Gov. Bobby Jindal’s 66% vote against nine opponents tops the winning margin for the open-primary era, though it falls short of John McKeithen’s 80% margin over three opponents in 1967. Two other statewide incumbents held off challengers backed by Sen. David Vitter. Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne won nearly everything north of the coast as he beat Billy Nungesser, 54% to 46%. Secretary of State Tom Schedler beat Speaker of the House Jim Tucker by one percentage point. Both Dardenne and Schedler were well outspent by their challengers. Despite Nungesser’s play to combine the Republican right wing and organized black support, Dardenne won in the mainstream. Nungesser carried all the coastal parishes, but the lieutenant governor swept nearly all of the rest of the state. Tucker failed in a similar strategy to unseat Schedler, who hammered away at Tucker’s push for the aborted legislative pay raise. Read the full column here.
(John Maginnis publishes LaPolitics Weekly, a newsletter on Louisiana politics, at LaPolitics.com.)
