2007 Louisiana gubernatorial election
The Louisiana gubernatorial election of 2007 will be held in two rounds. The filing deadline for candidates is September 6, 2007, the primary will be held on October 20, 2007, and the run-off (if needed) will be held on November 17, 2007.
Incumbent Governor Kathleen Blanco is not running for re-election; her open seat will likely have several formidable challengers, including U.S. Congressman Bobby Jindal, whom Blanco narrowly defeated in the 2003 election, and a likely candidacy from former U.S. Senator John Breaux, the leading Democrat, who is expected to announce soon.
Background
Elections in Louisiana, with the exception of U.S. presidential elections (and congressional races beginning in 2007), follow a variation of the open primary system called the jungle primary. Candidates of any and all parties are listed on one ballot; voters need not limit themselves to the candidates of one party. Unless one candidate takes more than 50% of the vote in the first round, a run-off election is then held between the top two candidates, who may in fact be members of the same party.
Candidates [1]
Democrats
- Raymond Brown - Minister and African-American political activist from New Orleans; Louisiana Chairman of Reverend Al Sharpton’s organization, the National Action Network. Brown received 2% of the vote in the 2002 U.S. Senate race and has also run for a number of other political offices. Brown’s campaign platform includes calls for a ban on flying the Confederate flag in public, making life in prison a maximum 20-year sentence, treatment for drug addicts instead of jail time, an end to the death penalty, and a state law banning racial profiling.
- Foster Campbell - Louisiana Public Service Commissioner for District 5, 2002-Present; St. Senator, 1976-2002. Campbell, a cattle farmer and owner of an insurance agency from Bossier Parish. As a state senator and as a Public Service Commissioner, Campbell pushed to regulate and lower utility rates. A centerpiece of his populist campaign is a proposal to tax foreign oil refined in Louisiana and use the proceeds to eliminate personal income tax.
- Hardy Parkerson - Lake Charles attorney. He is running as a self-described “Ronald Reagan Conservative Democratic Family Forum Christian-Coalition States' Rights candidate.”
Potential candidates
- Jim Bernhard - Buisnessman
- John Breaux - former United States Senator, 1987-2005, and United States Representative, 1972-1985.
- Charles Foti - Louisiana State Attorney General, 2004-Present, former Orleans Parish Criminal Sheriff
- Richard Ieyoub - Former Louisiana State Attorney General, 1992-2004, candidate for governor in the election of 2003
- Chris John - Former U.S. Representative for Louisiana's 7th congressional district, 1997-2005
- John Kennedy - Louisiana State Treasurer, 1999-Present
- Mitch Landrieu - Lt. Governor, 2004-Present, candidate for Mayor of New Orleans in the election of 2006
- Sean Reilly - member of the Louisiana Recovery Authority and former state representative
Republicans
- Walter Boasso - Elected to the State Senate in 2003, representing St. Bernard Parish and Plaquemines Parish. He is also president and CEO of Boasso America Corp., a network of shipping container facilities, and has served on the Port of New Orleans Board of Commissioners. He has received a reputation as a conservative, pro-business legislator. After Hurricane Katrina, Boasso achieved prominence as one for the state’s leading advocates for consolidation and reform of the state’s Levee Boards.
- Bobby Jindal - A U.S. Congressman representing Louisiana's First Congressional District. Jindal previously served as Louisiana's Secretary of Health and Hospitals from 1996 to 1998 and President of the University of Louisiana System from 1999 to 2001, and was appointed by President George W. Bush as Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services for Planning and Evaluation from 2001 to 2003. Jindal ran against Kathleen Blanco for governor in 2003, and was narrowly defeated, having received 48% of the vote.
Potential candidates
- John Georges - CEO of several large Louisiana based businesses. Former member of the Board of Regents and past President of YPO Louisiana. Georges was an active leader in the citizen-driven levee board reform movement.
Libertarian
Announced
- T. Lee Horne, III - real estate salesman from Franklin
Independent
Announced
- Anthony "Tony G" Gentile - oil refinery supervisor from Mandeville
Campaign
Originally planning to run for re-election, the incumbent governor, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, entered the election year with a significant erosion in her level of popular support, due in large part to perceptions of inadequate performance in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In November 2006, Blanco had an approval rating of 39%, and she encountered further political setbacks since November.
In December 2006, Blanco called a special session of the Louisiana State Legislature which she intended to use to dispense $2.1 billion worth of tax cuts, teacher raises, road projects and other spending programs. Legislators allied with Blanco attempted to lift a spending cap imposed by the state constitution, but Republican lawmakers defeated Blanco’s spending measures. The high-profile defeat further eroded Blanco’s political reputation. [1]
By late 2006 and early 2007, Blanco was facing increasingly heated accusations of delays and incompetence in administering the Road Home Program, a state-run program which Blanco had set up following Katrina in order to distribute federal aid money to Katrina victims for damage to their homes. By January 2007, fewer than 250 of an estimated 100,000 applicants had received payments from the program, and many of the payments were apparently based on assessments which grossly undervalued the cost of damage to homes. [2]
By January 2007, the first opinion polls of the campaign showed Blanco trailing expected opponent Bobby Jindal by over 20 percentage points. Facing an upcoming re-election campaign with greatly reduced popularity, Blanco began her campaign by making repeated public criticisms of the administration of President George W. Bush in January 2007. Noting that Bush neglected to mention Gulf Coast reconstruction in his 2007 State of the Union Address, Blanco called for a bipartisan Congressional investigation into the conduct of the Bush administration following Katrina, to determine whether partisan politics played a role in the slow response to the storm. [3] This call followed comments by disgraced former FEMA director Michael D. Brown, who claimed that the White House had planned to upstage Blanco by federalizing the National Guard in the days following the storm. Blanco also repeated accusations that Mississippi received preferential treatment because its governor, Haley Barbour, is a Republican. [4]
Beginning in February 2007, speculation grew among Louisiana political commentators that former U.S. Senator and current Washington, D.C. lobbyist John Breaux would announce his candidacy.[5][6][7] However it has been alleged that Breaux might not meet the residency requirements to run for Governor as he has listed his primary address in Maryland since 2005 and is registered to vote there. [8]
On March 20, 2007, Blanco announced that she would not be running for re-election. She stated that removing herself from the campaign would allow her to focus the remainder of her term on Louisiana’s recovery without the distraction of campaigning for re-election. But her announcement came after weeks of growing calls from members of the Louisiana Democratic party for her to step aside and allow a more popular candidate to face Jindal. [9]
Opinion Polling
| Source | Date | Blanco (D) | Campbell (D) | Jindal (R) | Breaux (D) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southern Media and Opinion Research | Jan 16, 2007 | 35% | N/A | 59% | N/A | ||||
| Southern Media and Opinion Research | Jan 16, 2007 | 31% | 6% | 58% | N/A | ||||
| Southern Media and Opinion Research | March 21, 2007 | N/A | N/A | 55% | 25.6% |
References
See also |