[StBernard] Blanco decision a relief

[Westley Annis]

Blanco decision a relief

Levee failures and the Road Home program ended any chance for Gov. Blanco to
be re-elected. Her recent decision to bow out of the race allows Republicans
to focus their firepower on former Sen. John Breaux. 
By John Maginnis , Columnist

When Gov. Kathleen Blanco said last week she was "planning" to run for
governor, hardly anyone believed it anymore. The state Republican Party had
already moved on to attacking former Sen. John Breaux, who is neither a
candidate nor a registered voter here, in hopes he stays that way. With
Congressman Bobby Jindal putting off campaigning so as not to blow his huge
lead in the polls, the only two candidates actively running, state Sen.
Walter Boasso, R-Chalmette, and Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell,
D-Elm Grove, generated scant interest from the body politic, whose attention
seemed fixed on when the big shoe would drop.
It came down not as a surprise but rapidly nonetheless, from first leak to
televised announcement in a matter of hours, appropriately, on the last day
of winter. The first reaction of many both in and out of politics was
relief, for her and for us, not to have to go through an election that is
consumed by the worst of our past.

With a good economy, her own hard work and a scandal-free administration,
Blanco was uneventfully but deliberately on her way to re-election when she
was undone by two man-made disasters: the levee failures and her own Road
Home program (the latter was supposed to resurrect her fortunes but finished
them off instead). The only purely natural disaster she faced, Hurricane
Rita, she handled pretty well. 

In looking ahead to the campaign that was not to be, she said she had a
story to tell and looked forward to telling it. The people didn't. They had
seen the same story, with images so vivid that she was not going to supplant
them with 30-second commercials.

There will be time for a full assessment of her one term, which still has
critical days ahead. But the state has a new governor to elect first, as it
waits for the next shoe to drop.

For a statewide election campaign to be on hold until John Breaux decides if
he wants to enter it has become a regular occurrence, almost a ritual. The
last races for governor and U.S. senator did not start until he passed on
them. This time, according to those he spoke with, he was only waiting for
Blanco to get out the way.

Republicans, disappointed to not have Blanco to kick around a while longer,
have been trying to give Breaux second and third thoughts about making the
plunge. The state party's recent commercials pretty much call the Democrats'
native son a political illegal alien and plundering carpetbagger, who
deserted his state for a big-money lobbying gig and multimillion-dollar
Maryland mansion.

Also, a so-called confidential memo being widely circulated matches up
legislation filed by the former senator with the benefiting businesses who
hired his son, John Jr., as a lobbyist. The not-so-confidential message to
Breaux is: if you run, we're coming after you, your family, your house and
your dog. It's all fair game, and unfair, too.

If he runs, he will have to address the citizenship issue squarely, starting
by re-registering to vote in Louisiana. The lack of a clear definition of
"citizen," which the constitution requires a gubernatorial candidate to be
for the five preceding years, as well as state courts' liberal
interpretation of candidate qualifications, favor him legally.

Politically is another matter. He will be hammered on that issue and a
closet full of opposition research on his 40 years of public service,
starting with his first boss, Edwin Edwards. Having not faced the voters in
almost a decade, the first polls are bound to show him trailing Jindal
badly.

But issues that seem so big initially have a way of working themselves out
over the course of a long campaign and not being decisive in the end. If a
governor's race between Breaux and Jindal is meant to be, it will be the
watershed election of our times, and will go down to the wire in October,
regardless of what crops up in the first weeks of spring.