We’ve posted about the special election in District 60 before – namely, when Republican Brad Daigle entered the race to replace Chad Brown – the Democrat former state representative who took a job as the state’s Alcohol and Tobacco Commissioner. Brown’s District 60 seat is mostly in Iberville and Assumption Parishes, across the Mississippi River from Baton Rouge, and it’s a traditionally Democrat seat which has been trending more Trump-friendly.

So the Louisiana GOP is cautiously optimistic that Daigle, an insurance broker and Greater Baton Rouge Port Commission member who hasn’t held elected office before, can flip it in the special election this weekend. That’s never happened in District 60.

To do it he’s going to have to knock off an Iberville Parish Council member named Chasity Verrett Martinez who comes from an old-line family in that area just like the Daigles are.

Martinez has been running as middle-of-the-road, and there are people in the area who say she’s likely to switch parties once she’s elected to the state house. Go to her campaign website and Facebook page and what you’ll see is plenty of nothing. For example…

• Strengthening infrastructure and essential services
• Improving healthcare access, including mental health and substance-abuse support
• Increasing transparency and government accountability
• Supporting families, workers, and small businesses
• Ensuring every resident feels heard and represented

What does any of that even mean? Is she saying “I’ll get the bridge built between Plaquemine and South Baton Rouge?” If so, what’s her evidence that she can do that? What does “improving healthcare access, including mental health and substance-abuse support” mean? More money for the Louisiana Department of Health? Most people would say it has too damn much money already. So is Martinez saying she’s bought by the hospitals?

“Ensuring every resident feels heard and represented” is just downright creepy, actually. You can’t get any more vacuous a campaign promise than that.

She did come up with a cute AI image, though…

We must confess that we are less than amused by the bullhorn. It’s an indication she might be a closet Minnesota radical – white chicks with “D’s” next to their names mostly are these days, and there isn’t much reason to think otherwise at this point.

If Martinez isn’t a commie, this would be a little embarrassing…

Daigle is for-sure unelectable! He told somebody to go kick rocks on social media! Certainly this means that Brad Daigle wouldn’t ensure every citizen feels heard, right?

Martinez can say that was the Democrat Party’s flyer and not hers, but if you’re putting a “D” next to your name you’re endorsing this kind of neocommunist rhetoric. Does anybody really believe that DEI “protects qualified minorities and women from racial and gender discrimination?” Or that the MAGA movement “engaged in the Jan. 6 insurrection against our nation’s capital?”

It doesn’t really look like the usual election players have bought into Martinez as middle-of-the-road supportable. Daigle has the endorsement of pretty much all of the business groups – he has the Louisiana Republican Party, local RPEC, Louisiana Committee for Conservative Majority, Lt. Gov Billy Nungessor, Insurance Commissioner Tim Temple, Ag Commissioner Mike Strain, West Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff Jeff Bergeron, the Louisiana Motor Transport Association, LABI, the Homebuilders, the Associated Building Contractors, the Louisiana Realtors Association and several others lined up with him.

But in what’s very likely to be a low-turnout special election, who knows whether the big boys lining up behind Daigle in what’s turning into a swing district can help a lot. If they can turn out the Republican vote for him, he’s got a good chance to win. If not, and the Democrats there buy into the stupid rhetoric their party is putting out, then it’ll be Martinez.

And if it is Martinez, we’ll get this at the state capitol…

…rather than this…

It would be a nice win for the state if Daigle pulled this thing out tomorrow.