From the Editor: Is Higgins about more than name recognition?

By Bill Decker
bdecker@daily-review.com
Clay Higgins didn’t talk to big crowds when he came to Morgan City last week. But Higgins, the former St. Landry Parish Crime Stoppers spokesman now running in the 3rd Congressional District, made an impact all the same.
Our story on Higgins, who appeared on the City Hall steps with cowboy hat, badge and sidearm, drew at least four times the number of views that the top story of the day usually gets. A few days later came news that Higgins is attracting attention in a different way. A recent poll indicates that if the election were held today, political newcomer Higgins might be in the runoff.
The poll, described in media accounts as independent, comes from the Trafalgar Group. The reports are short on such details as when the poll was conducted and the sample size. In any case, the poll said Public Service Commissioner Scott Angelle is the leader with 39 percent, followed by Higgins with 19 percent.
Greg Ellison, one of two service academy graduates in the race, got 8 percent. The rest of the multitude drew 3 percent or less.
It’s no surprise that Angelle, the former St. Martin Parish president and former Department of Natural Resources secretary, has the early lead, even if he is bucking history. If he wins, he’ll be the first candidate from somewhere other than Lafayette or Crowley to accomplish such a feat in the old 7th District in at least half a century.
They call it the 3rd now, but it’s mostly the old 7th District with the addition of St. Mary, Iberia and St. Martin, which were attached after the 2010 Census took away one of Louisiana’s seven House seats.
But Angelle has good name recognition and an impassioned speaking style with just a hint of Cajun about it. That went over well in 2010, when he was the most dynamic speaker at a rally called to protest the Obama administration’s post-BP-spill drilling moratorium. The rally packed thousands into Lafayette’s Cajundome.
Name recognition is part of the equation for Higgins, too. His Crime Stoppers videos, which often made the story of each week’s desperado sound like a “Lone Ranger” episode, were hits on local TV. Jimmy Fallon even put one of those videos on his late-night show.
One video, in which Higgins called out the Gremlins gang, talking about “animals” and “thugs,” caused a flap when the American Civil Liberties complained. Higgins eventually resigned from the St. Landry Parish Sheriff’s Office. He remains an auxiliary deputy with the Lafayette City Marshal’s Office.
His success, if 19 percent counts as success, might be about more than video glory. Like the other conservatives in the race, Higgins rails against President Barack Obama, his policies and the impact of both on the oil industry.
That puts him squarely in the post-Reagan mainstream along with the other Republican candidates. What sets Higgins apart, in his campaign as well as in his Crime Stoppers videos, is that he casts issues in moral or religious terms.
During our interview with him, Higgins held up a wrist band bearing the word “redemption.”
“By the way, this is what our country needs,” Higgins said, “financially, spiritually, morally, ethically, compassionately.”
Moving away from the traditional pack may not be a bad idea in our tea party, Trump-nominating time.
Our second service academy grad, former Midshipman Erick Knezek of Lafayette, put out a press release today saying that he’d been awarded two patents: one for an efficient way to transfer cargo from deep-draft vessels to small ones, and another to help Louisiana’s low-density marsh soil support structures that can stop the loss of coastal land.
Knezek might also want to invent a way to break out of a list of announced candidates that also includes Republicans Gus Rantz, a Lafayette businessman whose website boasts of receiving former LSU baseball coach Skip Bertman’s endorsement; Grover Rees, a former ambassador to East Timor 2002-09, also of Lafayette, who has been endorsed by former Bush administration official John Bolton; and Brett Geymann, a Lake Charles businessman and former state senator who was term-limited.
Kenny Scelfo of Franklin is running as an independent, although his views place him very definitely in the conservative camp.
The mystery in the 3rd District is why the Democrats, in a year when many feel the Donald Trump presidential candidacy will be a disaster for down-ticket Republicans, haven’t fielded a big-name candidate. So far, the only widely mentioned potential Democrat in the race is Dorian Phibian of Lafayette, a young artist and musician who would seem less at home in a congressional race then at a Pearl Jam concert.
Reach Bill Decker at 985-384-8370 or bdecker@daily-review.com.
Lafayette Republican who is stepping down to run for the U.S. Senate, since he first ran for the House in 2004 and faced Willie Mount of Lake Charles in the runoff.
Boustany is the fourth consecutive representative from the 7th District (the fifth, if you count Charlie Melancon in the old 3rd) to leave the House to run for the Senate. Only the first, John Breaux in 1986, has been successful so far.