Sen. John N. Kennedy is asking you to re-elect him
12th September 2022 · 0 Comments
Part I
On November 8, 2022, incumbent U.S. Senator John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) hopes you will send him back to Washington, D.C., for a second six-year term. Kennedy comes across as a folksy, Andy Griffith type, the actor who played the sheriff of the quaint, fictional southern town called Mayberry.
However, Kennedy’s folksy bravado in his recent campaign ad belies his true nature. Billing himself as a “conservative,” Kennedy proclaimed, “I said I’d tell you the truth. I have. I said I wouldn’t back down. I haven’t. I don’t hate anyone but I don’t care what others think of me – except dogs. I like dogs.”
Kennedy took a backhand slap against mainstream media, saying, “You can’t always trust the media.” Yet he has no trouble going on extremist Republican propaganda machines like the so-called FOX News and other right-wing media to cast doubts and aspersions on free and fair elections.
Kennedy also criticized lots of “woke” groups in Washington, D.C., that laugh at our Louisiana values. Now we know the term “woke” has been weaponized into a negative. For the umpteenth time, woke is a word used by African-Americans to describe a person who is politically aware of right-wing deception and foolishness. The senator’s criticism of wokeness was red meat to let his white voters know he opposes African-American culture.
But did Kennedy tell the truth, really? He says he doesn’t hate anyone. If that is true, then his rhetoric, votes, and actions are more insidious because reality implies he’s just posturing for show and attention.
So, let’s look at the “truth” about Kennedy’s so-called claim that he kept his promise to “fight for Louisianans.”
During the 117th Congress (2021-22), Kennedy voted against: gun control measures; allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices; extending Affordable Care Act subsidies; expanding tax credits for renewable and clean energy efforts; establishing a 15-percent corporate minimum tax; domestic production of semiconductors; the nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, 2022 fiscal year appropriations bill; providing money for transportation, utility and environmental infrastructure; repealing an Environmental Protection Agency rule that removed limits on methane leaks; expanding voting rights and strengthening campaign finance regulations and ethics rules; strengthening rules against wage discrimination; investing in science and technology manufacturing and research; establishing a commission to investigate the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol; and repealing a rule that allowed borrowers to get loans at interest rates above the limit set by their state.
Kennedy also voted against 13 of Biden’s nominations for secretary of various departments and against Judge Merrick Garland for U.S. Attorney General.
Apart from holding political office for the past 19 years, 13 as Louisiana’s Treasury Secretary, Kennedy, a Democrat turned Republican, is a dyed-in-the-wool supporter of the disgraced, twice-impeached former President Donald J. Trump Sr., and an election objector.
Kennedy voted to oppose the certification of Arizona’s electoral count on the same day, January 6, 2021, when Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol to prevent Congress from certifying Joseph R. Biden as the 46th U.S. President.
He voted against imposing additional sanctions on a Russian gas pipeline?
“John Kennedy was one of the eight members of the POT (the successor to the GOP), who, the day after the Senate Intelligence Committee confirmed that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, were in the Kremlin for a photo-op with ranking members of Vladimir Putin’s administration. (POT, by the way, is the acronym for Party of Treason),” Louisiana Voice reported last May, “National ad by Really American PAC targets Kennedy, seven other members of Party of Treason over 2018 Kremlin trip.”
Louisianans need senators who can talk and walk the walk; not one in bed with Russians, the oil and gas and insurance industries, lawyers, and lobbyists.
We don’t need folksy rhetoric. We need someone who cares about the least of these and someone who will really fight for everyday Louisianans.
This article originally published in the September 12, 2022 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
