On Tuesday, GOP Louisiana Treasurer John Kennedy announced that he would seek this open Senate seat.
This is the third time that Kennedy has run for the Senate. In 2004 when he was a Democrat, Kennedy placed a distant third in the jungle primary. In 2008, Kennedy was one of Team Red’s top recruits, but he lost to incumbent Mary Landrieu 52-46. (Kennedy’s famous Massachusetts namesake won a Senate seat on his first try: Even John Kennedy is no Jack Kennedy.) Kennedy has been positioning himself to run here for a while. Last year Kennedy faced a very uncompetitive re-election campaign, but he spent millions on ads to boost his name recognition.
Kennedy faces GOP Reps. Charles Boustany and John Fleming in the November jungle primary, and a number of other politicians from both parties have expressed interest in running. While Boustany and Fleming were able to raise millions for their House campaigns and simply transfer it all into their Senate warchests, Kennedy needs to start his fundraising from scratch. However, Kennedy can “donate” the unused cash from his statewide campaign account into his allied super PAC, Louisiana Proud. While Louisiana Proud can’t coordinate with Kennedy and they don’t get the discounted rates on TV and radio that candidates get, it’s a start.
The race is still taking shape and it’s far too early to tell who has the edge. A SurveyUSA poll for Louisiana Proud showed Kennedy with better positive name recognition than his foes, things will change once the spending starts. The jungle primary is also a huge wild card: In the very likely event that no one takes a majority in November, the top two candidates, regardless of party, will advance to a December runoff. It’s impossible at this point to know whom those candidates will be, and which party they’ll each come from.
Kennedy is very likely to be the only candidate on either side who has ever held statewide office, which could give him a leg up on his foes. Kennedy was raised in metropolitan Baton Rouge and he lives in St. Tammany Parish, a large red suburban area north of Louisiana. However, we’ll need to see if he has a geographic base in either area, or if his five terms in statewide office has left him with support that’s a mile wide but an inch deep.