Sunday Reads: All Politics are Still Local

Good Morning!

We traded up mornings the last few days so I could get situated with family for awhile.  Dr. Daughter took me out to get my hair cut and we picked up sushi on the way home.  We’re now watching lots of episodes of Walking Dead.  So, I’m settled in for a week of Dad and dog.

This is a little provincial bit of local politics that I found very interesting.  Up in the Northeast corner of Louisiana is the city of Monroe and the fifth district congressional seat.  It’s a very safe Republican seat in a very redneck throwback part of the state.  There were two Republican candidates.  One was the Jindal blessed and sanctified candidate.  The other was backed by the Duck Dynasty family.  The unJindal candidate won Saturday with a very healthy margin and he supports improving the ACA unlike the Jindal candidate who rode him hard and wet in political ads.

Vance McAllister, a political newcomer with the backing of the popular “Duck Dynasty” TV family, was elected Saturday as Louisiana’s newest member of Congress.

McAllister, who largely self-funded his campaign, beat establishment candidate Neil Riser, a state senator, in a special runoff election for the vacant 5th District seat.

Both men are Republicans.

McAllister, a businessman with multiple companies, ran as a political outsider, capitalizing on frustration with politicians and Congress. As a point of pride during the campaign, he said he’d never been to Washington.

Riser, a funeral home owner in the Senate since 2008, campaigned on his experience in the Legislature and with the support of tea party groups.

“Plain and simple, this was Riser’s election to lose. Riser was the favorite going into the evening. He had the dollars. He had the endorsement of the Republican establishment. He had a strong showing in the primary. Yet, he lost it,” said Joshua Stockley, a political science professor at the University of Louisiana at Monroe.

Riser and McAllister are both conservatives and largely agreed on many issues. Both oppose abortion, favor strong gun rights and criticize the levels of federal spending and debt.

Their sharpest distinction rested with President Barack Obama’s signature health care law.

Both opposed the health overhaul, but Riser wanted only repeal, saying the law will harm businesses and families and can’t be fixed.

McAllister said repeal had no chance with Democrats leading the Senate and White House, so he said Congress should work to improve the law. He also wants Louisiana to expand its Medicaid program to give insurance to the working poor, an expansion that Riser opposes.

Perhaps even more interesting is the kind of backing Riser got.

Riser is heavily relying on the backing of the GOP establishment – he’s won endorsements from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Alexander, and much of the state’s GOP congressional delegation. He also has the support of FreedomWorks and the Tea Party of Louisiana.

The candidates’ ads didn’t air as far south as New Orleans but an interesting contrast was drawn in the Baton Rouge/New Orleans daily The Advocate. The Duck Dynasty guys vs. a typical Tea Party attack ad about sums it up.

“Vote for my good buddy, Vance McAllister,” Robertson says in the ad. “Let’s send somebody from the 5th district who speaks for us to help turn Washington around.”

McAllister’s campaign is spending tens of thousands of dollars to air the commerical in 5th District television markets.

McAllister already was being support by Robertson’s father, Duck Commander Phil Robertson, but Willie Robertson’s assist puts more of the Robertson clan in McAllister’s corner.

Riser is spending the final days of the campaign attacking McAllister in television ads for supporting the Medicaid expansion in Louisiana to insure about 265,000 more state residents under a provision of the Affordable Care Act.

Gov. Bobby Jindal has refused to adopt the expansion, contending it will prove too costly long term.

Riser sent a new campaign mailer that features the faces of McAllister and President Barack Obama and accuses his opponent of having “liberal views.”

“On the major issues … Vance McAllister agrees with Obama,” the mailer states.

McAllister opposes “Obamacare,” but he has argued that as long as it is law the state should take advantage of helping lower income people get health care.

“Hold on, Vance. You support Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion,” Riser’s ad states. “A vote for Vance McAllister is a vote for Obamacare.”

As of Wednesday, Riser has raised more than $950,000 in campaign funds, including recent $5,000 contributions by U.S. Reps. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, and Mike Conaway, R-Texas, according to Federal Election Commission records.

McAllister has taken in about $920,000, but roughly $825,000 of the total comes out of his pockets. McAllister has said he may end up personally investing close to $1 million.

Something tells me the good old boys in NE Louisiana went rogue on Jindal and the Republican party apparatchik.  Basically, these guys beat the tea party in what should be a genuinely friendly locale.  Here’s an article that suggests the stagnant economy is probably the reason. It hurts the very constituency most likely to appeal to Tea Party antics.

What he found was that people in those districts tended to be poorer and have a higher rate of unemployment than the country as a whole. “The median income in those districts last year was 7 percent lower than the national median, according to the Census Bureau. The unemployment rate averaged 10 percent. That was almost two percentage points higher than the national rate, and two percentage points higher than the overall rate in the states that contain each district.”

In other words, these are not the people are worried about the stock market or the GDP growth in the 4th quarter. They haven’t seen an economy recovery. They are worried about making it through the month, or the rest of the year with enough food on the table for their families.

While those of us inside-the-Beltway bemoan the rabble-rousers who are undermining the established order, folks in these struggling communities want to see the established order shaken up. After all, why should they believe that those with a vested interest in helping Wall Street or Washington succeed are at all interested in helping them get ahead? They don’t see anyone fighting for them. And, they are angry about it.

This chart from Gallup should remind every politician just how pessimistic most Americans are about their ability to get ahead.

From 1952-1998, more than 80 percent of Americans agreed with the statement that “there’s plenty of opportunity” to get ahead economically in this country “and anyone who works hard can go as far as they want.” Today, just 52 percent of Americans agree with that statement, while forty-three percent concur that “the average person doesn’t have much chance to really get ahead.”

So, from my standpoint, the best thing about this is the total humiliation to Bobby Jindal; governor from hell. Did I mention  he actually hornswaggled the current congressman to retire early?

The results of the 5^th District congressional race are in and the message has been sent loud and clear—surely loud enough to be heard in Baton Rouge.

With political newcomer Vance McAllister walloping State Sen. Neil Riser (R-Columbia), the heir-apparent to Rodney Alexander’s 5^th District seat by not a comfortable but by an astounding and resounding 60-40 margin (okay, it was 59.65-40.35—an actual vote count of 54,449 to 36,837), the Louisiana Tea Party and Bobby Jindal have to be reeling and wondering what the hell happened. And Riser especially has to be feeling quite flummoxed and embarrassed at this juncture—particularly given the fact that he could muster only 3,800 more votes than he got in the Oct. 19 primary while McAllister pulled in an additional 36,000 votes, a margin of nearly 10-1 in the number of votes gained.

Actually, when you break it all down, there was more than one message sent in this election that Riser entered as the odds-on favorite to walk into office on the strength of the fast one that the Jindalites tried to pull off. The governor vastly overplayed his hand when he maneuvered Alexander into “retiring” halfway into this two-year term of office so that he could take a cushy state job as head of the Louisiana Office of Veterans Affairs at $130,000 per year, a job that stands to boost his state pension (he was a state legislator before being elected to Congress) from about $7,500 per year to something north of $80,000 per annum.

Speaking of more local politics,  Seattle just elected a socialist to its city council.

Seattle voters have elected a socialist to city council for the first time in modern history.

Kshama Sawant’s lead continued to grow on Friday, prompting 16-year incumbent Richard Conlin to concede.

Even in this liberal city, Sawant’s win has surprised many here. Conlin was backed by the city’s political establishment. On election night, she trailed by four percentage points. She wasn’t a veteran politician, having only run in one previous campaign.

But in the days following election night, Sawant’s share of the votes outgrew Conlin’s.

“I don’t think socialism makes most people in Seattle afraid,” Conlin said Friday.

While city council races are technically non-partisan, Sawant made sure people knew she was running as a socialist — a label that would be politically poisonous in many parts of the country.

Sawant, a 41-year-old college economics professor, first drew attention as part of local Occupy Wall Street protests that included taking over a downtown park and a junior college campus in late 2011. She then ran for legislative office in 2012, challenging the powerful speaker of the state House, a Democrat. She was easily defeated.

Here’s an unedited local TV news interview with the future Council woman.

So, I promise that I’ll try to take on more in the future.  Meanwhile, what’s on your blogging and reading list today?