It's Official!! The controversy behind the Louisiana Democrats not backing the party candidate for Louisiana Treasurer is now of the past.
Earlier this week, the party's executive committee, via its party chairperson, Karen Carter Peterson, announced it was recommending the endorsement of Derrick Edwards. Two days after the general election, the Louisiana Republican Party endorsed its candidate John Schroder.
Does Derrick Edwards have a Chinaman’s chance of winning the Louisiana Treasurer’s race?
Conventional wisdom says, no way. Not a Chinaman, not an Englishman, only, a “no-way man” chance of prevailing.
The top Louisiana politicos and pollsters in Louisiana pretty much agree.
In a series of online Facebook Live interviews, post-election, with Dr. Ed Chervenak, Bernie Pinsonat, Jeff Crouere, Jim Brown, John Couvillon, none of them have felt there was any possible scenario to victory.
It’s like they threw a party but nobody came. That’s how election officials must have felt when they counted the ballots for last week’s statewide election. The turnout was a paltry 13.5%. Now remember that some 50% of adults over eighteen who could register have not done so. That means the less than 7% of Louisianans over eighteen bothered to show up at the polls to vote.
Ask any politico: Elections are a game of numbers. It is a question of where a candidate will place assets to achieve the winning numbers.
While the Louisiana Democratic Party did not formally support the only candidate for Treasurer, Derrick Edwards, during the general election and while there are still questions as to whether it will hold off its support for the leading candidate who received the most votes on Saturday, the Republican Party of Louisiana has not dither one bit. It announced its official endorsement of John Schroder for Louisiana State Treasurer who will be facing Edwards on November 18..
What happened Saturday night?
How did Representative John Schroder beat his Republican opponents in the Louisiana Treasurer’s Race, only to come in second against Democrat Derrick Edwards, who some believe has no chance to beat his GOP foe?
Democrat Derrick Edwards, who ran without the official endorsement of the Louisiana Democratic Party and without its funding, pulled off a stunning victory Saturday night in leading the field of Treasurer candidates. The runoff is November 18 in which he will be facing John Schroder, who received 24% of the vote.
by Lou Gehrig Burnett, Publisher of Fax-Net
Money in the Treasurer’s race
State Sen. Neil Riser has raised the most and spent the most in the race for Louisiana Treasurer, according to the latest campaign finance reports from the Louisiana Ethics Commission.
He has raised $442,047 and spent $315,269 as of September 4, the cutoff date for the latest reports. But that has also left him with the least amount of money on hand for the stretch run.
According to a new poll commissioned by the Angele Davis Campaign for Louisiana State Treasurer and conducted by by JMC Analytics and Polling, Davis is leading that race among Republican candidates and might be heading into a runoff with Democrat Derrick Edwards.
You would think Louisiana Democrats would embrace Derrick Edwards as the perfect candidate for state treasurer. But the party’s litmus test plus its aversion to looking impotent instead makes him an outcast.
At its most recent meeting, the party’s executive committee failed to endorse Edwards despite his qualifying as the only Democrat in the contest. Moreover, he ticks off two victim class boxes, racial minority and person with disability; Democrats generally allege that American society discriminates against minorities and the disabled, mandating increased government efforts to redistribute resources their way. And, Edwards seems competitive as he polls in the lead for the spot.