With qualifying officially over and every major candidate for governor now running ads on TV, the battle is on, and Business Report Publisher Rolfe McCollister says you better buckle your seatbelt because it’s going to be a wild and rough ride.
“We [have seen] TV spots start running—paid for by a 527 independent group—that focused on Sen. David Vitter’s ‘serious sin,’” notes McCollister in his latest column. “The Vitter campaign said it was ‘a vicious, gutter campaign against me full of stale attacks.’ Everyone knew this was coming, and all predict it will continue and even heat up over the weeks ahead—and the mud will fly in all directions.”
And then there were reports … of a reporter with NBC affiliate WVLA, Derek Myers, who claimed he was fired after pressing Vitter on the issue. Myers told The Advocate that he believed the Vitter campaign had something to do with his firing because of a conversation that was overheard in the newsroom following the incident. Luke Bolar, Vitter’s spokesman, said no one from the campaign contacted the station about the ads, calling the allegation “1,000 percent false.” The TV station’s general manager also said no one from the Vitter campaign contacted the station about ads, but that company personnel rules prevented further comment on why the reporter was fired.
“Who knows what the truth is in this ‘he said, they said’ situation? That is usually the case in political attacks. But you can be certain this is just the beginning—and there are many other races and a long home stretch before election day,” McCollister writes.
On another topic in his new column, McCollister says it seems that Louisiana teachers unions and Diane Ravitch—whom he calls a “national enemy of school choice for parents”—have all decided to target the governor’s race and the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education “in order to take over the Louisiana Department of Education and control all of the money, jobs and power that it commands.”
They would also like to be able write the Minimum Foundation Program budget for the Legislature and have the final say on approval of any Type 2 charters that get turned down by local school boards, McCollister says.
“In essence, they want the power to kill all the progress and reform from the past decade—and go back to the ways of our sordid past and its pathetic education system,” McCollister writes. “Voters should beware that our children’s future hangs in the balance, and ‘the adults’ want to seize control of the ‘jobs machine’ for their own benefit and their union members.”
Read the full column, in which McCollister also touches on another No. 1 ranking for Louisiana’s capital investments and job creation by Southern Business & Development; as well as America’s pending nuclear deal with Iran. Send your comments to editors@businessreport.com.
