Edwards, Brown penalty reductions set bad examples

Requests have been forwarded to Pres. George W. Bush to commute the sentence of Prisoner #03128-095, formerly known as ex-Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards, and to pardon the former Prisoner #03312-095, now known as ex-Louisiana Insurance Commissioner Jim Brown. For different reasons, neither is a good idea.

Some high-profile individuals, including past political opponents of Edwards’, have argued that because of his advanced age Edwards ought to be let go early, or at the very least be let out 18 months early when, at the beginning of 2010, he becomes eligible for parole. I’m sure it’s tough on an elderly dude and his family for him to be in prison, but it’s not a reason good enough to spring him prematurely.

I guess Edwards wasn’t thinking about those hardships when he was performing the crime that got him convicted of influence peddling. And the precedent that would be set would not be in the public interest: if you can hang on long enough before and after being caught instead of reforming your ways and/or not committing that abuse of the public trust so as to be elderly when convicted, you can cheat paying back your debt to society.

While Brown’s crimes were less serious, which actually came about during an investigation of more serious crimes for which he escaped conviction, he asks for a full pardon so legally if was as if the crime never existed. Brown has bent over backwards to convince the world the crime didn’t exist, even going so far as to writing a book about his situation.

However, that evidence certainly did not convince multiple courts that he was persecuted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, including the U.S. Supreme Court who twice turned down appeals by him. Therefore, in order for Brown really to have proof of his innocence rejected so often, there would have to be a fix in not just with the federal government and its prosecutors, but with the entire U.S. judiciary by his cosmology. If he really believes this, next thing you know he’ll be talking about his alien abduction.

If Brown showed some repentance, instead of falsely asserting his innocence, some thought to grant his request might be in order. But to pardon him would send the message that, no matter how phantom your innocence may be, if you squawk long and loud enough you can get, in essence, declared innocent, inviting more such antics by elected officials seeing this example.

For the public good, Bush needs to throw both requests into the shredder.

LA Fourth District race may affect redistricting options

With an almost certain retreat of the Sixth District from Democrat back into Republican hands, the outcome of the Fourth District race for the U.S. House of Representatives may have an impact on redistricting in Louisiana after the 2010 Census.

While one commentator argues that the result of the census, which almost assuredly will result in the loss of a congressional seat due to depopulation courtesy of the hurricane disasters of 2005, will cause the Fourth which is centered around Shreveport to gobble up the Fifth, centered around Monroe, this view places too much emphasis on regionalism and discounts the factors of partisanship and race. Perhaps almost 20 years ago, when there were almost no Republicans in the state Legislature and a Democrat-turned Republican governor ruled the state its north-south division might have mattered.

But it will not in the future. One of the outcomes of 1990 redistricting was two majority-black districts, one of which was tortuously drawn and coexisted in north Louisiana with another. Not surprisingly, the racially-gerrymandered district was tossed out by the U.S. Supreme Court, bringing the lines largely present today. With just one majority-black district now present around Orleans, black legislators will fiercely protect it even though that is the area which lost the vast majority of population, not the least by threatening voting rights lawsuits.

Republicans will cooperate because geography suggests the easiest district to erase while creating a sufficiently non-convoluted majority black district is the Third, the home of the only other white Democrat, Rep. Charlie Melancon. As trends go, by then Republicans are likely to have a state House majority plus sufficiently large representation in the state Senate, and Gov. Bobby Jindal, to control the process with black Democrats. Now that partisanship matters (just another example is the letter from Republican leader state Rep. Jane Smith praising Jindal for line item vetoes after he was roundly criticized by Democrats, support which never would have been publicly revealed even a decade ago when the GOP was too small), it will be the driving force of redistricting.

Thus, the desire will be strong to retain the Fifth as is with current Republican Rep. Rodney Alexander cruising to reelection now and probably then, too. But the contest to succeed retiring Fourth District Republican Rep. Jim McCrery has a competitive Democrat running which could put the seat into that party’s column this year and in 2010. That would make the Fourth an eligible target along with the Third.

Still, given the coveting of a majority-black district somewhere around Orleans, the geography works about better to eliminate the Third. But what if Melancon, sensing his district will get carved up by 2012, decides to run for Senate in 2010 against incumbent David Vitter? Regardless of what happens, a Republican is more likely to win there perhaps by 2012 making the Fourth the only held by a white Democrat. Then geographical information systems will have to work overtime to fold that district into others while keeping a majority-black Second.

So it may well be true that the outcome of this year’s Fourth District contest will eventually affect representation in the area of the Fifth. But only if certain other things happen that are tied to partisanship, not to regionalism.

Suffering political damage, Nubian Queen takes on more

I suppose if anybody were looking for a nickname for state Sen. Yvonne Dorsey, she helpfully provided one: the Nubian Queen. That’s what she said she could be called after it was revealed in a childish letter she sent to her chamber colleagues she had called Gov. Bobby Jindal “Maharajah.”

Her Democrat comrades aren’t touching this one with a pole of any length, refusing comments about it or insisting they didn’t endorse any “racial slur.” In private, they must be fuming equally about Dorsey’s rhetoric, which also included calling Jindal a “blatant liar” (maybe) or “asinine” (definitely not, if referring to decisions to veto wasteful spending and an asinine legislator pay raise), and the fact the letter got made public because part of the liberal Democrat gambit is to accuse those against their redistributive policies to be “racists” (since redistribution is supposed to make up for the “racism” in society and government) and the remark of hers makes it easier to see what a joke that strategy is.

Particularly ironic, which Dorsey seemed too moronic to grasp, was in her calling Jindal “one more one-term governor.” This coming from a woman who won her first term in the Senate by exactly nine votes while Jindal steamrolled his gubernatorial opposition much like he did her policy preferences, such as his vetoing her request for taxpayers to foot the bill for a hot-air balloon festival for unspecified expenses and by making her work for a living with a real job by his veto of the raise (and preventing a massive hike in her retirement benefits taxpayers would dole out to her that she is eligible for despite her service only being part-time).

Jindal says he takes none of this personally. But that’s exactly how Dorsey takes it, and there is the crux of the matter. Unscrupulous politicians like Dorsey just want to suck money out of hard working Louisianans in order to support their lifestyles, either in payment of salary or by promising redistribution of resources to political supporters. Dorsey knows she barely scraped into her privileged lifestyle (after having served in the House of Representatives) and the shame she brought on herself through voting for the pay raise and her inability to deliver on her one earmark makes her even more vulnerable to fail in her reelection bid.

Idiots like Dorsey are a dime a dozen in politics but, but survival of the fittest also applies. Maybe some of her liberal pals in the Legislature have the same constipated views as she does but they had enough sense to keep their mouths shut and pens capped. Perhaps the single biggest political loser after Jindal vetoed the raise, besides cheerleader House Speaker Jim Tucker, was its author state Sen. Ann Duplessis, who herself narrowly twice has won her seat. After this incident, the Nubian Queen looks set to join her in that dishonor.

Legislator sour grapes, or did Jindal really set them up?

Act I in the drama of the tussle between majoritarian branches of government in Louisiana was Gov. Bobby Jindal’s veto of a pay raise to full-time status of part-time legislators. Act II was his line-item vetoes of appropriations bills that in almost every case slashed budget spending that was local and/or questionable in nature. Act III, the finale, came when the Senate vetoed the veto session to undo any of this. Jindal clearly triumphs, but it doesn’t mean he can avoid the hypocritical sour grapes of legislators.

The loudest complaints came from those whose projects clearly violated the standards Jindal had promulgated about these items, and have been discussed elsewhere. Another set of complaints have come from those who said that the smaller portion of vetoed items, dealing with specific appropriations for local governments, were done with little guidance.

On the surface, this would appear to have merit. No detailed guidelines were issued regarding these items as Jindal did with nongovernmental organizations in his Apr. 30 missive. But a nanosecond’s worth of thought dismisses this charge as just more politics.

Jindal defended his actions on this account by saying he used “common sense” criteria, creating priorities with infrastructure at the top and considering the scope of impact. What he didn’t say, or perhaps needed to state unambiguously to a bunch short on common sense, was that it is common sense that all capital items for local governments should have gone into HB 2, the capital outlay bill. As it was, everything that legislators asked for, with the exception of an outlay that violated state law, he kept in that bill.

But from legislators’ perspectives, that’s bad news because there’s much more oversight and procedures attached to the outlay bill – which meant, given the low priority so many of these requests would have, that many probably would not have made it into that bill. Simply, they preferred the more politically expedient route stuffing these outlays into HB 1, and got burned, and now they’re mad because they got called on the practice.

The hypocrisy comes in when legislators then begin to blame Jindal for the vetoes rather than themselves. It was rich irony to see one of the biggest hypocrites in the legislature, state Sen. Robert Adley (among others) accuse Jindal of making the vetoes for political reasons (since that these have been enthusiastically received by the public). Properly interpreted, legislators knew many of these vetoes were coming yet forged ahead anyway so that some of them would succeed and of those vetoed they could at least bleat they had tried to get them enacted, then launch the “Jindal playing politics” blame gambit. (Adley already milks hundreds of thousands of dollars a year out of local governments for a no-bid contract his company has with an association of them, so he brings home plenty of bacon for himself at least, just as another such whiner, state Sen. Joe McPherson, makes millions in Medicaid funding to his nursing home.)

Make no mistake, by taking this course of action it was legislators playing politics. Many of them slammed by going on the record for a pay raise they felt they could have avoided if Jindal had played it differently, then getting pet projects cut that for some are major parts of their reelection efforts, the griping about all of this is their only recourse to spin any success out of it all when they could easily have avoided this rash of negative publicity by not touching the raise issue and by being parsimonious with their earmarks and/or putting them in the capital outlay budget.

But on the subject of playing politics, might legislators be correct in one sense when some argue the pay raise fiasco cut off any override session chance, because it would make legislators look like they wanted payback for that? As far-fetched as it may seem: was it all a setup by Jindal? Did he allow the Legislature to blunder into approving the raise, so as to make it lose so much political capital that it then could not resist the vetoes?

Given that Jindal took a hit as well as a result, it doesn’t seem likely. Unless it was a miscalculation on his part to a gamble that at least partially paid off?

Thrice lucky, fortune looks to abandon Melancon in 2010

The accidental congressman, Rep. Charlie Melancon, earned a free ride back to the House of Representatives. Good for him, as it’s likely to be his last term

Democrat Melancon won narrowly back in 2004 only because of internecine warfare between Republican candidates and was the district that year with the highest percentage of the vote for Pres. George W. Bush (57) that elected a Democrat. He got lucky again in 2006 when former state Sen. Craig Romero, the Republican who had waged the scorched earth campaign against Melancon’s GOP opponent in the general election runoff even after his elimination, was Melancon’s main opponent and given the ill will Romero had generated because of his 2004 actions, an unfavorable election cycle for Republicans, and hurricane displacement effects, Melancon won reelection.

Now in 2008, Melancon convinced enough political activists in the district that he had enough of a moderate image that he would be tough to topple in a year where the GOP is likely to have to expend resources in other places to defend their seats, and drew no opponents. In large part this was constructed with his initial two years of votes, where, according to the American Conservative Union’s scorecard, he racked up moderately conservative scores of 61 and 76.

Note that this was a period of Republican control of the chamber where he treaded lightly to burnish his credentials for reelection to a district which ideologically he really didn’t represent. But when his Democrats took over in 2007, the real Melancon showed up. Last year the ACU scored him at 36, solidly liberal, with Melancon’s votes including to increase the minimum wage, against the Iraq “surge” that is bringing the war to a successful conclusion, against religious freedom in hiring practices, against earmark reform, to delay construction of the Mexican border fence, to allow more union coercion in workplace elections, to allow wasteful expansion of the Children’s Insurance Program and new taxes to fund it (twice), and against expanding domestic energy production.

It’s a very vulnerable record, but luck was yet again on his side. But that looks to change in 2010. At that time, Melancon probably will abandon his seat to make a run for the Senate against Sen. David Vitter that, while it is not a longshot, in which he will be a definite underdog.

Taking this gamble to leave his seat in 2010 he must because there probably won’t be a House seat for him in 2012. With Louisiana sure to lose a House seat in redistricting, at the top of the list for disappearance will be his Third District, as a Republican-led state government aided by Democrat black legislators who wish to preserve the Second District (around New Orleans) and make other seats more competitive for blacks see his as their natural target.

So he either takes a less than even-money Senate shot at Vitter in 2010, or he almost certainly is out of a job in 2012 if getting even reelected to the House in 2010. Either way, it looks like Melancon’s luck finally may run out.

Abramson protests too much on information bill veto

There’s been lots of legislator carping about Gov. Bobby Jindal’s vetoes for this past regular session, given he cast 302 of them (278 line items), and a lot of it has come from lawmakers who, frankly, have a fundamentally misguided view about the purposes of government. They may be safely ignored. But one complaint merits further investigation since it comes from one of the apparently more level-headed House members.

Of all the Democrats in the Legislature, state Rep. Neil Abramson scored the most conservative/reform in voting. Thus, when he complains that a veto of one of his bills, HB 176 (actually, a second attempt since an earlier version in the first special session also got vetoed), casts doubt on the sincerity of the governor on the issue of transparency of the office, it should be reviewed seriously.

This bill intended that an elected official with appointive powers disclose whether appointees had made contributions to his campaign (or a gubernatorial transition). Jindal vetoed the bill citing concerns that the language was overbroad and would force reporting of any appointee’s contributions to any candidate. He also said his office had talked to Abramson about altering the bill to address that concern and that Abramson agreed, to which Abramson said he had not agreed and therefore did not change the bill.

But another reason Jindal easily could have used to justify vetoing the bill is it is a prime example of unnecessary regulation already adequately dealt with under current law. The point of the bill, to show which appointees gave to an appointer, already can be accomplished. All you have to do is go to the state’s Ethics Administration web site, enter an appointer, and there will be the list of donors. And if you need to know who the appointees are, there’s a list of boards and commissions with member names.

Yes, this is somewhat clumsy because in many cases, through this list or on agency web sites sometimes it’s not clear who exactly is whose appointee, and an appointer’s list of donors requires going through report after report, but the fact is the information is in the public domain. So when Abramson makes statement such as “It raises the question whether they're concerned about releasing that information or not,” it shows he is one or more of misinformed, ignorant, or stupid, because information going back a decade is accessible by anybody with Internet access. (The only thing new about the bill is the gubernatorial transition information – which Jindal voluntarily released – but Abramson didn’t make a point of that.)

If Abramson made public complaints about how it might be difficult to collate the information, or how his bill could streamline the process, he might come across as reasonable. Instead, he looks like a political opportunist, fabricating an issue by accusing the governor of doing the same, in attempt to score cheap political points. Thus this strained credibility calls into question whether Abramson can be believed that he did not agree that the bill was flawed. Methinks he doth protest too much.

Line item veto lessons unlikely learned by legislators

I have to ask a similar question as one posed in yesterday’s post: just how many Louisiana legislators are illiterate? More than a few, it would appear, from the rhetoric coming about the trimming Gov. Bobby Jindal inflicted on the state’s appropriations bills through the use of his line item veto power, and questions can be raised about their attention spans and abilities to do their jobs as well.

Some legislators complained that they didn’t have adequate “warning” about these cuts to their pet projects, which totaled 283 items worth over $25 million in direct costs. Well, if they could read, they did indeed have it, courtesy of an Apr. 30 memo Jindal sent outlining his four criteria for judging the merit of such projects slipped into the budget, they being the project must have a statewide or substantial regional impact; have been presented or openly discussed during the legislative session; be a state agency priority; and must have the proper disclosure form published online prior to consideration for funding.

It was that simple, and it’s clear that in reviewing projects in the cases of the vast majority of the vetoes that they unambiguously did not meet the criteria. Why is it that non-politicians can figure out the obvious, while the politicians can’t? Instead of blaming themselves, the ilk like state Sen. Joe McPherson (who already makes millions a year off the state) tried to blame Jindal, claiming he tried to score political points in a kind of set-up to have legislators forward projects so he could relish vetoing some.

Such a statement might be made not so much because of inattentiveness to what Jindal wrote, but because these politicians discounted it. Note that while many Republican-sponsored projects got slashed, almost all of the complaining is coming from Democrats concerning the Republican Jindal. This is because political motivations of Democrats and Republicans differ because of the differing political ideologies each tend to follow.

Conservatism, to which most Republicans adhere in more or less purer forms, wins in the marketplaces of ideas and policy outputs over liberalism, as logic and history demonstrate. Therefore, when Republican politicians tell what their policies will be and when based upon conservatism, they usually mean what they say. Democrats, on the other hand, at least the ones who want to get elected where there isn’t a large liberal majority in the electorate, knowing they lose on ideology, will try to obscure that aspect and regularly make policy pronouncements in vague, ambiguous ways, or speak outright contradictorily, saying one thing to get elected (witness Sen. Barack Obama) because it’s what they have to do to win, and then doing another once they have power.

Because they think that way, they believe all politicians act accordingly, including Republicans like Jindal. Perhaps now Jindal has somewhat disabused them of the notion that, legislators' pay raises aside, that he doesn’t say what he means.

And another question to ask legislators, from some whining they emitted, is whether they know how to do their jobs. For example, state Sen. Edwin Murray, who lost financing for a community center that has been in operation since 1976, bleated, “I don't understand why it was cut. It serves the only hot meal some people get every day.”

If the program was so valuable Murray, who’s been in the Legislature many years, long ago should have sponsored a bill to have the state fund and run the program or, at the very least, set up a bid process to contract out that function. Instead, this has operated in the shadows for over three decades without sufficient accountability or any real debate over the value of the program relative to other state needs. Murray, and others who think like this, are derelict in their jobs if now all they can do is gripe about this situation when they could have taken care of it long ago. (And despite being unable to do their jobs satisfactorily, many of them still wanted the Jindal-vetoed pay raise.)

A Republican, state Sen. Mike Michot, actually summed up best this angst on the part of mainly Democrat legislators: “Many of them who serve (in the Legislature), they serve for this very reason. They serve to be able to bring money back to their districts.” Which only goes to show such politicians have absolutely no clue as to the purpose of government and no business representing the people of Louisiana.

Government is there only to do what individuals and non-profits in their collective efforts cannot. It helps most by staying out of the way of people, the opposite of the constipated view of those described legislators who see government as a redistribution mechanism to suck the people’s resources from them in the hopes of redistributing funds to meet the twin goals of creating a world of the politician’s own choosing and to enhance their own political power.

Maybe Jindal’s vetoes will shake the redistributionist numbskulls to their senses. But somehow I doubt it.

Jindal veto vigor necessary, endangers legislative careers

Just how dumb or illiterate are some Louisiana state legislators? Gov. Bobby Jindal certainly gave them an opportunity to wise up with his raft of line item vetoes to the state’s appropriations bill HB 1

On Apr. 30, Jindal issued a letter outlining clearly and succinctly criteria he would use in making these decisions, they being the project must have a statewide or substantial regional impact; have been presented or openly discussed during the legislative session; be a state agency priority; and must have the proper disclosure form published online prior to consideration for funding. Scrolling through the list of requests, matching them to the actual line items, one could see a train wreck approaching.

As with the supplemental bill which Jindal also trimmed, in some cases, the item was missing on the list. In a few others, the list information mismatched with the item. But a significant number unambiguously were local in nature.

So what do we make then of state Sen. John Alario’s complaint that Jindal went too far when he, for example, vetoes local government requests for playground equipment, prompting Alario in high dudgeon to declare, “I think they've gone farther than what the ground rules were. If you're playing a game, you ought to play by the rules.” I guess we make that Alario is an idiot: what definition of “local” does he see as a synonym of “statewide” or “substantial regional?”

We can understand part of Alario’s thinking by his very comment likening the process to a “game.” To legislators of Alario’s ilk, they see the entire scenario as a game, played by legislators where the object is to squeeze out as much state money as possible into the hands of local interests. Do enough of that, and you “win” the game by getting reelected. This idea stands as a principal tenet of their entire governing ideology.

By contrast, Jindal sees this exercise not as a necessary, much less a desirable, feature of modern governance. He sees it as an affront to taxpayers whose hard-earned money should go to statewide priorities instead of ending up subsidizing local concerns. As Jindal rightly pointed out, these vetoes don’t mean the projects themselves necessarily aren’t desirable, it’s just that there is no moral reason state government should pay for these when legally it is not compelled to do so; these are matters outside the proper reach of government or are properly handled by local government.

If supporters of these feel differently, they are free to pass laws mandating such state spending, in the process inviting the establishment of procedures to prioritize and to direct the spending with appropriate auditing. But that’s not what the Alarios of the world want, nor the likes of state Rep. Patricia Smith who called the criteria “unrealistic,” who was the queen of these items with 13 requests totaling $3.3 million out of the roughly $53 million requested, and who suffered 10 vetoes for $705,000 (requests often were parceled into multiple items). Their entire worldview about how government works is that it is there primarily to redistribute money from certain constituencies that they think have too much to those they think deserve more (naturally, theirs). They base their electability on this stunted, improper understanding of the purpose of government: they get votes by promising to bring home the bacon.

Understand then the upset of these characters stems not so much from their disagreement with Jindal’s informed philosophy of the purpose of government, but from the fact that it threatens their reelections. They now cannot with certainty go to certain groups and promise rewards for their elections. More than ever they will have to stand on their ideas to get elected and constituents will be more inclined to elect legislators on the basis of their ideas. That may not favor Alario, for example, whose ideology if compared to voting behavior by his constituents for other offices would indicate he is out of touch with them.

That Jindal did precisely what he said he would do, with plenty of clear warning, shows he is very serious about changing the “government as fatted calf” culture – making it imperative to abscond more and more of the people’s money to feed it – that all too many legislators perpetuate. To move the state forward and out of its dregs requires just such a change, no matter how many legislators get offended and whose political careers are endangered by this concept.

Jindal lives up to expectations, promises on line item vetoes

Gov. Bobby Jindal had a Clintonian moment by showing up to his news conference announcing his disposition of HB 1 11 minutes late. The rest of his presentation was anything but.

Jindal meant what he said (contrary to former Pres. Bill Clinton who often said one thing then did another) that he would line item veto those projects that did not at least have a regional impact of some importance and/or were not documented properly and publicly. He thusly axed 258 items to the tune of $16 million (and said indirect savings were $27 million more), over ten times what he excised from the supplemental bill and about double the number from the last 12 budget bills combined. This in and of itself perhaps tells us there hasn’t been a lot of good prioritizing in past budgets.

Perhaps the most controversial was the indirect item veto that would have allowed chiropractic services to be claimed on Medicaid (and at a higher reimbursement rate than other medical professionals were allowed to claim). The Jindal Administration had opposed the item during the regular legislative session. Some items were multiple requests for the same organizations.

He also mentioned many other items were kept despite having a tenuous connection with the criteria, particularly the “statewide/regional” impact criterion. He said he did so because they were important and they already were contracted to do government services – but that the process should be changed so that these line items weren’t necessary. For example, he brought upon Councils on Aging and said an update of the formula that computed the contracting dollars should occur to obviate the necessity of line items. In other words, Jindal will look more dimly on such future requests and that the state should get going on making these kinds of revisions.

He said the priorities were economic development and transportation and shied away from purely local projects. Even so, many items that advertised themselves as for economic development still were vetoed. He also correctly noted that local government purchase of such items produced greater accountability and transparency, as the rationale for these would be better documented and local elected officials could be held better accountable through elections. However, most items were of nongovernmental organizations that did not appear to be at least regional in his estimation, with the usual amounts being around $25,000, give or take $15,000. As with the supplemental bill, for some the amount(s) requested appeared to be the organizations’ entire budgets.

Such a huge total leads to wondering withso many legislators hit by the slashing they might do something unprecedented in state history – call an override session. That seems unlikely, even as the pain seemed spread fairly evenly although urban constituencies cuts tended to be more frequent and for higher dollar amounts. Since a two-thirds vote is required to do override on top of the majority vote to get the session called and some legislators suffered no vetoes or very few for small items, there’s probably not enough passion practically speaking to overturn any even if a significant number of lawmakers viewed the vetoes taken as a whole in the framework of logrolling.

Provided this doesn’t happen, expect in the future of Jindal’s governorship that these requests will taper off dramatically. Legislators no longer can make what they have assumed to be promises to these groups and so either will find some regular channel in state government (which no doubt would require greater justification and audit potential than present) to try to procure these funds, or simply not to make promises at all in order to avoid disappointments. Either way, taxpayers’ dollars are put to better use and accountability increases.

Jindal meant what he said without ambiguity, and that’s a good thing on this issue.

Coming Cazayoux defeat illustrates Democrats' dillemma

Hopefully, Rep. Don Cazayoux took out some short-term leases on housing, furniture etc. in Washington upon his arrival courtesy of winning a special election in May, because when qualifying closed for November’s federal elections, his future prospects to retain his office became very dim.

Although he did not draw a Democrat opponent in the primary election to be contested on Sep. 6, that turned out to be a problem. Not only did a tough general election opponent go unopposed in the Republican primary, state Sen. Bill Cassidy, but a potential strong candidate for the Democrat nomination, state Rep. Michael Jackson who he held off with difficulty for the nomination for the special election, skipped it in order to run as an independent against Cazayoux and Cassidy in the general election.

State Democrats may cry foul but Jackson was acting in a way to maximize his chances for election and in a sense the state party only has itself to blame. When looking at only Democrat registrations, given current trends by September with a small black majority among Democrats in the district but slightly higher turnout and cross-racial voting habits of white over blacks, a Cazayoux-Jackson race would have been a close.

But Democrats allow independents to vote in their party primaries and, with whites largely voting for whites and blacks overwhelmingly for blacks in a one black, one white candidate setup, the fact that a healthy majority of independents are white probably would tip the nomination in Cazayoux’s favor. By contrast, if Jackson could split the white vote in a three-way contest including Cassidy, he might get the win – and would be more likely to do so than in a contest solely against Cassidy given blacks as a whole in the district comprise less than 30 percent.

However, Jackson’s chance is not great because of Cassidy. Being one of the most conservative members of the Louisiana Senate, most conservative voters will abandon Cazayoux, who tries to use a few conservative votes here and there to mask his general liberal record, for the genuine article in Cassidy, while most black voters will desert Cazayoux for an unapologetic and black liberal in Jackson. Had a less-conservative and/or more controversial candidate (an example of the latter being the erstwhile special election GOP nominee Louis “Woody” Jenkins) gotten the Republican nomination, Cazayoux might have had a chance to hang onto to more of these conservative votes and had a slim chance to prevail. However, Cassidy’s quality makes it not only virtually impossible that Cazayoux can win, but that it will take significasnt luck for him to win – Cassidy will just draw too many Republican and/or conservative votes.

So Democrats must blame themselves for being unable to consolidate their hold on the office in part because of the decision to allow in independents. This can be seen in the black community as an attempt to keep out black nominees which it suspects the party wants to do because party (mostly white) leaders sees white nominees as more electable. So this spawns independent black candidates with considerable black support because white Democrats don’t understand their goal is not so much to elect Democrats who may not sympathize much with black leaders’ agendas, but to elect blacks to office.

It is the modern dilemma of the Democrats, a party built around coalitions of varying unelectable ideologies united only by the desire to win power: only if the acquisition of power seems possible do they hang together. The likely Cassidy win forthcoming illustrates the appropriate roadmap for Republicans to follow in the majority of the country: nominate solid conservatives as conservatism beats liberalism in the marketplace of ideas, and thereby negate Democrat strategies to compensate for their own internal contradictions.