Steve Scalise Projected Winner in GOP Louisiana Primary's 1st Congressional District

WWL-TV New Orleans | 4/5/08 | Greg Rigamer

[murron]

WWL-TV political consultant Greg Rigamer projects that Steve Scalise will win the GOP Primary in the First Congressional District of Louisiana. With 95 percent of the vote in, Steve Scalise has 58% of the vote. Tim Burns has 42%.

[murron]

If he wins, and he should, he would replace Bobby Jindal in Congress.

[balch3]

Woody Jenkins wins GOP primary in 6th district

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hkqIvQlXhZ73QDOTtBlXsaQlMj2AD8VS3H5O0

[murron]

Good deal. I wasn’t aware that he was running in a runoff today as well. Is that a safe Republican seat? Who would he be replacing?

[fieldmarshaldj]

It's been Republican since 1986 when Richard Baker won it, but we've got a fairly decent shot of losing it. It leans GOP, but not like the 1st does.

[fieldmarshaldj]

*ping*

[Galactic Overlord-In-Chief]

We’ve held it for longer than that. Henson Moore won the seat in 1974 and held it until he stepped down in 1986 to run for the Senate, Baker won the seat then.

[Clintonfatigued]

No surprise here.

[fieldmarshaldj]

D'oh ! Excuse me. I don't know why I momentarily forgot about Moore (who should've become the first GOP Senator from LA since Reconstruction). Before Moore was the, ahem, "colorful" John Rarick, a DINO. Rarick left the Dems after his failure to be renominated and joined George Wallace's former party, the American Independent party. Rarick, who actually wasn't a Southerner but an Indiana native, made Jesse Helms look like Nancy Pelosi.

[Impy]

http://voteview.ucsd.edu/Is_John_Kerry_A_Liberal.htm

This pegs Rarick as the second most conservative democrat in the time period it measures. Though I don’t know it’s criterion. Who is #1 Larry McDonald?

“A Conservative Democrat, he was active in numerous civil organizations and maintained a conservative voting record in Congress. He was known for his staunch opposition to communism and believed in long standing covert efforts by powerful US groups to bring about a socialist world government.”

Not even a racist? What was holding him to the rats?

[fieldmarshaldj]

Wow, Larry McDonald of Georgia. You’ve never heard of him ? A legendary member of Congress, first elected with the ghastly Watergate baby class of 1974. A DINO that made a lot Conservative Republicans look like Communists. McDonald was a Bircher (and was President of their society at one point). His beliefs of the Soviet infiltration may have been well founded in his case. He was murdered, along with every other passenger, 269 in all, on Korean Air Lines Flight 007 in 1983 while still in office by a Soviet military jets. He was only 48. Some other individuals claim that the plane was brought down and McDonald has been interred in a Russian camp since, but take that with a grain of salt. None of the bodies, IIRC, were ever recovered.

I was only 9 when that happened, but I remember how nasty a situation that was. One of the hottest flare-ups during the Cold War, and grounds enough for justifiable American retaliation.

As for Rarick, what held him to the ‘Rats (as with Larry McDonald) is that there was virtually no Republican presence in GA and LA at that time. In the case of LA, it wasn’t until the early 1970s when a Republican (Dave Treen) was first elected to a House seat in a century. Running as a Dem was the only option in the 1960s (Rarick couldn’t have run on his views in IN and gotten elected as a Republican for that matter). GA had no federal Republicans at all after the 1974 election and the label was badly damaged. Not until Gingrich was elected in 1978 would there be a Republican from GA.

[Bogey78O]

Well I voted, then afterwards wanted to change my vote once I talked to my parents. Especially now that I did a more than cursory glance at their records and positions.