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“Fleming is definitely more conservative than Scalise.”

I just looked up the vote ratings in my 2014 Almanac of American Politics (has the 2016 edition come out?) and Fleming indeed had a more conservative voting record than did Scalise (albeit by just a smidge) during 2011 and 2012.

Instead of looking at a single vote rating, I average the vote ratings from three conservative groups and (after converting them to a conservative score by subtracting the liberal score from 100) three libefal groups. The three conservative groups are the Family Research Council (social conservatives), the Club for Growth (economic conservatives), and the American Conservative Union or ACU (general conservatives); the three liberal groups are the AFSCME (pro-union), the League of Conservation Voters (environmentalists), and Americans for Democratic Action or ADA (general liberals). After getting the average score (or conservative-equivalent score) for each group for the two-year period, all of which are in a 100-point scale, I add them up and then divide by 600 to obtain a Conservative Vote Percentage.

For the 2011-2012 Congress, Fleming had a Conservative Vote Percentage (CVP) of 95.33% (572 out of 600 possible points). This barely edged out Scalise, who had a CVP of 94.58% (567.5 out of 600). Both Fleming and Scalise were more conservative than was Boustany, whose CVP was 90.83%. Boustany actually had a more conservative voting record than now-Senator Cassidy, whose CVP for 2011-2012 was 87.00%. (To put things in perspective, the lone Democrat in the LA House delegation, Cedric Richmond, had a CVP of 11.83%.)

“The most conservative choice though might be Tea Partier Col. Rob Maness.”

Well, if we went by words alone, Maness would be the most conservative, but it’s easy to talk a good game when you don’t have a record with which to compare your words. You know all of those Republicans that have disappointed us in Congress? All of them claimed to be Reagan Republicans when they were campaigning. I wish that Naness had run for a lower office and compiled a conservative voting record first instead of jumping into one and now maybe two U.S. Senate races without any record with which to compare his words.

It seems to me that Fleming has had an exemplary voting record in Congress, although I’m sure that he’s cast a few votes with which some of us would disagree because that’s what happens when you have to cast hundreds of votes a year. Boustany’s voting record actually may be as conservative as Vitter’s, but Fleming’s is better and I’m still pissed at Bustany for insisting on a more conservative CD for himself in 2012 that gave him an unfair advantage against Landry (by placing much of Landry’s CD in Scalise’s) and resulted in drawing a potentially competitive district in NW LA. Thankfully Fleming has been able to hold that NW LA CD, and hopefully we’ll hold it now that it’s opening up.

So my preference as of now is Fleming.

Unless Maness wished to toil in the legislature with its 4-year terms, his preference is running for federal office. The problem is he lives in the 1st CD (hailing from Madisonville in St. Tammany Parish). With Steve Scalise ensconced in that seat, that option is out. The Senate race is the only other available option.

Of course, when one runs for federal office without having previously served in lesser office, we can only take their word as to where they will stand (and in his case, as a retired Air Force Colonel), unless there is something revealed in their background to the contrary. Unless there is an exceptional House member (or current or former Governor) waiting in the wings, I see nothing wrong with bringing someone in from the private sector (or ex-military) to run for the Senate. We did just that in 1994 in TN with Fred Thompson and Dr. Frist, neither of whom had held or run for office when they went to the Senate.

Col. Maness ran a decent and respectable race for the Senate last year. He didn’t get all weird or pull a Dardenne/Angelle backstabbing action against Cassidy and campaigned for him after his loss. Contrast that with a certain creepy primary candidate in Kansas.

This just in: Elbert Guillory is running for Congress, in the LA-04 House seat that Fleming is vacating to run for the U.S. Senate. Powerful candidacy announcement for Guillory:

http://www.elbertguillory.com/congress/

The LA-04 is based out of Shreveport, but includes much of Guillory’s home parish of St. Landry (but not his hometown of Opelousas, which is just outside the CD’s borders). Apart from the black-majority (and overwhelmingly RAT) LA-02, the LA-04 is the least Republican—and least white—CD in Louisiana, but it’s still like 2/3 white and held Obama just under 40% in both 2008 and 2012.

Louisiana has that terrible (and, IMHO, unconstitutional) jungle primary system in which all candidates regardless of party run on the same ballot and, if no one gets 50%+1, the top two go on to a run-off; unless enough prominent Republicans run and split the vote and exactly two Democrats run and each gather 18%-20%, a Republican will win the election. Guillory is a conservative hero (he switched to the GOP a couple of years ago to become the first black Republican in the LA Senate since Reconstruction—and representing a black-majority district to boot) with a solid voting legislative record, and his ability to win votes from white conservatives and open-minded blacks should propel him to a top-two finish in the jungle primary and a victory in the general. But, of course, I thought that Guillory would do well in the Lt. Gov. jungle primary, and he got slaughtered, so we’ll have to wait and see whether he’s just tilting at windmills here.

For the record, I am endorsing Elbert Guillory for the U.S. House of Representatives. We need more people like him in public service, and particularly in Congress. Sure, he’s 71 years old, so he may not serve in Congress for very long, but a black conservative that can explain eloquently why blacks should be Republicans is a necessary—albeit not sufficient—requirement for obtaining 25% of the black vote and putting the Democrats out of business once and for all.