About 780 days remain until the Oct. 29, 2019, primary elections, but a handful of influencers already are at work trying to stack the legislative races, Jeremy Alford writes in his latest column.
“Hey, it’s never too early,” he says. “That’s an important maxim in Louisiana politics. But we’ve never seen so many contests for the state House and Senate start this soon. That’s for sure.”
So why is this happening now?
There are several reasons, Alford writes, beginning with term limits.
At least 35% of the Legislature will be turning over in 2019, he says. The Senate will lose 41%—or 16 out of 39—of its members.
The House, meanwhile, is slated for a 33% loss—or 35 of its 105 members. That figure could climb as representatives run for Senate seats instead of re-election, Alford says.
“Candidates and campaigns managers are also discovering a need for fundraising efforts to start earlier—or, better yet, never stop,” he says. “Large super PACs, or political action committees, have become the norm in Louisiana, even for legislative elections—and they’re making it more difficult for some of the smaller association PACs that traditionally endorse candidates and help fund them to capture new donations.”
The next crop of legislators also likely will be charged with steering the redistricting process, which occurs every 10 years, he says. Members of Congress, judges and other elected officials will be traveling to the Capitol in 2021 to protect their district lines—though not before special interests try to elect the legislators to draw them.
“Finally there’s a very real recruitment effort underway by both Republican-minded and Democratic-leaning groups. Decision-makers have finally grown weary of having to pick from a list of qualifiers. They’d rather influence who actually qualifies,” Alford says. “… And there’s not much of a balance to it all—in fact, most of that early action can only be found on the right. That’s the side of the state’s political spectrum where a coalition of conservative committees and associations has been meeting regularly. Their shared goal is to have choice candidates in nearly every legislative race.”
Read the full column. Send your comments to editors@businessreport.com.
Jeremy Alford publishes LaPolitics Weekly, a newsletter on Louisiana politics, at LaPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter, or on Facebook. He can be reached at JJA@LaPolitics.com.
