Baton Rouge Mayor Kip Holden’s prospects to win a third term in the primary looked pretty good until a Republican barrage unloaded on him in the final weeks, with a strategy to peel Romney voters off of the two-term Democrat. An ad last week by Republican challenger and Metro Councilman Mike Walker started the offensive on a racial note, criticizing Holden for providing police protection to Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan when he spoke at Southern University in October. That ad was followed by a spot from the Republican Super PAC, based in Indiana, showing images of President Barack Obama and Holden with a voiceover saying the former has failed on the economy and the latter on crime. Finally, hitting close to home on Holden is a direct mail piece sent by a local GOP group that shows homes on the mayor’s street with security bars on doors and windows. The ads have put Holden on the defensive in the final week, but he still has white support in south Baton Rouge neighborhoods and the business community. Business Report publisher Rolfe McCollister endorsed Holden, praising his streets program and business outreach, while dismissing Walker as “a step backward” for the parish. Two other candidates, Steve Myers and Gordon Mese, have spent little money but could attract voters turned off by the negative campaign, thus forcing a December runoff, where momentum could shift more to Walker.
—For legislators, adding to trepidation over Saturday’s LSU-Alabama game and Tuesday’s election is the unveiling on Monday of the capital outlay projects the Jindal administration wants funded. The joint capital outlay committee will review the recommendations and send them on to the Bond Commission. Most legislators expect to be disappointed because they put into the capital outlay bill last session $120 million more in projects than the state’s borrowing limit.
They said it: “It’s one thing when you’re 18 years old, but do you want your 80-year-old grandmother driving after she smokes pot?” —Professor and researcher Lisa Schrott, at the LSU Health Sciences Center in Shreveport, on legalization of marijuana for medicinal use, which is on Tuesday’s ballot in Arkansas, in the Shreveport Times
(John Maginnis publishes LaPolitics Weekly, a newsletter on Louisiana politics, at LaPolitics.com.)
