Democrat First District Attorney James Stewart must be getting very nervous about his reelection chances against Republican state Sen. Alan Seabaugh.

Demographics favor him. Registration totals that made the books for the election next week show only several more black registrants than white out of over 150,000 on the rolls (Stewart is black, Seabaugh white), but Democrats outnumber Republicans 3:2.

However, Seabaugh, who resides in Caddo Parish although his senate district also encompasses Bossier Parish and smaller-populated parts of others, is a superb campaigner who has stumped with a disciplined message about Stewart’s laxness on holding criminals accountable (with data that back up that contention) and has utilized plenty of resources to spread that message. While chipping in $115,000 of his own resources, he also has raised a couple of hundred thousand bucks to go along with an existing $400,000 campaign kitty and spent through the middle of October this year nearly $200,000, main on eye-level and electronic media.

Although with fewer resources at the start and raised, Stewart has spent about as much, focusing more on street-level campaigning but also with media buys. Yet it appears that it’s not enough for Stewart to think he will pull it out.

That’s as at the end of this week Baton Rouge-based racial provocateur and oft-times candidate for office Gary Chambers posted on social media about an alleged incident as asserted by Republican former Louisiana Supreme Court Justice Scott Crichton. In a clip he narrated, Chambers displayed video of Crichton implying that Seabaugh used a racial slur in while in high school – although Crichton stopped short of saying explicitly that Seabaugh was the one who actually uttered it (saying a “racial slur of Alan Seabaugh,” not “by” or “from”) likely as he had not witnessed it and only heard of it from someone else, confirming Seabaugh’s assertion that he didn’t say it but was present when someone else said it, even as Chambers then flatly alleges that Seabaugh did say it.

The question of whether this happened as Chambers would want people to believe it did pales to others regarding Stewart’s role in trying to cast racial aspersions on Seabaugh. First, why is it Chambers, who is seen by many in politics including some fellow Democrats as an attention-grabbing grifter and is hundreds of miles away from the jurisdiction, gets to be the mouthpiece? More to the point, it seems odd that if Crichton felt compelled to get off his chest information that could be interpreted in a way pejoratively against Seabaugh, why go to Chambers of all people whose audience largely is composed of a small number of people who insist upon seeing white racist devils around every corner, instead of an outlet that would reach the mass voter base in Caddo Parish?

That tactic would make sense only if Seabaugh’s message that Stewart has fallen down on the job has started to resonate among the black community, which as a whole suffers more crime, and Crichton wanted to stem this turning tide against Stewart’s candidacy, for reasons made clear below. And that Chambers was willing to perform the sleight of hand that transformed the statement from potential fantasy into a mediated reality, which required that the campaign have as few fingerprints on it as possible.

Second, if there is legitimacy to this, why allege this now? Wouldn’t this be such a disqualifying presumed data point that it should have been released after qualifying for the office occurred? Perhaps because Stewart is worried about shoring up support that seems increasingly tenuous at this late date, which to would point to him having foreknowledge of the claim and its needing some kind of assent from him to distribute it.

Third, what role did Stewart have in producing this? He served as a judge with Crichton on the First Circuit and the latter’s campaign committee has donated $4,000 to the former’s campaign but, perhaps most indicative of Stewart having an active role even as the information was distributed by Chambers, in the video Chambers supplied Crichton is apparently wearing the same clothes as in a campaign commercial he cut for Stewart, implying that the Chambers video was made some time ago at the same time as the commercial.

Considering all of this, it seems impossible that Stewart could not have explicitly countenanced, if not actively planned, dissemination of this campaign fodder that looks more and more like a dirty trick coming from a sitting DA. It also doesn’t do Stewart any good to be recognized as in cahoots with Chambers, who advocates for far less funding for policing, while Seabaugh complains Stewart is too soft on crime.

Regardless of whether this is a thinly-disguised hatchet job engineered by Stewart using Chambers as a conduit to hide his culpability in an unsavory attempt to inject racial politics into the contest, its appearance does indicate some level of desperation within the Stewart camp to prevent Seabaugh from winning outright without a runoff. This kind of last-minute mudslinging of questionable veracity, however it came about, shows considerable worry by powers-that-be that Seabaugh has a real chance to upset their apple cart.