In case you haven’t, which would probably mean you didn’t watch any college football over the weekend because if you had you wouldn’t have been able to avoid the campaign ads for the governor’s race candidates, we’ve got them here.

First, there’s the John Bel Edwards self-congratulatory spot crowing about all the lives he’s saved because of his Medicaid expansion. In the interest of fairness we’ll show it to you, and you can judge for yourself if Louisiana should re-elect the only governor in America unable to grow jobs in Trump’s economy on the basis of a few folks who had a positive experience with government health care…

Did you notice that everybody in that spot looks middle class or above? We did, too. One wonders what they’re shooting for there – perhaps it’s to sell swing voters on the idea that what Edwards expanded Louisiana’s budget by TEN BILLION DOLLARS for over the past four years isn’t more freebies for the poor but rather a gleaming new solution to everybody’s health insurance problems.

The thing is, though, Edwards just kicked 50,000 people off the Medicaid rolls because he suddenly realized they weren’t actually eligible to sign up for the program in the first place – an embarrassment you’d never hear the end of if he was a Republican.

But sure – as Medicaid expansion is the only policy item of any significance which can’t be inarguably panned as a disaster during Edwards’ term (it’s a disaster, but not universally recognized as such yet, unlike, for example, his flood recovery mess), Edwards is running on it.

The other spots showing up on the tube in the last few days have a bit of a different tone to them. For example, here’s one which just went out from the Louisiana Republican Party…

That stings a little, doesn’t it? So far the ad is a digital-only spot, but it probably needs to get up on TV pretty quickly if the LAGOP is able to raise some money to get it on the air. You would think a statewide cable buy on Cox Sports Television, for example, or the Fox Sports channels, would be worthwhile even if the money can’t be raised to put the ad on ESPN or the broadcast channels where college or pro football is on. Edwards’ threat to kill college football in the state if he didn’t get his $7 billion in tax increases to satisfy his big-government wish list might have been the lowlight of his time in office, and the public needs to be reminded of it.

Here’s an ad you couldn’t have missed, as it’s practically on repeat on the broadcast channels…

I had a column yesterday at the American Spectator talking about the governor’s race, and in it I mentioned that it appears Rispone has bounced from the 6.5 percent we had him polling in the Hayride-MultiQuest survey in late July to the upper teens in two recent polls, so his television blitz is certainly having an effect. But, I said, to get from the 19 percent Rispone held in Verne Kennedy’s unadjusted poll to a number that would match or exceed the 25-30 percent Ralph Abraham is holding the industrial contractor’s messaging will have to be refined; the “I support Trump more than anybody” stuff had its uses, but for more than the low-hanging fruit Rispone would need to start telling people what they’d get out of electing him governor.

So you get this spot, which is seasonal with the football stuff and focuses on the fact Rispone is a job creator and understands how the private sector and the actual economy works. It’s probably the best ad he’s produced so far.

Along the lines of selling Louisianans a vision of what it would look like to make him governor, here’s the latest spot from Ralph Abraham…

Yes, the “two genders” thing generated more buzz than any other spot of the campaign so far, but this is Abraham’s best ad. It’s both the hardest-hitting and most optimistic ad anybody has run so far – it indicts Edwards for his campaign of lawsuits against the state’s oil and gas industry, which has everything to do with the governor’s abysmal economic performance, and includes that unforgettable, almost satanic image of him laughing while it details that indictment. Then it touts the healing power of the oil and gas industry in resuscitating the state’s economy, which is a little more specific than Rispone’s ad about how the Louisiana economy might revive with Abraham in the governor’s mansion.

You can tell the ad infuriated the Edwards camp, as this stupidity flowed forth yesterday…

Referencing lame smears by Lamar White and his Bayou Brief blog as a source for “the facts” is funny enough, but the juice here is that Edwards is apparently now denying he’s had anything to do with ginning up lawsuits against the oil and gas industry while trying to equate a lawsuit over a defective pipeline, which is something any landowner would be expected to pursue in the normal course of responsible business, with a politically-motivated campaign of using taxpayer money to extort oil and gas companies into settlements for damages having little or nothing to do with behavior the state itself gave permits for and drew revenue from.

It’s bizarre, but what’s notable about it is the utter lack of respect for the intellect of the voting public it contains.

And Edwards’ attack on Abraham comes amid another spot which isn’t specifically aimed at the governor’s race but unmistakably is given the current context…

If you’ll recall, it was the Grow Louisiana Coalition who put on the Oil & Gas Industry Day event back in the spring at which Abraham showed Edwards up by producing a copy of the letter the governor wrote to coastal parishes telling them if they didn’t sue the oil and gas companies for damage to the state’s coastline he’d do it himself, and Abraham then ripped that letter up and dumped it at Edwards’ feet. To have this ad appear now in that light can only be seen as an attack on Edwards and his promotion of the state’s poisonous legal climate.

Yesterday was, of course, Labor Day – which traditionally marks the start of the election season in Louisiana. It’s pretty clear that season has already started and is in full form.