Jindal may ultimately be to blame for Vitter’s loss. It’s very difficult with an incumbent party member with high disapprovals to pass off the seat to a member of the same, even if they hail from different wings. I’m reminded of Ohio in 2006 with the very unpopular RINO Gov. Taft rubbing off anti-GOP negativity on Conservative Ken Blackwell. Even here in TN in 2002, Sundquist, who was unpopular, got Van Hilleary partly saddled with his negativity (although in Hilleary’s case, he had little money to compete against Bredesen, but still just barely lost).
Jindal won’t run for the Senate seat, at least. His negatives would be hard to keep the seat. I was going to suggest Landry run if he had narrowly lost tonight, but since he didn’t, he’ll likely be a strong candidate for Governor in 4 years. Other than that, I’m not sure who would be the best candidate to run for the Senate who would match Vitter’s excellent record.
I’ve heard Rep. John Fleming (LA-04) talked up as a Vitter replacement when it looked as if Vitter was going to win the governor’s race in a walk and end up appointing his replacement. He’s had the highest conservative rankings in the LA delegation last I looked, but I hadn’t checked the ratings since Abraham (LA-05) and Graves (LA-06) were elected. Graves, BTW, has been talked up more recently as someone who could move on up, but like I said, I haven’t checked the overall record of the LA House members very recently.
RINO Boustany (LA-07) is part of the House leadership and is (thankfully) unlikely to run.
Scalise (LA-01) is majority whip, very unlikely to give that up for a Senate run especially when he could plausibly become majority leader or Speaker someday, although his voting record has taken a turn for the worse, and as of now I don’t plan on voting for him next time.
State Treasurer John Kennedy is also mentioned as a candidate, which would mark his third try, his first while still a Dem that ran to the left of then Dem Chris John in 04, then switched to the GOP and got beat by Landrieu in 08. My take: why? We have a deeper, better, and younger bench to pick from, and people who frankly have more reliable conservative credentials.
Phil Angelle (one of Vitter’s two Republican opponents) has been rumored as a candidate to primary Vitter if he ran for re-election. Don’t know if he’d run now, but I’ve never been crazy about him, so pass.
“Jindal won’t run for the Senate seat, at least.”
Jindal is going to go run his own think tank, where he can be irrelevant in comfort.
As for Vitter, he was out campaigned, and ran almost exclusively on negatives about his opponent at least on radio. Edwards ran warm, fuzzy, security blanket ads of assurance about his military service, pro-life and pro-family goodness. His wife cut a particulary effective ad for him.
Scalise has the best voting record in the LA House delegation, but he’ll likely stay in his safe House seat and leadership position. We’ll likely see a couple of less reliably conservative congressmen run (Boustany and Fleming ome to mind).
Had Elbert Guillory not been crushed in the Lt. Gov. jungle primary he’d be my first choice.