July 10, 2010

Melancon says he is optimistic about race

By Billy Gunn  |  The Town Talk  |  Link to article

U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon, a Democrat from Napoleonville, said Thursday his polls show him trailing incumbent Republican Sen. David Vitter by nine percentage points in the race for the U.S. Senate, with plenty of time to win by November.

Both candidates view the other as their only competition, although there were four others who qualified Wednesday and more who might by today's deadline.

Melancon stopped at The Town Talk and KALB Channel 5 in Alexandria Thursday morning.

Vitter addressed a crowd at Alexandria International Airport on Wednesday, where he said Melancon was in league politically with President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, both Democrats and both unpopular in Louisiana.

Melancon said he's optimistic about winning because the polling numbers tell him that many in the state do not know him and would vote for them if they did.

According to March polling results supplied by the Melancon campaign, Melancon's name was recognized by 59 percent of state voters while Vitter was known by more than nine out of 10. In that same report, compiled by Anzalone Liszt Research, Vitter held a 47-37 percent edge in likely votes.

That number now is 47-38, Melancon said.

As he meets constituents, Melancon might have some explaining to do, such as why he voted for Obama's taxpayer-funded bailouts of big corporations, which Vitter voted against. Vitter has hammered Melancon at every opportunity for that vote.

Melancon said he voted for taxpayer-funded bailouts because he remembered the mid-1980s when Louisiana's economy took a dive.

"I didn't want to revisit the '80s," he said. Colleagues in Congress were looking at major unemployment without money from Washington, he said.

Louisiana, at that time, looked like it might escape the brunt of the recession, until the BP oil spill and Obama's drilling moratorium. That move could do away with thousands of good-wage jobs in South Louisiana, whose misfortune might ripple upward to the rest of the state, Melancon said. Northwest Louisiana, he said, might weather it better than the rest of the state because of the gaming industry and Barksdale Air Force Base in Shreveport and the Haynesville natural gas developments.

Melancon said he was against the Gulf moratorium, which was a decision made by Obama.

The president had opened up oil and gas drilling off the U.S. East Coast and the Gulf Coast of Florida, for which he "caught holy hell from the left wing of the Democratic Party," Melancon said.