Why'd Tony Perkins lose?

[sandnsea]

:shrug:

[punpirate]

1. Probably a couple of things...

... first, lying about not knowing anything about paying David Duke $82K for his KKK mailing list in Woody Jenkins' 1996 campaign and then getting caught in the lie--people have a long memory for that sort of thing. Second, he's a raving fuckin' maniac (and that only plays well to a minority of Louisianans). :)

[sandnsea]

2. I guess I should have been clearer

Did the David Duke thing come up during the campaign and really hurt him? Or would it be fair to say getting 10% of the vote in Louisiana means America isn't quite as right wing as the media is leading us to believe?

[punpirate]

3. In Louisiana, as elsewhere...

... money played a big part of it. But, yeah, the David Duke business did come up, I believe. From the little I watched that campaign, it seemed as though the big Republican guns were behind Suzanne Haik Terrell--she got lots of PAC money, and lots of attention from Bush and Cheney. She was also saying many of the same things as was Perkins, especially about "activist judges" and was fairly unabashed about being a pro-lifer, so that stole some of Perkins' thunder, too.

Cheers.

[BoogDoc7]

4. Yeah...

Some of it came down to lack of support statewide. He didn't start out with good support, and with Cooksey in the race as well wasn't going to get it. He's good at grassroots, but you can only do so much with so little, and the DC Republicans were backing Terrell (who really wasn't all that popular with many in the state).