Bill Cassidy, a three-term Republican congressman and a medical doctor, is running for Senate in Louisiana against incumbent senator Mary Landrieu.
His announcement begins warmly, with him discussing his work teaching medical students and working in the state’s charity-hospital system, and his wife mentioning her work as a breast-cancer surgeon and working in a charter school for children with dyslexia . . .
. . . and then he gets rough, quick. Cassidy mentions Landrieu’s opposition to a Balanced Budget Amendment, support for taxpayer funding of overseas abortions, and Obamacare.
Louisiana has trended Republican in recent years. Romney beat Obama here 57.7 percent to 40.5 percent; that’s actually a small improvement for Obama, having lost 58 percent to 39 percent in 2008. In 2008, Landrieu beat Republican John N. Kennedy, 52 percent to 45 percent.
Nearly 1.9 million Louisianans voted in that presidential year; two years later, with 1.2 million voting in the 2010 midterms, incumbent David Vitter overcame old scandal charges and beat Democrat Charlie Melancon, 56 percent to 37 percent.
UPDATE: The DSCC sends along this statement from Louisiana Democrats:
“Bill Cassidy knows his only hope is to run a Jindalesque campaign of smoke and mirrors. His rhetoric is as empty as his record. He cannot talk about anything he has done or accomplished in Congress because he repeatedly votes against Louisiana — be it hurricane relief or burdening the middle class with higher taxes — and for extremists in Washington.” –Stephen Handwerk, executive director for the Louisiana Democratic Party.
If a “Jindalesque campaign” leads to a result like the 65 percent that Jindal won in his 2011 reelection bid, then that sounds pretty good.