led to the end of contracting with it that helped starve the organization into disbanding.

That event may make some think twice about supporting her, and Everson maybe the best alternative. Political unknown Deborah Allen is not expected to gain much traction, and Craig Lee has a reputation as a crank who interjects race and class into almost any political and social controversy imaginable.

Finally, the area’s race for Congress might turn interesting, where minister David Melville is the Democrat nominee. For years, Melville was well-connected in the community as an administrator with Shreveport’s First United Methodist Church (besides being politically-connected partly as a result of being married into the Roemer clan), but felt a calling to more actively serve his faith. Now a pastor, he continues the tradition of conservative Democrats vying for the Fourth District seat.

Republican incumbent Dr. John Fleming ever since he began what was then a longshot quest for the office in 2008 has been criticized by some for being too plainspoken. Fleming clearly recognizes the battle of ideas that is part of his job and is not shy in contrasting publicly and by his actions as a representative his conservatism with the liberal ethos that soon appears to be on its way out in the House after just four years.

But what Melville considers to be a weakness also serves as Fleming’s strength. With a perfect 100 score on the American Conservative Union’s 2009 voting scorecard, joining just a handful of members with that in the House, Fleming solidly is in line with a majority of voters in his district. Melville’s task of trying to convince the public that despite his label he’s conservative enough but who would appear kinder and gentler than Fleming in style is made more difficult by the toxic electoral environment in the district to national Democrats and that the Rev. Artis Cash, an even bigger crank on race and class than Lee, qualified to run for the general election and will take some black votes from the Democrat nominee. Fleming, with almost a half million dollars sitting idle (about seven times Melville’s stash) and the ability to lend himself more in a pinch, is a clear favorite for reelection.

Melancon, unable to handle truth, reverts to playbook

Increasingly, it’s difficult to take Democrat Rep. Charlie Melancon seriously about anything he says as he experiences the death throes of his political life. Devoid of having winning issues on his side, his latest tack in his Republican Sen. David Vitter character assassination tour returns to an old theme he applies against political adversaries, calling the incumbent Vitter whose job he wishes to take hypocritical. Since it’s something Melancon typically does when he himself is open to that charge, let’s review where he’s practiced hypocrisy on the issues in the Senate campaign, from remarks given at the Press Club of Baton Rouge.

Vitter has not spoken to that organization and appears not likely to want to, and Melancon tried to echo that by calling Vitter a “high tea” sipper disconnected to the Louisiana working class. But he neglected to reveal that, between the two, Melancon has been far less accessible to the Louisiana public than has Vitter, as in the past two years Melancon has made a cottage industry of dodging constituents and concerned citizens inviting them to their rallies.

Melancon is a leader of the so-called “Blue Dog” Democrats who pose as believers of fiscal restraint in government. Instead, Melancon has shown little of that inclination, among other big spending votes having voted for the 2009 spending bill that was the greatest budget-buster in history, and over a year later with its pernicious effects reverberating throughout the economy he’s still a true believer, vowing history (which conveniently means not the past 18 months nor next seven weeks) will redeem his view. This ignorance remains despite the historical evidence both recently and in the past that show such programs do not work, as well as the academic evidence corroborating the invalidity of his statement.

But when it’s convenient – in his case, a chance to redistribute wealth – Melancon suddenly becomes in favor of fiscal restraint relative to increasing taxes on almost half of small business income earned, a preference even the Blue Dogs mostly disavow. Further, he supports this despite knowing – or because perhaps knowing it as his conservative political opponents control Louisiana government – it will cost the state of Louisiana as much as $40 million in reduced tax collections.

This would be consistent with his demonstrated partisanship, which he claimed he does not practice while arguing Vitter does excessively, and dishonesty, again claiming himself pure on this attribute compared to Vitter. Instead, Melancon regularly has made partisan overtures and not been above-board in his political dealings: the controversy over his attempt to subvert University of New Orleans procedures is a recent yet classic example of both.

This claimed agreeableness Melancon asserts makes him a more effective legislator than Vitter. Besides the fact that in-party legislators by definition are going to be much more of that, nevertheless Melancon has shown utter incompetence and inability on the issue of the devastating impact that the moratorium by the Pres. Barack Obama Administration on deepwater oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico has had on U.S. energy independence and the economies of the Gulf’s states.

Melancon claims he’s against it, but in reality attempted to impose a procedural one with no expiration on the exploration industry. And if he’s so much more influential than Vitter, why has he had no influence in curbing the existing moratorium? Or if so much more nonpartisan why has he not disavowed the crude attempt by the Obama Administration to downplay the real economic damage of the moratorium?

Finally, Melancon’s cognitive dissonance on his floundering in the contest approaches the clinical. Every independent poll, including the latest, shows his trailing badly. Rather, he deludes himself by thinking he’s “close” because the result of a vicious Senate Democratic Campaign Committee push poll has him down just 10 points.

Even as Melancon argues that this “amazing phenomenon” may dissipate because of the “truth,” the fact is Melancon can’t handle the truth of his situation. His career of saying he is one thing and then doing things inconsistent to that seems about up.

Law appropriate to prevent additional killing at clinics

If we are to have legalized killing in Louisiana, at least let’s hold down the collateral damage. But some aren’t even willing to curb their thirst for that.

Yesterday, the Center for Reproductive Rights announced it was suing to overturn the recently-enacted Act 490 that creates more stringent operating standards for abortion clinics. In an unrelated development, today a hearing will determine whether to lift an injunction against shutting down oxymoronically-named Hope Medical Group in Shreveport under the new law.

About three weeks after the law went into effect the clinic was cited for numerous violations including one that was an immediate threat to safety. The law allows the secretary of the Department of Health and Hospitals to forgo the 30-day grace period allowed in it if the violations are of a serious nature, as well as provides for the injunctive relief sought by the clinic. The seriousness of the violations will be at issue in today’s proceedings.

Only conservative can derail Dardenne for lt gov

Regardless of the real motivations of candidates in the special election for Louisiana’s lieutenant governor’s job, as early voting has begun in what direction is it heading that might produce the state’s next governor after current Gov. Bobby Jindal leaves office?

As noted, Sec. of State Jay Dardenne seems assured of a place in what almost certainly will go to a runoff given the number of candidates and resources they are deploying. With substantial name recognition compared to the others, an organization that has run three statewide contests in four years, and excellent fundraising results, he remains the favorite in that potential future scenario.

Whether he can win may depend upon who his runoff opponent would be. Realistically, a Democrat cannot win against him. Republican Dardenne, whose politics in his legislative career have been closer to the center than the right, can fend off a challenge from the left if he were to face unvarnished liberals such as Democrats political activist Caroline Fayard or state Sen. Butch Gautreaux, since he would hold most conservative votes and pick up moderates. Interestingly, these candidates also hold the key to Dardenne’s chances even if neither becomes his runoff opponent.

Dardenne only is vulnerable against a conservative, of which three major Republican candidates can claim to be, former candidate and entertainer Sammy Kershaw, state party Chairman Roger Villere, and St. Tammany Parish Pres. Kevin Davis. If any of these candidates in a runoff against Dardenne could take advantage of an electoral environment that will energize conservative involvement and depress liberal participation, without a Democrat on the ballot there might roll off enough liberal voters to make up for some of the conservative votes Dardenne will get for one of these others to win.

But one must make the runoff which remains an open question. Not only are they battling among themselves over much the same pool of voters, but the major Democrats are starting to pour money into the contest so that, if the trio of GOP conservative hopefuls sufficiently divides the vote among themselves, could allow for one of the liberals to sneak on through. However, fortunately for these Republicans, Fayard and Gautreaux are doing a pretty job of splitting up their own base, as national political figures and Orleans-area Democrats have been helping Fayard while state political figures and organized labor have swung behind Gautreaux.

At this point, polls show that among these five that Kershaw has the best chance of advancing. Yet with a plurality of intended voters still undecided, any of the five could. Still, if those in the anybody-but-Dardenne camp had to make their best bet on stopping him, it appears that Kershaw is the best positioned. He consistently has run second in the polls not far behind Dardenne, has name recognition not just from his previous run but also his music career, and probably has the most potential monetary resources on hand to compete against Dardenne. He seems serious and thoughtful on the very limited range of issues relevant to the office, and if Louisiana can put a singer into the Governor’s Mansion, why not one in the second spot?

To get there, he must campaign sufficiently well not to let Villere or Davis run too close to him and hope that neither Fayard nor Gautreaux can consolidate the liberal vote, and hope that Dardenne (who will wish to take as many conservative votes from Republican candidates as possible in order to face a Democrat in the runoff) can’t pick off enough of his voters as well. If a GOP candidate can do this, it will be a contest in November. Otherwise, absent a major blunder on his part, Dardenne will coast to a win then and establish himself as the frontrunner to be the next governor after Jindal.

Few candidates want lt gov office for what it actually does

With a potential free pass into the Governor’s Mansion potentially in the offing, a number of politically ambition politicians are taking a stab at the special election for lieutenant governor – to the point that one wonders whether most really are interested in that job as anything but a way station.

Historically, that office has paid off poorly for politicians wanting to use it as a springboard to leverage into the governorship, with since the nineteenth century only former Gov. Kathleen Blanco proceeding immediately from that office elected to the other. But these perhaps are not ordinary times. As first articulated in this space and now becoming more accepted by the interested public, Gov. Bobby Jindal’s immediate political future outside of his present position likely would be as the Republicans’ vice presidential candidate, and that may mean leaving office a year after a presumably easy cruise to reelection next year.

Thus, whoever wins this special election would become the favorite to win the regular one next year, and then take over if Jindal is on the national ticket and, as is looking increasingly likely, that ticket wins the White House in 2012. Unless your name is Sammy Kershaw or Melanie McKnight.

Kershaw, a 2007 candidate who finished second and noted entertainer, and the minor candidate McKnight, Republicans both, say they have no ambition to be governor.