There’s a new poll out on the 3rd District congressional race, which is the one for the seat Clay Higgins currently holds. A few days back we had a post on an attack ad that a Republican challenger to Higgins, someone named Holden Hoggatt, released in which somebody impersonating Higgins from his old Cajun John Wayne days in those famous Crimestoppers ads, trashed him.

We weren’t too impressed with the ad and it turns out the people of the 3rd District weren’t, either.

This is a Higgins campaign poll, but it was done by the Trafalgar Group – and honestly, if there’s a better pollster out there than Trafalgar we really don’t know who that might be.

We’d say these numbers are believable, at least as to Higgins’ numbers, if for no other reason than they’re what we would have expected…

The poll asked about Higgins’ approval rating and what came back was also not surprising: he’s at 39.3% Strong Approval and 19.9% Approval, for a total of 59.2 percent.

Meaning for another Republican to run against him was always a stupid idea – the only reason you’d do that would be to get your name out there in preparation for a run next year for something like the state legislature.

That isn’t a tactic we’re too fond of; we think you always want to fail up rather than down if you’re trying to make a name for yourself, because when you run for major things you’re not really qualified for and then drop down to more pedestrian, entry-level political jobs you’re doing so carrying the stink of (1) somebody who just likes to run for things, which in modern America is creepy as hell, and (2) somebody who’s a political loser and doesn’t have to be taken seriously.

But if Hoggatt was going to go to route of making himself a name by running for Congress and then turning around and running for the legislature next year, that attack ad on Higgins was an entirely brain-dead idea.

It obviously didn’t move the needle. Hoggatt’s people had been saying they were going to get lots of Democrat voters to come aboard for him, but at 6.6 percent and with both Democrat candidates ahead of him it’s clear that’s not going to happen.

What else looks clear is that Hoggatt irritated the Higgins people. And now they’ll remember never to vote for him in anything he runs for. The poll has Hoggatt at 14.4% favorable and 18.5% unfavorable – when you have such low name ID three weeks away from an election you really aren’t supposed to be underwater on favorability. That suggests he’s not a viable candidate for anything going forward.

It was an amateur-hour bit of political strategy, and the results are clear. So is the race itself; Higgins is going to win easily in the primary despite the crowded field of challengers.

And this was supposed to be the most contentious of Louisiana’s federal elections. It doesn’t look like any of them will be the least bit competitive this year.