Election Time! Senator Edition

It’s early November, and so an event almost as exciting as the Super Bowl is taking place-elections for our federal representatives and local leaders! In the spirit of fostering a good conversation about our candidates, I thought it would be fun to do a quick look at a handful of those running and a quick little opinion one way or another. While I welcome blind followers here, I must insist doing your own research for the local elections (judges, mayors, etc) as well as the amendments. I will not speak on those.

I am doing most of these analyses based off of what each representative’s website lists as priority issues. This is for the sake of simplicity, because we can all argue until the cows come home about each candidate and I’m not trying to dig skeletons out of closets (or hide them) to make a point.

United States Senator

John Kennedy (Republican) (incumbent)

Senator Kennedy’s Senate seat is up for grabs this year, and the winner will be serving along side Bill Cassidy in Washington. Senator Kennedy has been having a great time on TV—both as a correspondent on news channels and with his own campaign commercials. The issues he is focusing on (at least for this campaign cycle) is fighting inflation, putting America first, and helping Louisiana families, amongst several others. While I would put Louisiana families directly in front of putting America first, I still like this slate of concerns, as they have the most widespread effects for our state and country. He also lists subjects such as education, disaster recovery, protecting jobs, protecting life, and lowering energy costs. All great goals, as long as they are pursued in a proper way. I believe Kennedy can do that.

Gary Chambers, Jr. (Democrat)

I remember when Chambers’ face started popping up everywhere, his campaign videos starting to spread, and his popularity grow. He definitely was noteworthy. But looking at his priorities, I’ve no interest in having him fill a federal seat. What immediately strikes me is that in explaining his priorities, he is constantly expanding on the black community in all of America and in Louisiana. I would never say that black advocates have no place in our society, but judging by the way Gary has his priorities explained, he could be better fit for local minority groups, not representing the whole state.

Looking at his stance on the issues, he appears to want to appeal to the more polarized among us. His stance on reproductive freedom is backwards looking. I’ve mentioned in other articles why the pro-abortion sides do not make good arguments. Here is someone trying to capitalize on that. I’ll just say here that in my opinion, all of our reproductive freedom is the freedom to sleep with whoever we want. But pregnancy only happens one way.

Gary is a no-go for a federal office for me, but it appears that he would do great as a local-level black and minority community advocate.

Devin Lance Graham (Republican)

I don’t believe I’ve heard of this candidate until I began doing research for this article. Not much on his website besides some vague blurbs about his priority issues. I do appreciate his focus on helping the wellbeing of Louisiana from the federal perspective, but that energy could also be used in a state legislature. Right off the bat, it’s a no for me.

Luke Mixon (Democrat)

I looked at Luke Mixon’s website a while back and thought he was an interesting candidate for the most part. Mostly because his second-listed priority is daycare. While I’m sure the cost of daycare can be restrictive to some families, I also remember being charged a fee as a student without child at UL to support the day care services over there. These sorts of fees (and, on a higher level, taxes) drive people insane. People want to and do give out of the kindness of their hearts. We shouldn’t be forced to share the cost of daycares (or universal health) but we should have the freedom to do it personally.

Mixon, like Chambers, also makes a point to declare he would support women’s health by way of legalizing and protecting abortion. The examples that Mixon gives to support his stance, however, I have shown are very much marginal cases. The important thing to remember regarding “reproductive rights” is that the majority of abortions are not conducted because a pregnancy resulted from rape or incest, and life-saving medical procedures that terminate a pregnancy as a side effect are still protected by the government and such a procedure does not go against most (if not all) religious teachings.

There are several others who are also running, and while I chose to spotlight these four I do not want the others completely ignored. The rest of the Senator ballot for Louisiana is as follows: