As election observers have pointed out, Gov. Bobby Jindal’s 48-point margin of victory was a landslide, but with only a 36% turnout of eligible voters, his 673,000 votes hardly make for a mandate. Re-elected officials who mistake one for the other—who think a big landslide gives them the mandate to do what they want—set themselves up for major disappointments and rocky second terms. A classic example was former President George W. Bush taking his 2004 re-election to mean the country was ready for his plan to partially privatize Social Security, a miscalculation that got his second term off to a bad start, which only got worse.
Jindal the candidate was not very specific about his plans for a second term, besides to stay the course. But if a mandate is something voters want him to do, he could get that in the Nov. 19 runoffs for the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. This year’s BESE elections have developed into an unprecedented power struggle between candidates backed by the governor and business interests and those by the Coalition for Public Education, an alliance of teacher unions, superintendents and school boards. The well-financed governor’s side succeeded in knocking off two incumbents backed by the coalition, which was able to oust an incumbent backed by Jindal. The balance of power on BESE, along with the future course of K-12 education, could be determined by the remaining three runoffs. Read the full column here.
(John Maginnis publishes LaPolitics Weekly, a newsletter on Louisiana politics, at LaPolitics.com.)
