Democrats may resort to strategic voting in CD 5

This space recently conjectured whether a Republican other than Rep. Vance McAllister could make a runoff for Louisiana’s Fifth Congressional District, and if the entrance of Public Service Commissioner Clyde Holloway as a Republican into the contest diminished those chances. A new poll gives us some data on which to assess these observations.

Done by the same firm which released the only previous independent and public poll on the race, which had showed McAllister leading the field but with a dismal 27 percent and the only Democrat in it Monroe Mayor Jamie Mayo next at 21 percent, revealed the previously highest-placed challenger Republican to McAllister, physician Ralph Abraham, now topped the group at 22 percent. McAllister had slumped to 20 percent and Mayo was down just a point fewer than he had to 15 percent. Holloway debuted with 9 percent of the vote, in fifth place, behind businessman Harris Brown at 11 percent, who nearly doubled his previous total. Losing as much as McAllister was the previously fourth-place holder, salesman Zach Dasher, who fell to sixth place at 7 percent.


(There are some methodological quibbles with this poll and its predecessor, such as it fails to rotate answers throughout, meaning there’s a slight bias towards earlier-listed names and away from those nearer the end of the alphabet. But in terms of changes in candidate totals between polls that shouldn’t matter for analysis.)

Maness goes useful idiot with lame apology request

While she’s getting a Maness-churian candidate assist on the subject, the very nature of the issue’s dynamics is not going to turn a remark made by Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy into any appreciable fodder to help the deteriorating candidacy for reelection of Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu.

That remark was one where Cassidy compared the Senate leadership of the chamber political head, Democrat Sen. Harry Reid, as overseeing a plantation – orders are given, and the party out of power has no input into any of them, which does violate the collegial norms of the Senate. It’s not a new or even controversial assessment, as political historians have noted that Reid runs the Senate in one of the most closed, iron-fisted fashions ever.

And the idea, proffered by both Reid himself and minor Republican Senate candidate Rob Maness that there’s something objectionable about the terminology Cassidy used – presumably because plantations in America historically used blacks first as slaves and then until only a few decades ago as virtually indentured servants – seems hardly credible. Former Sen. Hillary Clinton used just such an analogy to describe House of Representative’s Republican leadership in 2006 to an almost-exclusively black audience and was asked to apologize by GOP leaders.

Thompson leaving earlier improves district's prospects

With state Rep. Jeff Thompson’s election as a 26^th District judge, the process of picking his successor, depending how it’s done, creates conditions that could leave district residents better or worse off.

At the end of qualifying, no one but Thompson signed up to run for the District B slot to succeed Ford Stinson, automatically putting him in line to be sworn in early next year. To do so, he must resign his current office before then. State law says that when the presiding officer of the chamber, in this instance Speaker of the House Chuck Kleckley, receives notice of a resignation when more than six months of a member’s term remains (Thompson’s expires in early 2016) without a regularly scheduled election prior to a session’s start, he may designate a qualification period and election date.

Historically, in these kinds of situations where a November election produces a legislative vacancy, presiding officers have scheduled a special election anywhere from the end of January to early March. Thompson plans on this as he has expressed intent to resign at the end of the year. He may not be alone: over a half dozen other legislators (including state Rep. Patrick Williams for Shreveport mayor) are running for various posts with them not as lucky as he by being an earlier winner. If any win, some may do so on Nov. 4 and others on Dec. 6. The idea, then, would be that by the latter date all who will need to resign will know, these will happen, and the replacement elections will be held together statewide early in 2015.

Landrieu scam on voters works against U.S. interests

If Sen. Mary Landrieu wants to create the perception that she’s identified with Louisiana rather than with Washington, D.C., standing athwart of foreign policy that helps U.S. interests just to make that point isn’t the way to do it.

For weeks all that has stood in between the U.S. being able to levy certain sanctions against Venezuelan individuals involved in crackdowns directed at protests against that country’s authoritarian leaders, which would involve revoking the visas and freezing the assets of a handful of people, has been Landrieu’s insistence that the matter not be taken up in the Senate. Under the rules for this kind of measure that require unanimity, she has become the only objector, claiming that these would cost Louisianans jobs with her rationale being that these could affect operations at a CITGO refinery in Lake Charles, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Venezuela’s government-owned Petroleos de Venezuela S.A..

How intellectually she can come to such a conclusion is known only to her. The bill as drafted, assuming that you can conflate Venezuela’s leaders as “owning” CITGO, does not prevent its operation in anyway – confirmed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffers involved with the bill. But Landrieu’s office admitted they agreed with Venezuelan officials – working through the struggling Patton Boggs lobby firm recently acquired by Squire Sanders but retaining as its co-lead lobbyist the guy who showed her the ropes when she got to Washington, former Sen. John Breaux – that CITGO might conceivably someday be considered a legal person despite the committee staffers’ reassurance.

Vitter has chance for more reform impetus than Jindal

Sure, Sen. David Vitter is the early favorite to win Louisiana’s governorship in a bit over a year. And the reason he is – possessing strong, take-no-prisoner conservative credentials with nods to the populist strain in the state’s political culture – is what gives him room to expand his policy options in ways that may win more votes than lose them.

In the early sweepstakes for the state’s top job, featuring Republicans Vitter and Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne and Democrat state Rep. John Bel Edwards, observers generally think that Vitter would come out on top but not with a simple majority of votes, and that while he would win going away against Edwards in a runoff, matched with Dardenne he would retain but a slight edge. This is because Dardenne is considered able to get votes of some conservatives disaffected with Vitter for his stridency and past admitted commission of a “serious sin” over a decade ago which is thought to involve prostitution, and also should attract disproportionately Democrats.

But at his last stop on a tour of the state over the past few months, in Baton Rouge Vitter articulated some issue preferences that might cause controversy. When given the opportunity when discussing about how to find money to build roads, Vitter did not automatically rule out raising the state’s gasoline tax. He did offer that ending diversion of gas tax funds to pay for State Police operating costs, which is permitted by law but controversial because it leaves fewer matching funds for transportation.

LA ruling shows path to uphold same-sex marriage ban

To Louisiana’s credit, based in it federal District Judge Martin Feldman delivered the most cogent decision yet on the issue of same-sex marriage, almost making certain that this case will end up as one upon which the entire question will be settled by the U.S. Supreme Court, and providing a preview into the basis for a decision using it in upholding states’ rights to define marriage.

In granting summary judgment dismissing plaintiffs who argued that Louisiana’s constitutional ban on recognizing any marriage besides that of a single man to a single woman violated equal protection, due process, and freedom of speech, Feldman exposed the poverty of that argumentation. He also tackled a root question prior to this, what kind of burden of proof states needed to regulate in this area.

While plaintiffs argued that the highest burden of proof was needed, thus reducing the ability of states to be able constitutionally to regulate marriage, Feldman demonstrated in fact the lowest was applicable, and in his opinion served notice that even if the highest were used, the justifications as such – the state having a legitimate interest in linking children with intact families formed by their biological parents and by ensuring fundamental social change occurs by social consensus through democratic processes – might well be just as compelling for that standard as the lowest. (He didn’t address another justification, not mentioned by the defense, facilely dealt with in Hebert v. Kitchen, that the state has a compelling interest in promoting procreation.)

Legislators casting social conservative votes tactically

Have Louisiana’s legislators become significantly more conservative over the past decade, as one source muses. Or is it just strategy on the part of many of them that just make it seem so?

At the end of July, the Louisiana Family Forum issued its 2014 Legislative Scorecard, prompting one observer to report the comparison made by the organization’s head that in 2004, of the 144 legislators, only 26 voted overall “pro-family and pro-life” (defined as voting at least 80 percent of the time with the organization’s preferences), while according to the 2014 version the number was 83. This prompted the assertion that there has been “further reddening of Louisiana.”

Reviewing the scorecards separated by a decade, and assuming the issues selected as represented by the votes constitute a representative sample of those, then it appears that on this universe of issues Louisiana legislators are voting considerably more conservatively, as the LFF uniformly picks what observers would consider conservative issue preferences to be scored high (thus higher scores mean more conservatism in votes). But those votes chosen by and large represent only issues of religious faith and personal conduct (which would be consistent with the organization’s objectives in championing traditional views on those). For example, in 2014, with its chosen slate of issues dealing with the right to bear arms, protection of human life, government regulation of conduct, and facilitating education delivery by faith-based organizations, the only vote on the scorecard that had any economic component to it was on Medicaid expansion. The ones in 2004 also showed just one tax issue among other dealing with the definition of marriage, cloning, and others.

Left fears too many voters will find Landrieu fraudulent

You can tell the political left is worried about the self-inflicted wounds Sen. Mary Landrieu has inflicted upon herself, because its mouthpieces understand these provide the linkage mechanism that exposes her most fully as a fraud.

The Democrat has survived now 18 years in the Senate, despite having strung together a far left voting record while representing a conservative electorate. In order to distract from this, a number of tactics are used, such as claims of her indispensability from serving many years, emphasizing non-ideological issues, and trumpeting the rare non-liberal vote as a form of prophylactic protecting her from being seen as what she really is by getting the public to buy that the exception is the rule. These have been adequate enough to date to have enough voters perceive her as she wishes to be seen rather than by what her behavior verifies that she is.

As information about politics becomes more plentiful and the public increasingly cognitively able to think for itself, the internal contradiction of her image vs. fact has become clear to more voters. Still, for a voting public the vast majority of members of which pay minimal attention to politics, getting them to expend cognitive resources in making the logical connection that concludes she is a fraud is not an easy task – especially when the least informed among conservatives are the most likely to vote for her (joining their poorly-informed liberal brethren who almost uniformly vote her without any knowledge of her issue preferences).

Jindal ignores winning issue with risky CCSS gambit

If, as conventional wisdom suggests, Gov. Bobby Jindal has gone all in on opposition to the Common Core State Standards in order to boost his national electoral profile, one must question his thinking and/or the quality of the political advice he’s getting.

As previously noted, with practically no political power to do so available, Jindal has been waging an intense rearguard action to prevent the state from implementing fully CCSS, and in the process of doing so has bet his entire national political future on an issue most voters don’t know about, of those that do for many it’s not a big priority, and one that splits his conservative base. Worse, the tactics he uses increasingly have acquired a sheen of desperation, such as a recent suit that essentially claims the 225-year old federal grant-in-aid system is unconstitutional, make his natural constituency of principled conservatives scratch their heads over his choices – especially when there is an education issue on which he has been a leader with a genuine constitutional question at stake that his side would win in which he appears to have no interest.

Last year, the federal government attempted to assert control over Louisiana’s scholarship voucher program, to which Jindal objected. Ultimately, District Judge Ivan Lemelle (who tipped his hand in a previous case) rendered an opinion that did not give the Pres. Barack Obama Administration control over the program, but in that justification wrote in an implicit power of the federal government to define unlawful discrimination by state government as a product of individual decisions by families unrelated to government – an audacious rewriting of the Constitution that vastly expands government’s power to intervene not just in instances where there has been intended and deliberate discrimination employed, but also merely where are present discrepant outcomes. More incredibly, it was based on the preclearance argument already dismissed by the U.S. Supreme Court earlier the year before that.

Glover's next move depends on who succeeds him

Typically, Shreveport mayors go out with a whimper, and the question is whether that’s the fate of current Mayor Cedric Glover,

To say the least, post-mayoral political careers of past Shreveport leaders have been dismal. Since going to the strong mayor/council system, none have won any elective office after their service. A relatively smaller population base doesn’t provide much to start with for statewide ambitions, and now that demographics and persistent voting habits make it all but certain that only black Democrat mayors will inhabit Government Plaza, the Fourth Congressional District or the Public Service Commission District 5 seats built around demographics and dynamics that favor Republicans mean upward mobility seems unlikely.

There was some thought that something big could be brewing for Glover that was not mutually exclusive with this quest and may have complemented it nicely. Make no mistake, by far the top goal of state Democrats is to keep Sen. Mary Landrieu in office, whose flagging reelection campaign threatens to remove her as the last Democrat in office elected statewide. In particular, as typically Democrats are lower information, lower interested members of the electorate, and blacks disproportionately making up this portion, with this election during midterms without an attractive figure to those voters such as Pres. Barack Obama running for something, it’s feared by them that lagging turnout will doom Landrieu’s chances.