This isn’t all that big a deal, and I’m not going to belabor it much because most of our readers literally could not care less what is written in the pages of the Louisiana Illumigroomer – sorry, the Illuminator, which is an apparently Soros-funded leftist rag fronted by former New Orleans Times-Picayune reporter Julia “Pigpen” O’Donoghue.

“Pigpen” because she’s known among the capitol crowd for a rather unfortunately deficient personal hygeine.

I know, I know. But I had nothing to do with the reputation. The nickname? Yeah, that’s me.

Anyway, back in the fall O’Donoghue wrote a hit piece about the Louisiana Freedom Caucus PAC, which as our regular readers know I’m the director of. She was complaining about a piece of campaign messaging that hit Republican Aaron Moak, at the time running for the District 65 seat ultimately won by Lauren Ventrella (whom the PAC ultimately endorsed in the runoff). We noted that Moak was involved in bringing gay pride celebrations to Baton Rouge and we were a bit flamboyant and attention-getting in how we messaged that.

In a text message we spent a few hundred dollars on.

The reaction to that message indicated to us, and we weren’t alone in getting this impression, that it had something to do with the outcome of the race. Moak was polling in the top two of a five-way primary, with Brandon Ivey, the brother of outgoing state representative Barry Ivey, in the lead. We didn’t think Moak could beat Ivey because the district is based in Central, which is the most bible-belt area of the Baton Rouge market, and we thought the fact Moak is gay was going to be a cudgel that Ivey would knock him out with. There were already some signs that’s what Ivey’s runoff campaign would focus on.

One could argue that for a little more than $500, we proved that theory. And when Ventrella made the runoff, it enabled us to get what we were going for, which was to keep another Ivey from occupying that seat. She won big, with Moak’s support as it turned out.

We didn’t have anything against Moak. We wanted to keep Ivey from winning. Tactically, and without a big budget, as this wasn’t one of our high-priority races in the primaries, what we did was our only move. Maybe it worked – either way, we certainly wouldn’t apologize for it.

But Pigpen didn’t like it, so she wrote a hit piece about LAFCPAC. The only thing anybody remembers about it was that she quoted me when I told her that I don’t do interviews with the Illuminator. I had several state legislators send me messages of admiration for that; my response was “why aren’t you doing the same?”

But this week, after the PAC filed its campaign finance report, O’Donoghue was back. She repeatedly harassed members of the PAC board demanding interviews, and when that got her nowhere there was this…

Again, none of this deserves much notice, and O’Donoghue’s hit piece hasn’t surfaced as of this writing so who knows what’ll be in it. Nobody really cares.

But what I’ll say is that I don’t think she understands what a conflict of interest is.

Rather than take a paycheck as the director of LAFCPAC, we did an advertising deal with The Hayride. That way the PAC got a good bit of exposure, particularly for some of its fundraising events and endorsements and so forth. If you’re a subscriber to The Nooner, this site’s newsletter, you’re doubtless well aware of that. We did a lot of LAFCPAC emails last year during the campaign.

Is that a conflict? The conflict would have been if I’d taken a fee and THEN sold ads to it. This was a more mutually beneficial move, and it made me probably the cheapest political consultant in Louisiana – especially given the results. We made 43 endorsements in legislative races last fall and 32 of those endorsees won. Most of them are current members of the Louisiana Freedom Caucus today, with, we believe, several more likely to join as this year progresses.

Which means that we made a whole lot of people happy. But not everybody. Most of the folks we made unhappy are folks we set out to make unhappy.

Which includes Pigpen. And that’s OK, regardless of what the Illumigroomer publishes.