| Well, the Democrats are headed to a runoff that will be held on Saturday, April 5th between Don Cazayoux and Michael Jackson. Here are the final numbers from last night's primary:
| Candidate |
Votes |
% of Vote |
| Don Cazayoux |
16,596 |
34.96% |
| Joe Delatte |
1,017 |
2.14% |
| Jason DeCuir |
8,790 |
18.52% |
| Michael Jackson |
12,882 |
27.14% |
| Andy Kopplin |
8,176 |
17.22% |
I must say that I find it impressive that with limited funds, Michael Jackson pulled in 27% of the vote, mainly on Cleo Fields' GOTV operation. I didn't see or hear anything about the operation out on the street until the week before the race, and yet, they pulled nearly 13,000 folks out to vote. That's impressive.
That being said, I still think this thing is Don's to lose. He raised a ton of money, and still has the ability to raise even more, as those folks can all donate again, thanks to a run-off. His campaign commercials were memorable, and I am hoping to see more substance from both Cazayoux and Jackson over the next month.
On the GOP side, there is going to be a run-off, no matter what the GOP says. I notice that the Secretary of State's website was calculating the percentages last night with two decimal places, and then all of a sudden, just stopped doing that. Perhaps because they wanted to ensure that folks thought Woody pulled the magic 50% number? If so, they forget that we Louisianans know how to add and subtract, multiply and divide.
Here the results, with the REAL percentages of the Repewblican Primary:
| Candidate |
# of Votes |
% of Votes |
| Laurinda Calongne |
7,584 |
25.46% |
| Michael Cloonan |
425 |
1.42% |
| "Woody" Jenkins |
14,849 |
49.85% |
| Paul Sawyer |
6,924 |
23.24% |
The magic # for Woody, as pointed out by arubyan in a previous post, 14,892, which means he missed it by 43 votes. Expect a recount, like arubyan suggests.
But the story behind the results, is as The Giant Squid points out, the voter turnout breakdown:
Total GOP turnout: 29782
Total Dem turnout: 47461
That's an advantage of 17,679 voters. The GOP has got to be worried of losing this seat, after last night's crushing defeat in IL-14, where a great Democrat took over former Republican Speaker of the House Denny Hastert's seat. |
