In our best interests

She chose the wrong side.

Actually, she tried to play both sides and lost. Mary Landrieu has grown into a typical Louisiana politician. That is not a compliment.

Last week Mary voted for background checks at gun shows. Then she voted against even discussing a ban on assault weapons and restrictions on the sizes of the magazines on guns.

She tried to please everybody, a calculated risk that she will quite possibly regret.

In trying to get the “red part of the state” to vote for her, she turned her back on her base that has carried her into the senate all these years. Problem is, the folks she’s courting are not going to vote for her, no matter what votes she casts. She’s got a “D” behind her name. They want someone they can rely on. So do Black voters.

By her vote last week, Landrieu just gave her Black constituency less incentive to even show up at the polls to caste their vote for her this time around.

Landrieu’s mistake is basing decisions on polls instead of principles.

Remember, polling told everybody that Blacks weren’t going to come out en masse for the past presidential election, but they did. Polling said that young folks weren’t going to turn, out but they did.

Any real ally of the Black community knows and cares that Black children are dying in the streets because of guns across this nation.

You can tell when an elected official is a real ally by how they vote.

This isn’t the first time Mary Landrieu has used her vote to declare that our interests can always be put on the back burner.

It could however, be the one in which her staunchest supporters return the favor.

This article originally published in the April 22, 2013 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.