Louisiana has six seats in the US House of Representatives. According to Ballot Access News, there will be Republican candidates running in all six districts, Libertarians running in five and Democrats in only three.
This marks a humiliating decline for Democrats in a state that did not have a single Republican senator for the entire 20th century. (David Vitter who was elected in 2004 was the state’s first Republican senator since Reconstruction). The fact that Democrats were unable to put up a candidate in three districts in this once solidly blue state may represent a new low for the party’s fortunes in the Deep South.
Although Democrats have been saddled with embarrassing statewide candidates in recent years like Alvin Greene in South Carolina in 2010 and Mark Clayton in Tennessee this year, they emerged by accident through low-turnout (and low-information) primaries.
In sad contrast, Louisiana Democrats couldn’t even find a single fringe candidate willing to appear on the ballot with a D next to their name in these three districts.
