We have an opportunity in 4 short weeks to re-elect Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards, the Deep South’s only Democratic governor.
Now I know you guys are sharp. You’re thinking, “Hold on. There are big statewide elections in November this fall, but why are we talking about electing Gov. Edwards in October?” Good question. The answer lies in the primary, which is coming up on October 12.
Why Louisiana’s primary is so unique
In most states’ primaries, Democratic voters only get to vote for Democratic candidates and Republican voters only get to vote for Republican candidates, and so on. But in Louisiana, all of the candidates for governor will appear on the same ballot in the primary. Voters are allowed to vote for any candidate they want to, not just those from their own party.
If one candidate gets just over 50% of the vote, they win. Full stop. They don’t go on to a general election. The race is over and the candidate who gets 50% becomes governor. If no one gets to 50%, the top two vote getters will move on to the election on November 16 to determine who wins.
Right now, Gov. Edwards’ main competition is two Republican candidates, Ralph Abraham and Eddie Rispone. The latest polling shows Edwards having between 45-47% of the vote, with Abraham and Rispone coming in at roughly 27% and 19%. But for Edwards to win the primary, getting another 3-5% more votes to get over the 50% threshold is going to require work. Otherwise, he’ll need to campaign for another month (which will mean needing a lot more money) to try and beat the 2nd place winner in a very red state.
What you can to do help
If you have the ability to donate, now is the time to help out Gov. Edwards. Every voter he can reach right now could mean the difference of winning, or not. You can find the link to his ActBlue donation page HERE.
If you live in Louisiana, consider helping out. You can sign up to volunteer directly for Gov. Edwards campaign HERE, or consider picking one of the ideas from my post, 15 Ways to Help a Campaign Win Their Election.
If you don’t live in Louisiana but want to help re-elect Gov. Edwards, pick one of the ideas from the article, 9 Ways to Help a Campaign From Afar.
Thank you for taking action!
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Categories: Uncategorized
Actually, Open Progress is texting for him right now and alllll week. They have a ton of texts to send, so if you can let people know somehow they can sign up at http://www.openprogress.com/text-troop . I’m going to post this article on their FB page.
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Great! Will let folks on Twitter and Facebook know.
Note: As I was researching articles to write this post, I saw that many outlets referred to Edwards as the only Democratic governor in the south. I mean no disrespect to North Carolina Gov. Cooper, esp. considering the crap he has to put up with the state legislature these days. Perhaps I should have said Deep South.