The Advocate owner John Georges tells Gannett Louisiana in an exclusive interview today that he “wouldn’t read too much into” his recent decision to hand off his duties as publisher of the Baton Rouge daily newspaper.
“But I’m monitoring the race very closely,” Georges said of the Louisiana governor’s race, which many speculate he is interested in entering.
When asked directly if he’s considering entering the race, Georges told Gannett Louisiana: “I’d rather not say one way or another. Right now I don’t have plans to run, but I don’t think it’s too late.”
Georges told Daily Report the same on Monday, while political pollster Verne Kennedy—who is following the governor’s race for an independent group of business leaders and has previously done polling for Georges—said, “I am sure he is looking at it but very cautiously. He is not ready to make an immediate leap.”
Though Georges maintained that he has no plans to run as of now, he did express confidence that he could be a contender in the race should he decide to throw his name in the hat.
“My polls show that I’d definitely make the runoff,” he tells Gannett Louisiana. “I’m polling very well as a private citizen, and I don’t know if I want to ruin that by jumping into the election.”
Georges said his polling shows he has 57% name recognition in the state, a number he said has grown since he bought The Advocate two years ago.
“That’s a big difference from when I ran eight years ago,” he said. “I wasn’t as well known, and it was a foregone conclusion that Bobby Jindal would win. When people have their minds made up it’s hard to break through, even when I said the emperor has no clothes.”
Georges, running an as independent, finished with 14% of the vote during his 2007 run for governor. He also ran a failed bid in 2010 to be New Orleans mayor.
“When I ran before, nobody knew who I was,” he said. “I’m much more well-known now with extremely low negatives in my polls.”
Georges said he consistently commissions polling numbers about himself and others from Kennedy, whose firm Market Research Insight has been polling Louisiana gubernatorial races for 25 years.
With qualifying just five weeks away, Georges will have to decide this month whether to make the leap. Kennedy told Daily Report that because Georges can afford to finance his own campaign, five weeks is still plenty of time. Kennedy also says the results of his latest poll, which was completed July 31 and is proprietary, shows the race is still wide open.
Read the full story by Gannett Louisiana for more from its interview with Georges.
