This one from Tom Schedler.

Will it work?

Last night’s Clarus Research poll had Schedler’s opponent in the Secretary of State race, House Speaker Jim Tucker, ahead by a 25-20 count but with 55 percent undecided. The race is still wide open.

Tucker’s latest ad is a bit less positive, and as it happens doesn’t quite address the job in question…

What’s most disappointing where the Secretary of State race is concerned is that the central issue in the campaign is not Eric Holder. After all, the same Justice Department whose head is now under federal subpoena thanks to his having lied to Congress about the Fast and Furious scandal and the same Justice Department which squashed an open-and-shut case of voter intimidation against the New Black Panthers is suing the state of Louisiana for insufficient vigor in complying with the Motor Voter Act despite voter registration ranking fourth in the nation.

Given the rather unsexy job description of the Secretary of State’s position, and the dominant importance of elections to the job, one would have hoped this would be getting all the publicity rather than somebody’s voting for a pay raise or backing the Stelly tax years ago. Louisiana’s Secretary of State can’t raise his pay or your taxes. What he can do is screw up the state’s election process, though – just ask the people in Minnesota who have an imbecile named Al Franken as their U.S. Senator thanks to a stolen election that state’s Secretary of State delivered to the Democrat Party.

Schedler, to his credit, isn’t backing down, and on this issue he’s making sense as well…

It’s understandable that this issue isn’t being contested in the race, of course, since both candidates are Republicans and Tucker can’t really use Eric Holder. One suspects Tucker’s approach to the case will look exactly like Schedler’s has – but even if that’s true it would be nice to hear it.

And this is why it’s a shame – and a disgrace – that the Louisiana Democrat Party has refused to participate in this election cycle. While Tucker and Schedler are both qualified for the job for which they’re running and the state will survive nicely with either one in office, they’re very similar in background as Republican leaders in the state legislature, they both have strong business backgrounds and they’re both generally of a quite-good-but-not-completely-pure conservative background, it’s not like the state’s voters are being presented with a real choice between the two. We’re going to get pretty much the same thing regardless of who wins this race.

We’d get something different were a Democrat to run and win. I don’t want that to happen, of course, but Louisiana’s voters need a real choice in elections. Otherwise, we’re going to endure campaigns in which ancient history and petty scandal-mongering is the order of the day, and nothing of substance will even be presented to the public.

That’s the way politics used to work here when the Democrats controlled everything.

At least in those bad old days when Republicans couldn’t win statewide office they’d find somebody to suck it up and run. Now? Democrats just suck. And so do the two intraparty statewide races so far, Schedler’s latest positive ad notwithstanding.