Angele Davis has been struggling to gain traction against John Schroder and Neil Riser in the state treasurer’s race. She’s looking for a path to the runoff and they believe they have it. They’re going to try and eat into Neil Riser’s black vote outreach and hope that will be enough to put her into a runoff with Democrat Derrick Edwards.

To that end, the Davis campaign is running this robocall/radio ad that is targeted towards black voters in New Orleans.

Neil Riser’s campaign has spent a lot of money to try and get on the ballots of the various alphabet soup black political organizations such as BOLD, SOUL, LIFE, etc. in New Orleans. The theory behind this is that turnout and specifically black turnout would be increased due to the New Orleans mayor’s race. The Riser campaign would try and grab a high percentage of the black vote and ride it into the runoff.

The Davis campaign takes aim at that strategy. The voice over, who is clearly black, starts by saying “don’t be fooled by Republican Neil Riser on all those ballots.” The ad then touts the qualifications of Derrick Edwards. It then closes by touting some of the qualifications of Angele Davis.

The ad is a very cynical ploy by the Davis campaign. They’re trying to increase the vote totals of Edwards by giving him more advertising than Edwards is spending himself. The ad can also be seen as insulting towards black voters. It sends the message that black voters are A) too stupid to vote without sample ballots and B) only care about identity politics.

Will this ad work? Probably not. Angele Davis has not been much of a factor in the metro New Orleans area and this ad won’t change that. Simply put Davis doesn’t have the campaign that could exploit this. At best, Davis is running for 3rd place which won’t get her anything.