Mary Landrieu, a two-time U.S. Senator and member of one of Louisiana\’s best known political families, is running for re-election this year against Republican Bill Cassidy.
Most analysts seem to think she is in serious trouble.
But that was before this information came to light – as excerpted from Alexandra Jaffe\’s article at thehill.com:
Sen.Mary Landrieu (D-La.) found that over $33,700 in campaign flightswere inappropriately charged to her official account in an internalreview of her finances released Friday.
The review,which was released four days after her self-imposed deadline of Sept.8, found that the senator took 43 trips, which amounted to 136campaign functions, that were paid for by funds meant for officialbusiness only. Eleven percent of the total amount Landrieu\’s officepaid for chartered flights should have been paid out of her campaignfunds, thereview found.
Landrieu\’s office said she fullyreimbursed the Treasury with campaign funds and has notified theSenate Ethics Committee of the errors. She also said in a statementthat she\’s implemented a new bookkeeping system to prevent similarerrors from happening again.
What should we make of this?
Well, Ms. Landrieu, no doubt, wants you to believe that she conducted an internal review, found bookkeeping errors regarding those flights, reimbursed the campaign for the errors, so no harm-no foul.
Mr. Cassidy, no doubt, wants you to believe that Ms. Landrieu systematically misappropriated funds for personal use, and when she realized the information was likely to come out, decided to co-opt the issue by putting on a dog-and-pony-show internal review, in a desperate effort to make herself look like an innocent victim instead of a corrupt politician.
Personally, I feel that if there were only a few flights involved, sporadically over time, I would be inclined to believe Ms. Landrieu. As dirty a business as politics can be, honest mistakes do happen, and it wouldn\’t have been like there were dozens of occurrences.
The problem, however, is that there were dozens of occurrences. And that makes her “internal review” smell like a limburger cheese factory two weeks after the refrigeration unit went blooey.
Look, under the best of circumstances Ms. Landrieu was likely to have a tough go for re-election. But this new information may well be the deal-breaker; a scandal that brings her prospects down to no better than long-shot status…
…unless similarly damaging stuff comes out about Mr. Cassidy, that is.
Remember, we\’re talking Louisiana politics here.
