The Joe Cunningham Show airs 3-4 p.m. every weekday on NewsTalk 96.5 KPEL. The daily show notes offer you a look into the topics of the day and the links to the top stories and Joe's own writings on the state of politics in Louisiana and around the country. Follow Joe on Twitter at @JoePCunningham and Like the Joe Cunningham Show on Facebook. You can also subscribe to the Joe Cunningham Show podcast on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, or Amazon.
IMPORTANT PROGRAMMING NOTE: Today, the newly-elected Mayor of Carencro, Charlotte Clavier, will be my guest for the first half of the show. I am excited to get to speak with her.
Local Election Turnout
Just over 45 percent of Lafayette Parish voters turned out to vote in Tuesday's midterm elections, down slightly from the 2018 midterm elections in 2018.
Just over 72,000 voters cast a vote in the U.S. Senate race for John Kennedy, which had the most votes cast in any race on the ballot, according to the Louisiana Secretary of State's election website. That's a turnout of 45.3 percent, compared to the 45.1 percent who cast votes in the 3rd Congressional District race (72,047 total votes).
LA-03
You need to read this analysis by Andrew Capps at The Daily Advertiser, but here’s the key part.
Higgins was able to grow that gap despite an amped up opposition campaign from Hoggatt that mocked the congressman’s well-known Crime Stopper videos and targeted his controversial history in attack ads this fall.
Notably, Hoggatt, a Lafayette prosecutor, was unable to beat Higgins in all but one of the 479 precincts in the 3rd Congressional District that voted for a Republican candidate.
Hoggatt’s sole win on Election Day came from Ward 1, Precinct 7 in Iberia Parish, where only one ballot was cast. He came second to Higgins in 305 precincts, with support largely concentrated in southern and western Lake Charles, as well as central Lafayette just south of downtown.
Remember what I said weeks ago: There’s no way attack ads work if you don’t have name ID. Hoggatt did not, and he got nowhere with just those attack ads.
Please Write Laws Gooder
I’m sorry. This is a bit facetious, but I have a major issue with people who write laws without actually reading what they could do. We saw that with the slavery amendment on the ballot, and now we’re seeing that with a St. Landry ordinance that could criminalize killing rats in your home if you read it the right way.
If a person "mistreats any living animal by any act or omission whereby unnecessary or unjustifiable physical pain, suffering, or death is caused to or permitted upon the animal," that person is guilty of abuse and neglect, according to the ordinance. The problem is that the ordinance does not seem to include any language referring to dealing with pests.
In fact, there is no reference to infestation or vermin and how to humanely deal with them specifically. Neither term is defined in the legal document.
Tweet Of The Day
I don’t have any other headlines for the day. I am exhausted with the national news for the moment. But here is a good tweet.