Tag: la-03

RS Interview: Jeff Landry (R, R-CAND, LA-03).

This one is a little late, thanks to various annoying, yet dull, technical difficulties. The race in question is Louisiana’s Third District: the loss of a House seat in redistricting has caused two incumbent Republican Congressmen to face each other in this November’s… “Election Day primary” is probably the best way to describe it: everybody runs at once, and if no candidate gets above 50% then the top two candidates go to a runoff.  One of those candidates is Rep. Jeff Landry.  We talked for a bit about the race:

Jeff’s site is here.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Meet Hunt Downer (R CAND, LA-03).

Hunt is one of the candidates running for Charlie Melancon’s seat in LA-03: the district is smack dab in the middle of Obamaspill, and as you can imagine, the candidate has views on that. Hunt’s a former general in the LA National Guard and state official, which gives him a pretty interesting perspective on this mess:

His site is here.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Pickup in LA-03?

LA-03: Cook has it at R+12, and McCain took the district with 61% of the vote in 2008.  Its current incumbent Charlie Melancon is widely believed to be planning to challenge Senator Vitter next year, but the NRCC is going to be whaling on this one any which way:

In recent months, the NRCC had been ratcheting up the pressure on the three-term Congressman with a radio and print media campaign challenging his claims of being a fiscal conservative and criticizing him for his votes on issues such as the economic stimulus bill. In addition, the committee has continually promised to put up a well-known, well-funded challenger in 2010 regardless of whether Melancon opts to leave the House behind.

With Melancon’s jump to the Senate race now seen as likely, the committee believes it has an even better shot of flipping a district that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) won with 61 percent in 2008.

“After months of being confronted with negative ads and hostile crowds, it seems clear that Charlie Melancon has decided he’d rather risk losing statewide than be defeated for re-election,” NRCC spokesman Paul Lindsay said Monday. “This is a district that has trended more conservative while Melancon has become more liberal.”

Continue reading Pickup in LA-03?

Blue Dogs feeling betwixt and between.

The poor things.

In the process of reading “Centrist Dems: Dogged If They Do, Dogged If They Don’t” by Froma Harrop (short version: pity the poor Blue Dog Democrats; the Left wants them to fall into line behind the progressives and the Right wants them to actually act as if fiscal conservatism meant something), I noticed this particular passage.

And Blue Dogs hold undisguised contempt for recent Republican conversions to fiscal rectitude. [Rep. Paul] Ryan’s appeal “to help us defeat this unprecedented taxing, borrowing and spending spree” drew a tart response from Louisiana Rep. Charlie Melancon.

“These statements come from the same individuals who wrote the president a blank check for eight years, driving spending to the highest levels in our country’s history,” said Melancon, a co-chair of the Democratic Blue Dog Coalition.

It struck me as an… odd reaction. Continue reading Blue Dogs feeling betwixt and between.