As the weather turns across Louisiana, our oaks shedding dead leaves and azaleas blooming pink, columnist Jeremy Alford says it’s difficult to ignore what is also a long-term seasonal shift in the political landscape.
“It has been a lengthy transition that prognosticators have been forecasting for some time, but the sense that it officially begins now is overwhelming—that feeling that the next seven months in Louisiana politics will collectively become a watershed moment for the coming generation of voters and politicians,” Alford writes.
The Edwin Edwards era is over, which was replaced by the Bobby Jindal era, which Alford notes is approaching its own end.
“The tone of the latter, in concert with new technology and a shifting electorate, appears to have ushered in a wave of guarded politicians who are unwilling to show their true, unfiltered sides. Cell phone cameras and trackers (that squirrelly bunch hired by campaigns and parties to capture every move a candidate makes) leave little room for spontaneity,” he writes. “You can still view our politics as sport, but less so as theater than ever before.”
Retail politics are as close to dead as they can get, Alford says.
“The days of a high-profile politician attending as many fairs and festivals as possible, kissing babies and eating alligator on a stick, are over,” he writes. “For those who can afford it, that practice has been supplanted by digital data and metrics that allow practitioners to put their candidates in the neighborhoods that matter most, usually via TV and direct mail, rather than in the crowds of high school football games. In other words, candidates are more likely to appear in your mailbox than in your community.”
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.
