President Trump isn’t officially on the ballot, but he’s desperate for proof that voters love him enough to take down a popular Democrat
Jessica Rosgaard is a journalist who lives in New Orleans. She covers politics at the local, state and federal level for WWNO, and is editor of Capitol Access, Louisiana’s statewide legislative report.
It’s even more challenging for Trump because of an awkward set of electoral facts, starting with the obvious one that Edwards, the so-called socialist Trump wants fired, is actually a deeply conservative Democrat. In fact, he’s a West Point graduate who earlier this year signed one of the nation’s most restrictive “fetal heartbeat” abortion bans, a move that angered progressive Democrats in the state but earned him some credit with conservative Republicans.
Earlier this month, the White House tweeted: “‘The Pelican State’ is booming—boasting its lowest unemployment rate since 2008, bringing back 5,000+ manufacturing jobs, and becoming one of our Nation's leading states in natural gas exports!” And then just to remind voters how close the working relationship is with the administration, Edwards talked about the nine times he was invited to the White House to meet with Trump on issues like transportation infrastructure, the opioid epidemic and criminal justice reform.
Orleans Parish, which went 80 percent for Clinton in 2016, is one of the four parishes where early turnout has hit record levels for a nonpresidential year. Perhaps it is a chance to exact some political retribution against Trump that has motivated those voters. Edwards, though, has stuck with a critique of Rispone that hearkens back to recent Louisiana history, not national history.
“And, bang, around 480,000 people who didn’t have health insurance got it. That’s unbelievably huge, that’s over 10 percent of the state population,” said Pearson Cross. “Not to mention roughly $12 billion in federal money coming to Louisiana as a result of Medicaid expansion. It was a no-brainer.
“Rispone doesn’t have a public profile, and he’s never held public office before, so when he announced [his candidacy] and released his first set of commercials, he made it clear that he was an ardent supporter of President Trump,” said Dr. Silas Lee, professor of public policy at Xavier University of Louisiana. “And considering this is a very red state that is very conservative on many issues, that made sense.
“The baseline for Democrats in Louisiana, regardless of who’s running, is around 39 percent,” Cross said. “That was about what Barack Obama got; that was almost exactly what Hillary Clinton got; that’s typically what candidates get in statewide elections when you have one Republican and one Democrat.”
“In a rural district, people know their elected officials personally,” said John Couvillon. “In the case of Ralph Abraham, he was the vet who treated their animals and the doctor who treated their children,” before he became their elected representative. “If you’re attacking Ralph Abraham, the people who are his constituents are much more likely to take umbrage because they know Ralph enough to where they don’t believe for a second that he’s a Nancy Pelosi clone or he’s opposed to the president,” Couvillon said.
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