Editor’s note: This story has been corrected since original publication. An earlier version identified the PAC as Citizens for a Better Louisiana. Daily Report regrets the error.
Super PACs, which have transformed elections at the national level, will be playing a role in the upcoming Baton Rouge mayor’s race.
Local business executive Eddie Rispone, chairman of ISC Constructors, has created a super PAC in support of Republican State Sen. Bodi White’s mayoral campaign.
So far, the Citizens for a Better Baton Rouge PAC has raised a little more than $100,000 and fundraising efforts have only just begun, Rispone says.
“We’re really just getting started because the Legislature went on so long,” he says. “Now that it’s over and the qualifying is done we are starting to focus on fundraising.”
Super PACs differ from traditional political action committees in that they can accept unlimited contributions from individual donors, thereby greatly increasing the total amount of money they can raise. However, super PACs cannot contribute the funds they raise directly to the candidates they support, but have to spend them on third-party ads and campaigns.
Citizens for a Better Louisiana does not intend to run aggressive attack ads against White’s competitors in the race, according to Rispone.
“We may point out the differences between White and the others,” he says. “But we don’t want to run attack ads. We want to focus on the positive things about Bodi.”
Rispone, who was at White’s side when he announced his candidacy early this summer, says he has not gotten involved in a Baton Rouge mayor’s race since the first campaign of Tom Ed McHugh in the late 1980s. He says he has become involved in the White campaign because he believes the Central lawmaker is the only candidate in the crowded field of 12 who can unite Baton Rouge and effectively address problems with education, traffic congestion and crime.
“He can fix the whole parish so we don’t have to keep breaking up our parish,” Rispone says.
When asked about the super PAC earlier this summer, White told Daily Report he was unaware of the plans his supporters were making to create the super PAC and was focusing, instead, on his own fundraising efforts.
Details about the super PAC, which is being managed by political operative Lionel Rainey, are available on its website, abetterbatonrouge.com. Additional details will come out later this month, when the latest campaign finance reports are filed with the Louisiana Ethics Commission.
—Stephanie Riegel
