UPDATE: Good news, as the bill was passed without significant amendments and the primary runoff was left unmolested. It looks like a bullet was dodged this time.

ORIGINAL: On Friday, we had a post here at The Hayride which talked about HB 592, the omnibus elections bill which is in front of the Louisiana Senate this morning. The bill contains a bunch of little changes the Secretary of State’s office wants to make to the state election code, none of which are particularly consequential from a policy standpoint, and as such it’s an uncontroversial bill which is likely to sail through the Senate and be signed by Gov. Jeff Landry.

But what we noted is that Senate President Cameron Henry, who is allying himself with the incumbent senior U.S. Senator from the state Bill Cassidy, is pushing an amendment to the state’s closed primary election process that would eliminate the primary runoff. This would be a way to save Cassidy’s re-election next year which otherwise probably doesn’t happen.

The Friday post went viral and put a lot of sunshine on what Henry is attempting to do, and we understand he’s not happy about it.

We don’t think there are 20 votes to put that amendment on HB 592, but we aren’t sure we’re right. The chances of that amendment getting brought on the Senate floor if Henry doesn’t have the votes are not very good – it’s Henry’s stated policy among his colleagues that they shouldn’t bring anything to the Senate floor which doesn’t have 25 of the 39 senators committed to it, because if you don’t have 25 votes you don’t have 20.

That’s a terrible policy. What it means is that Cameron Henry doesn’t want any of his people to have to take “tough” votes, meaning the actual consequential stuff that voters sent them to the Senate to vote on.

But in this case we’ll see if Henry follows his own rule. Because while it might be possible he has 20 votes between Democrats and RINOs in the Senate to pass this amendment he almost certainly does not have 25.

Why would Democrats vote to kill a primary runoff in Louisiana? Two reasons.

First, a primary runoff adds an extra layer to the election cycle, or at least it might. An extra layer means more fundraising. And Democrats can’t raise any money in Louisiana anymore. So they want primaries as cheap as they can get them, in order to save all their money for a general election. They struggle to find candidates for big races like the federal ones anyway; having to fund a runoff means they’re going to be even more underweight on cash in general elections.

And second, there is a lot of buzz out there that they’re going to run John Bel Edwards against Cassidy next year. If Cassidy were to be in a contested primary – he already has State Treasurer John Fleming in the race against him, and there will be at least one and probably two or three more challengers by the end of June – which he could win with a plurality of votes but no more than 30 or 35 percent of Republican voters supporting him, then you could have a dream Democrat scenario. Edwards isn’t particularly well-liked, but his voters don’t hate him like Republicans hate Cassidy.

We haven’t seen a poll testing a ballot between Cassidy and Edwards. Our guess is that might be scary from the Republican side. But if there’s a true winner in a full GOP primary next spring, whether it’s Cassidy or not who wins we will have had a full accounting of voter sentiment around the incumbent.

Cassidy is where he is because he voted for a post-presidential impeachment of Donald Trump over the Jan. 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol riot that we now know was stoked in no small part by FBI and other federal assets. That vote is utterly indefensible in the eyes of most Republicans, and Cassidy has never apologized for it or given a reasonable explanation. As such, whoever would make the GOP primary runoff with him is the likely winner.

And it goes without saying that knocking out that primary runoff which was passed only last year, and has never been tested in its current posture, would be incredibly poor form. That would be true even if it didn’t create the likely effect of giving John Bel Edwards one more easier-than-deserved opportunity at a major elected office in which he would perform disastrously.

So if you want to drop a line to your state senator and tell him or her not to get involved in Henry’s machinations on Cassidy’s behalf by supporting that amendment, you would not be in the wrong.