Secretary of state race turns sour before election
BATON ROUGE (AP) — Republican candidates in the Louisiana secretary of state’s race ramped up attacks against their opponents heading into Election Day, in a competition expected to head to a December runoff to choose a winner.
Louisiana’s six incumbent U.S. House members, however, hoped to avoid such a scenario and simply win outright Tuesday against challengers who lagged them in fundraising and outreach capacity.
Six constitutional amendments — including a prominent proposal to end the use of non-unanimous juries to convict people of felony crimes — are on the ballot. Voters also will decide on a parish-by-parish basis whether to legalize online fantasy sports contests for cash prizes.
Polls in the state open Tuesday at 6 a.m. and close at 8 p.m. Unless a candidate tops 50 percent of the vote, the top two vote-getters in a race will advance to a Dec. 8 runoff.
About 10 percent of Louisiana’s nearly 3 million voters cast ballots early, but the secretary of state’s office still predicts total turnout won’t top 35 percent in a state with only one statewide office up for grabs.
Louisiana’s secretary of state oversees elections, state archives and business registrations. The winner of the special election will fill the remaining year of the term of former Secretary of State Tom Schedler, a Republican who resigned in May after one of his employees sued him for sexual harassment.
Many of the major candidates in the race campaigned this weekend at high-profile LSU and Saints football games. Among nine candidates vying for the job, several Republicans have spent the final days targeting their opponents in a race that has found difficulty drawing voters’ interest or donors’ money to mount major advertising efforts.
Interim Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin, Schedler’s top aide, accused Rep. Rick Edmonds of shady campaign tactics. On Facebook, Ardoin said Edmonds has “shown zero integrity” and consistently misled voters “about my positions, my words and my character.”
Edmonds has slammed Ardoin through much of the race, saying Ardoin mishandled work to replace the state’s voting machines. He’s suggested Ardoin was disingenuous for entering the race at all after repeatedly saying he didn’t intend to run.
Former Sen. A.G. Crowe is running an ad that hits Ardoin on the voting machine problems and strikes at Rep. Julie Stokes for supporting taxes and voting against a Republican in the House speaker’s race.
Also in the race are Republican Turkey Creek Mayor Heather Cloud; Democrat Renee Fontenot Free, who worked for two prior secretaries of state; and Democratic lawyer Gwen Collins-Greenup. Ardoin and Stokes are the top fundraisers in the competition.
Across the state, voters also will decide whether to return six congressional incumbents to Washington for another term: Republicans Steve Scalise in the 1st District, Clay Higgins in the 3rd District, Mike Johnson in the 4th District, Ralph Abraham in the 5th District, and Garret Graves in the 6th District and Democrat Cedric Richmond in the 2nd District.
Each has drawn opponents, but prognosticators don’t expect any of the state’s sitting congressmen to be ousted.
“Louisiana doesn’t have any particularly competitive districts this time around. All our incumbent members of Congress are safe. So they’re kind of staying apart from what we’re seeing nationally where things are quite a bit more competitive,” Michael Henderson, director of LSU’s Public Policy Research Lab, said in a statement.
Republican pollster Roy Fletcher agreed Monday, quipping to the Press Club of Baton Rouge that the races were so dull, “I want to go to sleep.”
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