Here's my wager for the 2008 senate race against Landrieu. Recently elected state senator Julie Quinn (R).
Quinn won a recent special election by 500 votes. Which for state offices is par for the course. She is filling the seat left open by Senate President, John Hainkel, who passed away recently. It was quite a race with a bunch of local celebs gunning for the job. In the end, there was a run-off between Quinn and state rep. Diane Winston.
But I digress..
What has me certain that Quinn is being groomed from Washington and that they're planning to throw Quinn against Landrieu, was just the over the top professional, beyond comparison quality of Quinn's campaign for what is normally a total yawner of a race.
Quinn is the young, pretty wife of a hotel/real estate developer in town. A "Trump" in training if you will, although totally small potatoes in comparison. She spent two years on the local school board, pushing for among other things, school prayer and bible classes and looking for legal loopholes to promote christianity in the schools. She's a young, "girl-next-door" pretty mother of two kids and has an "aw shucks" approach to her christianity. Will totally knock Landrieu on her knees here in Louisiana.
The second the special election started, Quinn's sleek election ads were out on the airwave. We're talking federal election quality, when normally candidates for state senate either a) don't air ads or b) if they do, they're the static, blue screen variety with the talking head candidate reading a teleprompter.
Ditto with the campaign materials and campaign signs. Definitely not your garden variety local Louisiana race stuff.
There was an entire field of candiates, including many republicans, yet Quinn's headquarters just happened to be the very same offices that Bush-Cheney uses and Vitter uses.
When Quinn was forced into a run-off with Diane Winston, who was handpicked by Hainkel's family to run, she was INSTANTLY ready with the most impressive negative ads I've seen. They were a dagger to Winston and left you with a solid and positive impression of Quinn, IMHO. And the ads were classic Rove. One of them practically accused Winston of having murdered someone in a DUI. Winston had a non-fatal DUI on the books, but the way they put a family member of a DUI victim to narrate this commercial, you would haved thought they were speaking directly of Winston. The other accused Winston of being beholden of the tobacco lobby and endangering our children - complete with a tap-dancing pack of "winstons." Very entertaining.
So when you couple the quality of her communication materiels and her campaign office address....this one is coming from up on high. Landrieu better be careful.
