Louisiana Voice

I read a joke somewhere once that defined “priceless” as the expression on someone’s face the moment he realized he was wrong.

The same might be said of U.S. Sen. John Kennedy, U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry and other family values conservatives who may have backed the wrong horse in the Senate District 36 race.

All the right names (and that would be the “far-right”) have thrown their support and their money into electing challenger Robert Mills over incumbent Ryan Gatti because (gasp) Gatti, like Mills, a Republican, has a bipartisanship voting record as opposed to voting the straight party line.

In party politics (and I’m talking about both parties now), walking in lock-step with the party line has somehow become more important than cooperation and compromise with those across the aisle in order to do what’s best for state and country.

And it’s that spirit of party over progress that has so sharply divided this country and this state to the point of political paralysis.

We witnessed eight years of a Jindal administration in which a Republican legislature rolled back funding for higher education, public education, mental health programs, and privatized other programs. Once Democrat Edwards entered the governor’s office, he was opposed by the Republicans at every turn.

And now, big money with far too much influence in our electoral process is trying to tip the scales even further in favor of big business, big banks, payday lending, nursing homes, private prisons, big oil, and big pharma, just to name a few of the heavy hitters in Baton Rouge.

Behind those efforts are political action committees with names like East PAC, West PAC, North PAC, and South PAC, all political action committees of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI), begging the question of why does one lobbying organization need four separate political action committees? To make LABI’s political influence four times greater, perhaps?

And they have Gatti in their crosshairs.

People and organizations like the Republican State Leadership Committee, the Louisiana Student Financial Aid Association, Eddie Rispone, Koch Industries, Donald Bollinger, and relatives of Republican (would-be) kingmaker Lane Grigsby, among others, have joined LABI’s directional PACs to dislodge Gatti, whose senate district comprises all of Webster and parts of the parishes of Bossier, Bienville and Claiborne.

Just since January 1 of this year, they and others have coughed up more than $250,000 to get their boy elected. $250,000 for one little rural senatorial district.

The Louisiana Committee for a Conservative Majority, led by Kennedy and Landry, is pushing hard for Gatti’s defeat. “Sen. Gatti seems to have proven time and time again to choose the governor’s wishes over the Republican Party’s platform,” Landry said. The committee has raised more than $1 million to boost its candidates, Mills included.

But their boy—and by extension, his well-heeled supporters—may have a problem.

That problem goes by the name of ASHLEY MADISON. For those who may not know, that’s the online dating service designed specifically for married people seeking a discreet affair.

And Robert Mills’ name pops up on the website:

MILLS LISTING

…and an online AD has already popped up asking Mills about his name appearing on the Ashley Madison site:

Is it the same Robert Mills? That is, after all, a fairly common name. Not so much as John Smith or Joe Jones, but common nevertheless. And more so than say, Sterdly Thrunch.

We have no way of knowing, but whoever placed those two ads online seem to be pretty confident it’s the same Robert Mills.

If it is, those family-value conservative Republicans—Rispone included (he gave $2500 to Mills)—have to feel they’ve picked a loser.

Mills garnered nearly 48 percent of the vote in the first primary, finishing a full 10 points ahead of incumbent Gatti, but that big edge could evaporate in heavily-Protestant northwest Louisiana if it turns out Mills, who, four-times married and thrice divorced, according to one of the ads, turns out to be the same one trolling for an online hookup for a one-night fling.

Or maybe not.

That stigma certainly didn’t keep them from voting for Donald Trump.

But when the late Tip O’Neill said all politics is local, he wasn’t talking about a presidential candidacy.

And state senator doesn’t get much more local and the more local it gets, the more the perception of immoral behavior could figure in the final outcome.

Mills’ supporters have spent a lot of money and time trashing Gatti because he had the nerve to vote with Democrat Edwards from time to time.

That sin could pale by comparison to an Ashley Madison tie to their anointed candidate.

By all political logic, they should have a difficult time squaring their support for Mills if indeed, he is the one seeking warmth and companionship for the coming cold north Louisiana nights. But then, logic has seldom factored into the equation of Louisiana politics.