True, but it could also be explained that since elections are held at an off-kilter time in LA, an even “greater” opportunity to serve the people came up. If he wins and remains past the next redistricting (where LA will probably drop to 6 House members), he might conceivably be merged in with the NOLA House seat, since they’ll have to greatly expand into the suburbs to make up for the population drop.
Well, Treen running again is news to me, but probably not unexpected. He just keeps popping up again and again, who knows why. If he wanted to be useful, he could have run for the Senate in 1996 when it was open and maybe even won the seat, though he’d be getting pretty long in the tooth by now. I wouldn’t be concerned about him. Treen did his part in advancing the GOP cause here in LA, but he seriously should stay in retirement and enjoy life.
Now again, Bobby’s district is my district, so I have a good feel for the goings on here. I would say Scalise is going to run, and he has a good chance to win. He’s got a lot of name recognition down here in Jefferson Parish and it’s no secret he’s had an eye on this race for a while. Now, we will be going to closed party primaries instead of an open primary for federal elections, so strictly the GOP faithful is going to pick the Republican to run for the special election. No Dems or Independents can vote in our primary.
Scalise’s primary competition, if he has any, will probably come from the two Jeff Parish at-large members, Tom Capella and John Young, or Northshore Republicans like St. Tammany Parish President Kevin Davis or the mayor of Slidell. No RINOs in this bunch that I’m aware of. This race will be decided in the primary. The Dems don’t stand a chance here.
Now, as far as redistricting goes, I imagine Melancon’s seat will probably be the one to go. Throwing in too much of my district could turn the N.O. district competitive, as it lost many Democrat voters. They’ll want to gerrymander some black areas into the second district along the Mississippi River to maintain a black-influenced district. But those areas will likely come out of Melancon’s district. Melancon may end up having to challenge Boustany in the seventh district. That may end up being the outcome, a primarily Cajun congressional district that runs from the Texas border up to maybe Terrebone Parish. Remember, the first district was designed to pack in the GOP areas out of the second and third districts (Melancon’s predescor, Billy Tauzin, then a Democrat, beat a Metairie-area politician named Jim Donelon to win the seat, and the legislature cut Metairie out of his district some years later). They won’t want to let those areas loose to cost the Dems another seat if they can help it.