Louisiana state senator Karen Carter Peterson, the chair of the state Democratic party, runs away from local television reporters who ask about her declaration that opponents of Obamacare are driven by racism.

Run, State Senator, Run!

The reporter adds that they submitted a written request for comment, left at her desk on the Senate floor . . . that she promptly threw in the trash.

Every lawmaker says something they regret; what’s kind of stunning is that her race-baiting occurred on the floor of the Louisiana State Senate, and now she wants to pretend it didn’t happen.

Hmmm. This is probably nothing significant, but…

Gov. Bobby Jindal’s office has changed its policy and started notifying Louisiana’s second-highest ranking official when the governor heads out of state.

Under the Louisiana Constitution, Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne is technically the governor when Jindal leaves Louisiana. But until recently, Dardenne never knew when Jindal was gone.

… So, does Governor Jindal or his staff have reason to believe he’ll be leaving the state more regularly in the not-too-distant future?

UPDATE: Governor Jindal has a lengthy post in the Corner today.

For a good portion of next week, I’ll be in Louisiana, working on an article for the magazine on Louisana Gov. Bobby Jindal and the accomplishments of his first term. Besides his policy successes, Jindal has already surprised the state by making the Louisiana Democrat Party a virtual nonentity in this year’s gubernatorial race:

Campaign reports filed last week with the state Board of Ethics showed just how big a financing disparity exists between Gov. Bobby Jindal and his nine challengers in the Oct. 22 primary.*

Jindal has more than $7.7 million left in the bank for his campaign,

While Jindal had more than $7.7 million left in the bank, his best-financed opponent, Democrat Tara Hollis, had just $4,612 on hand — or .06 percent of Jindal’s total.

* Louisiana has the unusual primary system where ever candidate runs in the same primary and the general election consists of the top two finishers. In most races, that turns out to be the Republican and the Democrat but you can have “general election” contests consisting of two members of the same party. If a candidate wins more than 50 percent in the “primary” election, no general election is held.

Thus, unless the four little-known Democrats, lone Libertarian, and four other candidates with no party affiliation keep Jindal below 50 percent on October 22, he will be officially reelected in late October.

Down in Louisiana, it is an election year, and the firm JMC Enterprises is out with a new survey, looking at the outlook for that state’s legislative elections. The results can be found here; they conclude:

If you were to allocate all of the African-American undecideds to the Democratic column and split the white and “other” undecideds equally between Democrats and Republicans, you’d be looking at a 52-48% preference for GOP legislative candidates. What does this 52% GOP preference mean in terms of the likely size of the GOP legislative delegation after the fall elections?

If we look only at the raw numbers (Note: we’re not considering the quality of the candidates or “game changing” events that would impact the results), even though John Kennedy received 46% of the vote in his 2008 race against Mary Landrieu, he received absolute majorities in 70 out of 144 legislative districts (51 in the House and 19 in the Senate). When David Vitter was re-elected with 57% of the statewide vote last year, he carried 99 legislative districts (72 in the House and 27 in the Senate).

Given these numbers, a 52% GOP statewide vote roughly equates to the GOP winning 63 House seats (a pickup of 8 seats) and 23 Senate seats (a pickup of 1 seat).

JMC lays out a bit about their sampling:

For this poll, we chose a sample of 19,324 likely Louisiana households for an automated poll, and 489 responded to one or more of three poll questions. We chose a “likely voter” model because we believe this will best approximate the 2011 electorate.The survey was conducted June 28-July 2. The margin of error, with a 95% confidence interval, was 4.38%. The racial breakdown of the electorate was 71-28% white. This demographic breakdown closely approximates the 2010 electorate (27% African-American), and we believe it is the most reasonable model to use for this year’s electorate.

Of course, all of the standard caveats apply – it’s early, party loyalty is sometimes weaker in state legislative elections, quality of candidates matters, etc.

In other Louisiana news, the Democrats have now found a candidate to run against Gov. Bobby Jindal: Tara Hollis, a public school teacher from Haynesville, Louisiana.