Sen. Mary Landrieu makes big changes in her campaign as runoff vs. Bill Cassidy looms

Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu heads into a Dec. 6 runoff as a clear underdog, struggling for another six-year term against a wave of conservatism and Republicans looking to pad their new Senate majority.

Fifty-eight percent of voters chose another candidate on Tuesday over the 18-year incumbent. She has the distinction of being the last Democratic statewide elected official in a state where President Barack Obama remains highly unpopular. And her main campaign theme of clout was undercut when her party was forced into minority status: Even if she’s re-elected, Landrieu will lose her vaunted chairmanship of the Senate’s energy committee to a Republican.

And with that national question answered — Republicans will control the Senate with at least 52 of 100 seats, whether Landrieu wins or loses — the urgency of her quest for campaign cash and new voters has drained away.

Landrieu insists she can defeat Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy in the head-to-head matchup, despite consistent polling that shows her running behind in the runoff contest. She’s strung together victories in other runoffs. GOP leaders say they aren’t taking victory for granted, and Democrats say Cassidy has vulnerabilities Landrieu can exploit.

At a Wednesday event in New Orleans, Landrieu characterized the race so far as having been aligned against her because of the “national atmosphere” of frustration with Obama, from whom she distanced herself in many campaign speeches. Now, she said, voters in Louisiana will focus on the differences between her and Cassidy, and on what each can do for the state.

“I am encouraged, really, to be still standing in a night that was very difficult for the Democratic Party,” she said.

In New Orleans, state Sen. J.P. Morrell said the Landrieu campaign and the Democratic Party in general did a “lousy job of engaging African-Americans and keeping them engaged.”

“Mary’s got to realize that her success in Louisiana has always and will always depend on whether she can energize the African-American vote,” Morrell said, “and showing how much you disagree with the president doesn’t do it.”

Fundraising solicitations quickly went out from both campaigns, with Landrieu at a disadvantage. Cassidy, both political parties and outside groups booked millions of dollars in TV air time for the runoff before it was a certainty — locking in lower rates — but Landrieu’s campaign staunchly refused to reserve the space.

The Koch-backed Freedom Partners Action Fund rushed to the airwaves on Wednesday, starting a more than $2 million blitz of anti-Landrieu ads. The Karl Rove-backed American Crossroads network planned to keep throwing cash at the race, too, having spent $2 million ahead of Tuesday’s first round of voting.

“We’re determined to remain involved until Bill Cassidy is elected,” Crossroads spokesman Paul Lindsay said.

Senate Republicans’ campaign arm had booked $2.8 million in ads and Senate Democrats’ committee already had planned $1.8 million in ads. Neither had canceled their reservations.

While Cassidy skipped public events Wednesday, Landrieu unveiled a website highlighting votes she said Cassidy took against women, the elderly, students, veterans and disaster victims and kicked off a statewide tour to pan the congressman’s record.

On Wednesday, Landrieu switched from focusing on her chairmanship in energy-rich Louisiana to direct hits to Cassidy, calling him a “wishy-washy” politician who voted with his party’s leaders against his home state’s interests on such matters as the Social Security retirement age and disaster aid for his congressional district.

For his part, Cassidy will have to move beyond selling his candidacy as part of the GOP Senate takeover — any win by Cassidy would be irrelevant to Senate control. He’ll also need to coalesce support from voters who backed Republican candidate and tea party favorite Rob Maness in the primary.

Cassidy ran only 16,400 votes behind Landrieu among the crowded field of eight candidates. Maness carried more than 202,000 votes and hasn’t directly endorsed Cassidy.

http://thehayride.com/2014/11/to-mary-landrieu-edwin-edwards-and-jamie-mayo-dont-waste-our-time/

The Hayride

To Mary Landrieu, Edwin Edwards And Jamie Mayo: Don’t Waste Our Time

by Scott McKay

It may seem a victory of sorts for the Louisiana Democrat Party that in the three major races extant in this year’s election cycle they still have three candidates alive in a runoff this morning.

But the Democrats, and their candidates, shouldn’t take much joy in that fact. Mary Landrieu, Edwin Edwards and Jamie Mayo should all concede their races today and move on with their lives.

It’s the intelligent, and merciful, thing to do. Admit defeat and bow out gracefully.

For neither Landrieu, nor Edwards, nor Mayo are their races winnable. The margin of defeat awaiting them in December will be humbling. It will damage the Louisiana Democrat Party for years to come. Now is the time to set pride and vanity aside, and do what’s best for their families, their party and the people of Louisiana.

To all three of you, get out of your races.

Mayo was the sole Democrat running in Louisiana’s 5th District congressional race. The Democrats talked a big game about the get-out-the-vote operation they were going to support him with this year and how that 5th District race was going to be competitive, and even winnable, for them.

Mayo garnered a pitiful 28.22 percent. There was a Green Party candidate running in the race who managed 0.69 percent. The other 71 percent went to the seven Republicans and one Libertarian running in the race. There is no reason to believe Mayo will fare any better in the runoff than he did in the primary. With Ralph Abraham, who as of October 15 had managed to fuel his campaign with just under $500,000, now consolidating the Republican vote behind him a beating of gargantuan proportions is in the offing. Abraham is going to stomp Mayo by at least a two-to-one margin on Dec. 6.

There is no particular purpose in running a month-long campaign destined to be doubled-up by a better-funded opponent more in tune with the wishes of the electorate. Mayo has already run his race and been judged by the voters. In getting out he can spare the voters a month of TV and radio ads and political mailers. What’s more, he can get back to doing the job he already has, that being mayor of Monroe. His constituents would assumedly benefit from having a full-time, engaged chief executive rather than some political-hack Don Quixote perpetuating division among the public.

For Edwards, whom we already predicted would retire from the race, Tuesday night’s results had to be seen as a repudiation. Some 70 percent of the public took his measure as a candidate and found him wanting. That includes Democrats; two minor candidates with D’s next to their names combined for 4.39 percent of the vote to Edwards’ 30.12 percent. With 34.5 percent as the total Democrat vote Tuesday, which is a reasonable expectation as a ceiling for what he can do in a runoff, the electoral shellacking so long due the most venal and corrupt politician in Louisiana political history awaits him in 31 days.

Edwards has faced just such a wrath of the voters before. In 1987, after four years spent presiding over a disastrous state economy, a corrupt and dysfunctional state government and what could very well have been a conviction on public corruption charges Edwards faced very similar numbers to those he faces today. He got out of that race and let Buddy Roemer claim victory as the top vote-getter among four reform-minded gubernatorial candidates. Edwards did manage to re-inflict himself on the voters four years later and won the worst election in Louisiana (if not American) history, but his final term in office led to more managerial dysfunction, economic malaise and his own conviction on racketeering charges.

Such a squalid and dishonorable record as a putative public servant is the rightful source of shame and penitence. Not for Edwards, who before Anthony Weiner came along held the title of America’s most notorious political attention whore. Up until last night this vainglorious old man persisted in bragging he was a presidential pardon away from getting elected governor and that if he could run against Bobby Jindal he would win. Such is his hubris.

In Garret Graves, Edwin Edwards faces the nemesis to that hubris. Graves, who raised well over a million dollars in coming from bureaucratic obscurity to finish with 27 percent of the 65.5 percent non-Democrat share of the vote last night, might well match his primary fundraising figure by Friday. Raising campaign cash to banish Edwin Edwards into political oblivion might well become a national pastime by the end of this week; one can easily imagine Graves’ coffers overflowing with donations from Maine to Hawaii once the national public sees an attractive young Republican reformer and fighter for Louisiana’s coast matched against so embarrassing a figure.

And for the next month, Graves will delight in putting Edwards on trial before a 6th District public which has demonstrated itself to be a jury not of Edwards’ liking. The mailers and TV commercials and radio ads Graves’ campaign team can light off against him will set fire to whatever he thinks is left of his reputation. Graves himself has already offered up Edwards’ marriage to a 30-something trophy wife as an item of fun, referring to his wife Trina as one of his children, and when he does it he always gets a laugh out of the crowd. It’s only going to get worse, and Edwards, who at 86 years old no longer has the energy and drive of his younger years, has nothing left to offer to the voters, his party or his own ego.

And for Landrieu, Tuesday was an ignominious disaster. Her entire election strategy depended on stealing a march to 50 percent plus one last night. Not only didn’t she meet that goal, she wasn’t close. In fact, until the Orleans Parish vote came in toward the end of the vote-counting she was not only behind Bill Cassidy but under 40 percent. Only when the last 120 or so precincts in Orleans bore their usual Democrat fruit did Landrieu manage to barely inch ahead of Cassidy. She managed just 42 percent.

Where is the ceiling for Landrieu in what is sure to be a more Republican electorate in December? Add the other Democrat votes, those for Wayne Ables, Val Senegal and William Waymire, to her total and she’s just above 43 percent – of last night’s electorate.

Mary Landrieu spent (just as of October 15; certainly the true figure is considerably higher) some $13.6 million on this race. To finish with 10 percent less in November of 2014 than she earned in November of 2008.

Despite the ludicrous statements last night about how the runoff is “the race we always wanted” in what should have been her concession speech, Landrieu has no path to victory in 31 days. What she has in front of her is a trail of tears, and a repudiation by the voters which will destroy her family’s supposed electoral strength in this state.

Bill Cassidy nearly beat her outright last night. Cassidy fell just 16,000 votes shy of placing ahead of her. Meanwhile, Cassidy can count on the vast majority of the 202,000 votes Rob Maness amassed last night, and add to his figure the 27,000 votes fellow Republican Thomas Clements and Libertarian Brannon McMorris brought in. As of right now Landrieu is staring a 57-43 tsunami in the face – with the electorate as it was last night.

We know the electorate will not be what it was last night on Dec. 6. We know that it will be more Republican, and whiter. We know that Landrieu’s incomprehensibly irresponsible and stupid remarks about how Louisiana and the rest of the South are racist and sexist will live in infamy for the next 31 days, and that whiter electorate will offer her its wrath next month. And no, she won’t be saved by an influx of Democrat money and union shoe leather; the national Left isn’t riding to her aid. Not when it has been so thoroughly destroyed across the country. There is no rescue, there is no cavalry, there is no salvation.

There is only defeat, and ignominious defeat, at that.

It’s time for Landrieu, and Edwards and Mayo, to have the humility and the intelligence, and the dignity, to spare themselves and their voters the spectacle of the lost cause playing out to its denouement. It’s time for the three of them to concede their races so Louisiana can join the nation in moving on from this year’s election cycle.

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