Gov. Blanco's old foe now looks like he'll get her job after all
NPR reports here that, in a surpassing irony, the person now considered most likely to succeed Louisiana's current Governor, my Lafayette homegirl Kathleen Blanco (D), is the very man she soundly defeated four years ago to win the job in the first place. My home state's very first woman governor had a chance to make history...and did so, albeit decidedly not in the way she'd planned on, with her almost comically inept response to the Katrina floods' destruction of New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish. This left her so unpopular she wisely abandoned plans to seek re-election, knowing she would be in for a shellacking from eager GOP operatives and angry storm- and flood-displaced voters.
So guess who's the front runner in next week's free-for-all primary? None other than U.S. Rep. Piyush "Bobby" Jindal, the Republican opponent she faced in 2003. Fresh from re-election to his Congressional seat in the midst of a 2006 midterm-election tide of Democratic winners, Jindal faces a lackluster field of Dem candidates; the two leading popular choices on the Dem side, former Rep./Senator John Breaux and Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, both elected not to run (the former after a state-GOP attack-ad campaign harping on Breaux's having been a Maryland resident for over two years). Jindal is thus widely expected to win his way into the November runoff. A converted Catholic and die-hard supporter of no-exceptions abortion bans and the Iraq war/occupation, Jindal would only be the state's third GOP governor since the post-Civil War Reconstruction era (David Treen and Murphy J. "Mike" Foster having been the previous two, after four in the 1870s).
All in all, the gubernatorial prospects are looking pretty damned dim for the state of my birth. Here's hoping Walter Boasso or John Georges catches fire enough in the next few days to give this BushCo/fundie stooge a run for his money.
So guess who's the front runner in next week's free-for-all primary? None other than U.S. Rep. Piyush "Bobby" Jindal, the Republican opponent she faced in 2003. Fresh from re-election to his Congressional seat in the midst of a 2006 midterm-election tide of Democratic winners, Jindal faces a lackluster field of Dem candidates; the two leading popular choices on the Dem side, former Rep./Senator John Breaux and Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, both elected not to run (the former after a state-GOP attack-ad campaign harping on Breaux's having been a Maryland resident for over two years). Jindal is thus widely expected to win his way into the November runoff. A converted Catholic and die-hard supporter of no-exceptions abortion bans and the Iraq war/occupation, Jindal would only be the state's third GOP governor since the post-Civil War Reconstruction era (David Treen and Murphy J. "Mike" Foster having been the previous two, after four in the 1870s).
All in all, the gubernatorial prospects are looking pretty damned dim for the state of my birth. Here's hoping Walter Boasso or John Georges catches fire enough in the next few days to give this BushCo/fundie stooge a run for his money.