Ringside Politics With A Punch

Despite negative opinions by the Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell and Secretary of State Jay Dardenne, Ruben LeBlanc of New Iberia is proceeding with his long shot campaign to recall U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA). Landrieu was elected last year to her third six-year term as U.S. Senator. She does not have to face the voters again until 2014. However, LeBlanc wants to gather enough signatures on a recall petition to force a special recall election.

LeBlanc says he is just an average citizen who was spurred into action when Landrieu voted for the President’s health care bill in December. He believes that the Senator is not following the wishes of the vast majority of the people of Louisiana and deserves to be recalled from her office.

LeBlanc is trying to make history with this recall campaign as no U.S. Senator has ever been recalled from office. The problem for LeBlanc is that there is not a recall provision in the U.S. Constitution. In addition Dardenne did not allow LeBlanc to officially register his recall petition citing that there is no provision to recall a federal official in the state constitution either.

Despite the hurdles, LeBlanc is moving forward because he believes there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that prevents a recall. He is looking forward to challenging the issue in court and said he will take it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary. According to LeBlanc, “I think I’m on the right side of this.”

Under normal circumstances, a successful recall petition in Louisiana requires the signature of one-third of the registered voters in a district, parish or statewide. Currently, there are 2.9 million registered voters in the state, so any successful statewide recall would need 961,000 signed petitions. To qualify, the petitions have to match exactly with the names as they are registered on voter rolls. Any deviation results in a petition being excluded from the totals.

In recent years, there have been a myriad of unsuccessful recalls in Louisiana. In fact, recalls in Louisiana are extremely rare due to the difficulty in securing adequate signatures. A statewide or parish wide recall would require a sophisticated network of volunteers and thousands of hours of volunteer coordination. In recent years, a measure was introduced to ease the recall requirements, but it did not gain any traction in the Louisiana State Legislature. Not surprisingly, legislators were hesitant to make it any easier to recall any elected official in Louisiana.

Recall efforts in New Orleans, Jefferson Parish, and Mandeville all failed in the last few years. In the Second Congressional District, two ministers unsuccessfully tried to recall U.S. Congressman Joseph Cao (R-New Orleans). The Cao recall faced the same legal problems that LeBlanc is encountering, plus it did not generate enough grassroots support.

Therefore, LeBlanc faces the dual hurdles of both the sheer number of signatures and the constitutional questions. He is not deterred and has started gathering signatures from around Louisiana. According to LeBlanc, almost 1,000 volunteers have signed up to assist the recall campaign. His goal is to generate more than 1 million signatures before tax day April 15. He vows to sign up only actual voters and will not register “any dead people.”