“Everything possible is being done politically by Republicans to shut his mouth and shut him off,” said Bernie Pinsonat, co-founder of the independent polling firm Southern Media & Opinion Research. As for the state party’s endorsement, Doré said, “As of now, we don’t have plans for endorsing.” But he noted, “There has been some discussion of endorsing all the major Republican candidates and excluding Duke.” Meanwhile, at the parish level, Republican executive committees are trying to determine if they can exclude Duke from their endorsement meetings (at which candidates make a pitch for the committee’s backing). These efforts are more about staving off future nightmares than waking up from the current one.
It’s too late for that, Doré acknowledged. The governing committee is also exploring ways to bar someone from appearing on the ballot as a Republican if members feel that the candidate, as Doré put it, “doesn’t represent our values.” He is meeting with Louisiana’s attorney general and secretary of state this week to discuss possible options.īut none of this will have an impact on Duke’s current run. Among other naughtiness, he had solicited donations from his followers under the pretense of financial troubles and then blown the money on gambling.) (Starting in the spring of 2003, Duke spent a year in prison for tax evasion and mail fraud. The party’s governing committee will meet later this month to consider adopting a rule barring any felon from using the Republican brand. But it quickly became apparent, said Doré, that this would require wide-reaching statutory changes that would throw “the entire election into chaos.”Īnother problem: The state party has no bylaws controlling who can run as a Republican. “We looked at litigating to get him thrown off the ballot as a Republican,” said Jason Doré, executive director of the Louisiana GOP. At first, they thought about taking the problem to court. Party officials then scrambled to derail his candidacy. His mere presence in the race is enough to cause the party pain-and is, in fact, already doing so.ĭesperate to distance themselves from Duke, state Republican leaders and candidates issued statements denouncing him immediately after he announced his candidacy on July 22. “I have a hard time believing his hidden vote is so large it becomes a major factor,” says Jeremy Alford, the publisher and editor of .īut the bad news for Republicans is that Duke doesn’t need decent poll numbers to inflict damage. (Who are these people?) And while state politicos note that polls typically underreport his popularity, few expect him to be a serious contender. A poll released last week put support for Duke at 13 percent. Okay, the likelihood of such an electoral Sophie’s choice seems remote at this point. Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has reportedly taken to his bed with crippling panic attacks. Now the GOP faces an excruciating decision: Back the perennial poster boy for white supremacy or cede its Senate majority to the Democrats. (With such a crowded field, Duke didn’t need much more than 20 percent to place second.) More surprising still, the passel of Republican contenders split the vote, leaving Duke to face a Democrat in the runoff. What they had not foreseen was that one of the two finalists would be Republican candidate David Duke, ex-grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, Holocaust denier, and all around creep. This year, with 24 (!) candidates chasing an open seat, Democrats and Republicans alike had anticipated such a runoff.
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