It’s hard to know where the Baton Rouge mayor-president’s race is right now.
What we do know is that it’s a three-way race between Sharon Weston Broome, Ted James and Sid Edwards. Broome and James are the two candidates with the money and political names.
Edwards might be the candidate with the largest base vote.
That seems a little weird to say, seeing as though the Republican vote in East Baton Rouge Parish is basically 42-45 percent of the vote and Democrats generally get the rest.
But with James and Broome in a very competitive battle for the Democrat base vote, Edwards should be a lock for a spot in the runoff.
And so far, with only one more day to go in the early voting period, you’d expect Edwards has that in the bag.
As of Tuesday, 93,169 people have voted early in East Baton Rouge. Of that number, 41,615 were Democrats, 33,605 were Republicans and 17,949 were independents.
And of the 93,169, 53,996 were white, 34,862 were black and 4,311 were something else.
Interestingly, of the 93,169, 55,197 of them are female to only 37,818 males.
If you’re Edwards, you have two keys to victory at this point.
First, you have to thoroughly dominate that 33,605 – the Republican voters – and you’ll certainly want to dominate that 53,996.
Broome will get very, very few of those people. James has geared his campaign toward peeling them off as a means of beating Broome with them. That’s why Broome uncorked those tapes her campaign manager recorded during a couple of conversations with James which make him come off as a grifter and a cynic of the worst sort. She’d rather have a runoff with Edwards than with James.
That’s the runoff Edwards wants, too. If Edwards gets a runoff with Broome, this election then becomes a contest not about race, which Broome will unquestionably try to make it, or about sex, but rather about competence.
A vast majority of the people in Baton Rouge understand that Broome has shown herself to be an utter incompetent over the two terms she’s been mayor. The city is in decline as a result. Baton Rouge is dirty, there are homeless bums everywhere, crime is through the roof and parts of town which used to be perfectly safe are not, there’s lots of blight and empty storefronts are ubiquitous, and the St. George incorporation has been so poorly managed as to create an impending catastrophe for the parish government.
All of that is on Broome. People who voted for her twice know she’s a disaster.
Will that be enough to pull eight to 10 percent of the electorate off her and into the camp of a Republican?
Ted James’ camp says no. That’s the message they’ve deployed Republican quisling politicians like Scott McKnight and Paula Davis out to push to the public.
Of course, as we’ve noted, Ted James offers nothing different, either ideologically or in terms of skill sets, than Broome does. There is no reason for a white or Republican voter to support him other than that he isn’t her.
Except he is her, politically.
Or worse.
In fact, while Sharon Broome is a demonstrably incompetent leader, she leads a stable homelife and there hasn’t been much of a hint of scandalous behavior on her part. You can’t say that about Ted James.
Edwards’ reputation is that he’s an exemplary citizen and an exceedingly moral man. In that he’s better than James and similar to Broome.
But he isn’t like Broome or James for a very basic reason. Sid Edwards is actually good at what he does.
He’s built a reputation as one of the best high school football coaches in the state. He won a national award for the best high school football coach in the country a few years back. He won a couple of state championships at Redemptorist, a school which went out of business only a couple of years after he left. He built the program at Central High School and had it competing at a high level on a sustained basis.
What we know about Sid Edwards is that he builds winning organizations. He’s done it at all of his stops. He has a skill set which is transferable – successful coaches very often succeed in business and even in politics. It’s by no means a stretch to believe that a successful leader in his current venue can be successful in something larger.
Can Sid Edwards rebuild the Baton Rouge Police Department into something effective in deterring and solving crime? Well, he’s turned around male-dominated organizations and made them championship-level outfits multiple times before. Is he a better bet than Ted James who has at various times spouted all the usual left-wing anti-cop bilge, or Broome, who has actively destroyed the force?
Seems obvious.
Is Sid Edwards a policy wonk? No. He’ll have to hire policy wonks. And then he’ll have to lead them. But he’s a proven leader, albeit in a different venue.
We know Broome isn’t a good leader. She’s proven that over eight years. As for James? Typically speaking, people without principles or moral fiber are terrible leaders, and those tapes Broome’s people put out give off a very strong vibe in that direction where he’s concerned.
We’re looking at those early vote numbers and they look like they show an Edwards-Broome runoff. Unless James’ efforts at snowing white and Republican voters into backing him as some sort of “conservative Democrat” with whom they can do business, when there is zero track record of any of that to go on other than the word of the self-serving McKnights and Davises, pay off, he seems headed for third place.
Polls released by James’ camp notwithstanding.
We’ll see. But Edwards has that ace in the hole – a record and reputation for actual competence – which might just play well enough with voters to move him to a December runoff.