You Stay Classy, Don

Yesterday was a special election for Louisiana's 6th Congressional District to fill the void left by David Baker's departure into the private sector. There were several candidates, but the only two who had a prayer were Republican Woody Jenkins and moderate Democrat Don Cazayoux (CAZ-zyoo -- rhymes with "tax you." Haha! Get it? Because he's a Democrat!). I didn't learn too much about the election before it happened, but in the pre-election advertising blitz, I saw things all over Cazayoux's commercials about Jenkins that were distorted our just outright lies. Cazayoux may be a right-leaning Dem, but from what I saw, his campaign was spent pulling the classic ploy of trying to out-conservative his Republican opponent.

And apparently that ploy worked, because Cazayoux won by about 3,000 votes. His victory is somewhat of a shock, since the district has been held by Republicans for over 30 years and saw almost 60% of its constituents vote for President Bush in 2004. I attribute his win to low voter turnout among Jenkins supporters. And I base that on nothing but anecdotal evidence.

Jenkins supporters are saying their man will have a good shot of winning in November in the national elections for the same seat, but I'm kind of viewing them as losing sports fans who say, "Just wait till next year!" It's hard to not be cynical and say that if Cazayoux won the first time by running like a conservative, who's to say he won't just lay low until November then get reelected and have two years to go crazy with Nancy Pelosi?

I wasn't emotionally invested in this election anyway. But what did bother me was a line in the victory speech. Usually the winning candidate will spout clichés about his opponent, right? Like saying how he ran a good campaign, he wishes them all the best, etc. Well, Uncle Cazzy used the occasion to kick Jenkins while he's down, saying, "We talked about the issues in this campaign. The other side was more divisive." Classy.