Boasso Is No Earl Long- (He Is Back To Single Digits In The Polls)

Section: Votenews

by Sam Hanna, Jr. - The Ouachita Citizen (excerpt)

Earl Long, our famous former governor who perfected the art of ridiculing his detractors, had a habit of distributing a political opponent's record to make him defend it. Good or bad.

But the Longesque tactic employed by Boasso against Jindal apparently backfired.

Boasso slipped from running second in the governor's race with 18 percent of the vote to an impressive fourth-place position with 8 percent support among voters in the wake of the airing of the DHH/Jindal ad.

That's according to a reputable source who had a first-hand knowledge of a poll conducted by the Jindal campaign, which put the poll in play to determine whether Boasso was successful in peeling off some of the support for Jindal some four weeks before the election.

According to the poll, Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell is running second these days in the governor's race, while Republican-turned-Independent John Georges has moved into third-place.

Meanwhile, Jindal is holding firm with some 54 percent of the vote, which was consistent with other polls conducted on the governor's race in the past few weeks.

Four years ago, Jindal made a terrible mistake by not responding to then-candidate Kathleen Blanco's attacks that Jindal was a terrible secretary at DHH in the 1990s.

Jindal knows his failure to respond to Blanco cost him the election to some degree. Look at what we got as a result of playing nice, or acting like gentleman.

Several months ago in a private meeting, Jindal made it clear that he would respond to any negative attacks leveled at him during in the 2007 campaign cycle. Apparently, he wasn't kidding. The TV ads aired by the Jindal campaign last week in response to Boasso's attack showed that Jindal will play hardball if he has to. That's a good sign.

Jindal will have to play hardball as governor if he is serious about changing Louisiana.