Thursday night, your author participated as the moderator for a candidate forum put on by the conservative activist group Louisiana Strong at which seven Republican hopefuls for this fall’s 6th District congressional race offered ideas for what they’d look like as a congressman succeeding Bill Cassidy, who is vacating the seat to run against Mary Landrieu for the U.S. Senate.

The video below is the first of four from that forum. In it, the seven candidates – Garret Graves, Craig McCulloch, Dan Claitor, Norman Clark, Trey Thomas, Paul Dietzel and Bob Bell – give introductions of their candidacies to the crowd. Some are quicker than others.

As today progresses, we’ll have clips from three questions the candidates were asked…