Cao to challenge Caldwell for state attorney general post

3rd May 2011   ·   0 Comments

By Christopher Tidmore

The La. GOP establishment poured through the doors of Mary Matalin’s and James Carville’s uptown home on Sunday, April 10, to honor Ruth Ulrich, the Republican National Committee-woman – who had spent years volunteering to build the party.

Standing near the front door was a convert from the Democrats, Buddy Caldwell. The state’s attorney general mixed and mingled with the message that he was one of the crowd. It’s a mantra that he has repeatedly made to skeptical Republicans as he heads into a re-election campaign this October.

The handshaking came amidst reminders of Caldwell’s role in the multistate Attorneys General case against the president’s healthcare bill, and the many law and order initiatives that his office had championed over the last three years.

Caldwell made the case strongly knowing that these folk were former Congressman Anh “Joseph” Cao’s (R-New Orleans) financial and establishment support in his two races for the U.S. House.

Cao announced the following Tuesday that he is running against Caldwell. His campaign consultant Cheron Brylski said that “the little man who could” (Cao’s favorite moniker for himself) “is running to become Louisiana’s next attorney general, offering his reputation as a thorough and tough lawyer, proven reformer, [and] a principled legislator”.

The announcement came in email form which went on to note Cao’s investigatory hearings on corruption in FEMA and the national attention he drew from calling out senior BP executives. (Left unmentioned-but known to most of the media readers-was the fact that Cao had been recently fired from the Gulf Claims Board because he had fought Ken Feinberg a little too zealously over funds owed too Vietnamese-American fishermen.)

Caldwell, in anticipation of Cao’s challenge, worked the GOP crowd the previous Sunday in a subtle, yet conscious attempt to remind them that despite the recent mint of his Elephant credentials, he had more conservative bonfires than Cao.

It was a wooing effort that reflects what could prove the theme of the coming campaign – “Who is the real Republican?” Caldwell who joined the GOP in early 2011, or Cao, an independent turned Republican who also called Barack Obama a friend and supported the President’s early version of the healthcare bill.

And if no democrat enters the race, in an ironic twist, it could become a contest centering around which Republican candidate will be able to claim the most Democratic support in the fall, either in the City of New Orleans or in North Louisiana.

On the conservative front, Caldwell’s bid to turn former adversaries into allies has born fruit.

Crimefighters, Louisiana’s largest Victim’s Rights Organization, had supported one of his opponents in 2007. Caldwell, though, reached out to the group, whose board includes the past four presidents of PANO. The AG helped pass legislation that would start the process of changing Louisiana law to reflect federal law in jury trials.

Currently, those accused of violent crimes in Louisiana can unilaterally demand Judge trials. In the Federal System, however, the prosecutor must agree to waive the empanelment of a jury, and the victim or victim’s family must be consulted on their opinion. Caldwell sought to change Louisiana law to reflect the federal code on this matter, at the behest of Crimefighters.

The move certainly won their support. Crimefighters president Irv Magri called Caldwell one of the most responsive Attorneys General that he had ever known, and sung the praises of the incumbent, regardless of party.

Caldwell’s main effort to gain favor with Republicans is over the healthcare bill. While still a Democrat, the Attorney General made no secret of his hope that the U.S. Supreme Court would declare the entire bill unconstitutional, not just the individual mandate, (On the philosophy that the two parts of the bill, eliminating pre-existing conditions and a universal mandate to buy health insurance were intrinsically linked.)

Cao, of course, was the only Republican to support the original healthcare bill. Only when the ban on abortion funding was not included in the second bill did he turn against the president’s proposal, a fact trumpeted by Brylski in the announcement email.

Tea Party members still resent Joseph Cao for supporting the original Healthcare reform bill. Yet, Caldwell himself is little trusted. The fear is that the AG could receive the same anemic support that Republicans showed John Kennedy when he ran against Mary Landrieu statewide. The lack of conservative enthusiasm, particularly in the New Orleans metro, came from the fact that most GOP activists still considered the recent convert a Democrat.

It is worth noting that the other 40-45 percent of the state electorate might just decide the next AG. That is, the Democrats, and Democratic-leaning Independents. And to that end, the Democrats could prove to be just as divided in their loyalties as the Republicans.

Despite his party switch, Caldwell begins his re-election campaign with much the same courthouse support he enjoyed in becoming state attorney general. The former District Attorney (of Tensas, Madison, and East Carroll) can easily count on the predominantly Democratic parish establishments – perhaps even more so than four years ago when he faced Charles Foti, a former Orleans Criminal Sheriff, who had the support of his fellow law enforcement colleagues.

It is often said that the Louisiana Democratic coalition is a combination of courthouse (mostly rural) white Democrats backed by farming and mineral interests and (most urban) African Americans backed by trial lawyer dollars.

In an all-Republican contest, Caldwell and Cao might actually split this coalition. The sitting AG will certainly enjoy the former. However, the danger to Caldwell is that Cao, who represented the most African-American of seats and enjoys the support of many Black elected officials, may gain the latter.

There are more Black Democrats in Louisiana than white Democrats.

The logic is that a moderate Republican from New Orleans benefits both local interests and the African-American community far more than a Caucasian from the rural North.

There has only ever been one all-GOP statewide race remotely similar to the contest forming between Caldwell and Cao-the election’s commissioner race between Suzie Terrell and Woody Jenkins.

Terrell, then a GOP Orleans Councilwoman, managed to get unified African-American Democratic support in the Crescent City, managing to best the conservative Republican by a comfortable margin.

In point of fact, then Mayor Marc Morial made it a personal mission to unify the local political establishment behind Terrell, regardless of partisan stands. He had a personal reason to see the defeat of Jenkins.

The two had tangled during the 1996 Senate race and a subsequent election challenge.

These alliances collapsed when Terrell challenged Mary Landrieu in 2002, but they were sufficient for the New Orleans moderate Republican to beat her more conservative opponent.

Could Cao do the same? It might be up to Cedric Richmond.

The new Democratic congressman has made little secret of his personal antipathy for Cao, feeling that many of the Republican’s campaign tactics crossed the line last year.

Whether the argument that a Republican moderate from New Orleans may be superior to a former Democratic conservative from Tallulah in the congressman’s mind remains to be seen.

This story originally published in the April 18, 2011 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.