This is the kind of thing which tends to turn political races, largely because it says things about one of the candidates which could be dispositive.

This happened a few years ago, and it involves Hugh Andre, who is running against Blake Miguez in District 22. Andre is a number of things professionally, one of which is that he’s a sugar farmer.

The story goes that 10 or 11 years ago, Andre was planning to burn a field of his, something which is commonly done in the sugar-growing business at the beginning of the harvest – that’s done because the fire will clear away the leaves and tops of the sugarcane plant but it won’t get at the stalk, and the stalk is where the sugar is. So harvesting the sugar is made a lot easier when you’re just cutting the cane and have much less useless biomass.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with burning a sugar field pre-harvest, though the Sierra Club, for example, screeches that it’s an “outdated” practice. We’re certainly not siding with the Sierra Club.

But there was a pregnant female dog in the area which it was known had gone into that field to have her puppies.

And it was made known to Andre that this was happening, goes the story, and he was asked to hold off on burning the field until the puppies and their mother could be removed.

The story goes that Andre’s answer was, essentially, “Bah humbug,” and the field was set ablaze on schedule.

To the extreme disconcert of the puppies and their mother, some of whom didn’t emerge unscathed.

A caller to Moon Griffon’s show last week recounted this tale, and that’s getting a good bit of play the last few days…

This doesn’t disqualify Andre on policy grounds or anything particularly substantive, but what it does indicate is he’s not of a very agile mind – nor is he particularly compassionate if this story is true. We’re not in a situation where we need bleeding-heart liberals to fill up the Louisiana legislature; quite the opposite.

But we do need people who want to make sure the little guy isn’t trampled by the cold interests of corporate America, and this story is about as big an analog for that as you can get.

Seeing as though Andre is backed by a number of status quo fatcats like Clay Schexnayder and Page Cortez, including some of the big contract lobbyists at the Capitol, everything about this story fits. It comes off as too good to check, but when we did call around to ask if the story was made up we were told that local folks definitely remember the controversy when all this first happened.

Andre is catching all kinds of ugly nicknames as a result of this story. “Hot Dog Hugh” is the one we thought was the catchiest. We’re not sure that’s a nickname that wins him election over Miguez, the formidable favorite in the race.