Lt. governor’s race full of anger, accusations and severed ties

Published 5:41 am Sunday, October 30, 2011

The lieutenant governor of Louisiana was seething.

“He is a pathetic, desperate man,” Jay Dardenne said of his election rival, Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser. “He’s lying about everything.”

Less than 48 hours before the polls opened across the state, Dardenne was fending off a potentially toxic allegation that Nungesser had uttered that morning in Lake Charles: that Dardenne, a married father of two, had engaged in an extramarital affair.

The exchange – the accusation and the angry rebuttal – was emblematic of the 2011 race for lieutenant governor, a contest that ultimately became more about rumors than reality. Negative advertising was the norm, not a political nuclear weapon.

In a largely docile election cycle, the matchup of Dardenne vs. Nungesser was an outlier, dominating the headlines and airwaves unlike any other contest.

A mayoral election and an oil spill

Before the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico captured the world’s attention, Nungesser was barely a blip on the state’s political radar, if he was one at all. Nungesser was a self-made millionaire and the son of a one-time chairman of the Louisiana Republican Party, but outside of his southeastern Louisiana parish of 23,000 people, he was largely an unknown.

And then oil washed up on Plaquemines Parish’s coastline. A diminutive, heavyset man with piercing eyes and a barb-laced tongue, Nungesser lashed out at BP. He was a media darling – ABC News named him its “Person of the Week” – and catapulted onto the political stage.

Ellen Carmichael, Dardenne’s campaign press secretary, remembers the first time she saw Nungesser. “I thought, ‘This guy is pretty plainspoken, kind of a (N.J. Gov.) Chris Christie type,’” she recalled.

Weeks after the oil well blew, Mitch Landrieu, the state’s Democratic lieutenant governor, left the statehouse to become mayor of New Orleans.

Dardenne, then the Louisiana secretary of state, set a special election for the remainder of Landrieu’s term and announced he would seek the post. Nungesser supported Dardenne’s campaign and watched as the Baton Rouge attorney and longtime state legislator won 57 percent of the statewide vote.

Dardenne took over the state’s second-ranking post on Nov. 22, 2010.

Getting angry

As the nation shifted its attention from coastal Louisiana, Nungesser’s focus didn’t waver. As his stature continued to climb, he said, people started urging him to seek higher office. In June, he said he’d mount a campaign against Dardenne for a full, four-year term.

“I just see the people of this state crying out for true, honest leadership,” Nungesser said a few months after he announced he’d challenge Dardenne. “I don’t need the job, but I see a job that desperately needs to be done.”

Dardenne hadn’t seen Nungesser’s challenge coming, but he knew it was trouble. “It was surprising to me,” he recounted. “The day he announced, it was pretty obvious what the strategy was going to be because he came out with guns blazing with misrepresentations.”

A Nungesser consultant, Kent Gates, disputed Dardenne’s timeline. “Dardenne attacked Billy Nungesser the day he announced his campaign and never let up,” Gates said. “It wasn’t until his last commercial that he put anything about himself on TV.”

Dardenne also knew the race would be expensive. Nungesser had the personal financial resources to dump cash into his campaign, and he did, ultimately loaning his campaign $1.3 million. All told, the Dardenne and Nungesser campaigns combined to raise more than $2 million from contributors.

Much of that money went to pay for the advertisements, most of them negative, that seemed to be everywhere in the campaign’s waning days.

“Dardenne voted against increased penalties for when illegals take Louisiana jobs… twice! That means fewer jobs for us and more for illegal immigrants,” the narrator warned in one Nungesser spot.

One Dardenne advertisement tried to turn the environmental catastrophe that made Nungesser famous against him. “Nungesser made a profit on the oil spill,” a narrator intoned. “Even while he criticized them on TV, British Petroleum renovated his marina instead of using a free public one.”

Seemingly lost in the blizzard of negative spots were positive advertisements.

A Nungesser commercial trumpeted him as “the face of Louisiana’s fighting spirit” after the oil spill.

“Our state is poised to prosper,” Dardenne told television viewers in one ad. “On Election Day, I’m asking for the chance to keep Louisiana growing.”

As the campaigns waged war on the airwaves, they also began fighting for endorsements.

In September, U.S. Sen. David Vitter, R-Metairie, weighed in and backed Nungesser. Dardenne touted support from the National Rifle Association and tourism organizations. All the while, Gov. Bobby Jindal stayed quiet.

Two podiums in Baton Rouge

To hear it from his staff, Dardenne was clamoring for a debate. A few showdowns had been canceled because of scheduling conflicts, prompting Dardenne campaign aides to tell reporters that Nungesser was running from a fight, comments that found their way into newspapers around the state.

Nungesser would later say it was Dardenne who had ducked more debates. “Jay didn’t show up for nine debates around the state,” he exclaimed. “Nine times he didn’t show up!”

But on Oct. 13, the two men stood next to each other at a forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters. The debate’s format included time for the candidates to question each other, and that’s when Dardenne unhesitatingly pounced, creating a moment that he and his aides said was the campaign’s turning point.

The questions Dardenne conjured up were basic: Describe the sources of Louisiana tourism funding and the oversight authority of the lieutenant governor. But Nungesser bumbled his answers.

“Lieutenant governor candidate Billy Nungesser was stumped,” the normally staid Associated Press wrote of the episode.

Dardenne thought the forum sealed the election’s fate. “I think it was very pivotal. That was a statewide television opportunity,” Dardenne said. “Billy did not have a clue about what this office was about.”

Jason Hebert, a Dardenne strategist, said the debate ignited a paradigm shift. “I think that’s when people got to see the difference,” Hebert said. “We started to catch stride in our strategy.”

If the debate allowed Dardenne’s strategy to take hold, it didn’t trigger any changes in Nungesser’s camp.

“I don’t know that people pay that much attention to debates,” Gates said. “It certainly didn’t affect our strategy.”

Friend to foe

A few days ahead of the election, Nungesser, his voice raspier than ever, said the campaign’s negative tone had worn on him. He said Dardenne’s past opponents had cautioned him before the campaign that a fight with the lieutenant governor would be bruising.

“They said, ‘Billy, no one who has ever run against Jay Dardenne is his friend afterwards, and there’s a reason for that,’” Nungesser recounted. “And I see that now.”

And then he slipped in a mention of a purported extramarital relationship. “There’s a lot of things about Jay Dardenne I could tell you – his affairs, his girlfriend he hired and her son that works for the office, the family he’s brought into that office, paid with tax dollars – but, you know what, I spoke about the facts, his voting records.”

Part of Nungesser’s claim was rooted in a letter that Gates had sent to the Louisiana State Bar Association. The missive recounted a conversation with a former Dardenne law client, whom Gates said had acknowledged an affair with Dardenne. The American Press, along with other news organizations throughout Louisiana, opted not to report Nungesser’s claims because they could not substantiated. The woman in question did not respond to repeated interview requests.

When Dardenne heard the allegation, the typically even-keeled lieutenant governor erupted in a phone interview. “Billy has just come unglued,” Dardenne said, his voice rising. “He’s lying about everything.”

Dardenne was just getting warmed up. “Next, he’ll say I’ve been abducted by aliens,” he said. “I don’t know whether to continue praying for him or sue him.”

The frustration and anger, Dardenne said on Tuesday, didn’t fade with victory. He described the allegation as “the most deceptive and devious and outrageous political trick I’ve seen.”

In defeat, Nungesser didn’t dilute his accusation. Instead, he said he could have brought his allegation to the forefront of the campaign. “If I wanted to make an issue of that, I would have put the girl on TV,” he said. “I didn’t make that part of the campaign. That wasn’t my job.”

Pearson Cross, a political scientist at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, said the election turned personal because with two Republicans in the race, there were few policy topics to debate. “In the absence of other issues, races can devolve very quickly into personalities and into character issues,” Cross said. “We saw that in this race.”

End game

Standing with Nungesser on a Lake Charles street corner the day before the election, Vitter said he had no regrets.

“Win, lose or draw, I know I made the right choice,” he said.

His choice came up short.

As the returns rolled in on Election Night, Dardenne was the clear winner, winning 53 percent of the statewide vote. Dardenne described Nungesser’s ensuing concession call as “cordial.”

The candidates say the election came down to differences in their efforts to ensure supporters actually made it the polls to vote.

Dardenne’s campaign had a honed grassroots operation, a byproduct of years of statewide elections, which it used to its advantage.

“We felt good knowing that what we had was an electorate that paid attention,” Hebert said. “What we had to do was put our heads down and really work on turnout.”

Dardenne’s campaign had also recognized early that they had to win big in Baton Rouge, Dardenne’s hometown and political base, to win. But they encountered an apolitical obstacle: a home game at LSU. It happened in 2010, too, when Dardenne first ran for lieutenant governor, so the campaign already had a proven formula in its playbook.

“We had a strategy last year to accentuate early voting, and we did it again this year,” Dardenne recalled. “It was part of our plan.”

Nungesser acknowledged that his campaign’s strategy wasn’t as clear or as successful.

“We did not put in the efforts needed to get our vote out,” he said. “Whether that was a mistake, an oversight or whatever, we had a lot of enthusiasm going into the last week, a lot of passionate people, and we just didn’t get those people out to vote.”

Cross thinks Dardenne won reelection because not one Democrat, much less a prominent one, entered the race. “If (former lieutenant governor candidate) Caroline Fayard is in the race, then I think Nungesser ends up in the runoff with Caroline Fayard and Dardenne is third,” Cross said. Even though Dardenne spent much of the campaign trying to burnish his Republican credentials, Cross believes Vitter’s charges that Dardenne wasn’t a true conservative actually worked to the incumbent’s advantage.

“The race, as I see it, was probably decided not by Republicans and not by conservatives, but probably was decided by Democrats and independents who maybe didn’t know who to support in this race but were maybe given some clues about who they shouldn’t support by David Vitter’s entry into this race,” he said.

Gates thinks that even though Nungesser lost, the race stained Dardenne’s Republican resume. “We made the case that he is not truly a conservative Republican, and that’s the legacy he will have going forward,” he said.

A party fractured

Campaign participants and independent observers are divided about whether the contest will have a lingering impact on the GOP.

“There is no party unity,” Dardenne said. “The notion of party unity is a contradiction in terms.”

Nungesser also said the party is sharply divided, especially on how much potential challengers should defer to incumbents.

“Nobody deserves a job just because they’re a Republican and a Republican shouldn’t run against them,” he said. “I think the arrogance of some people saying that definitely divides the party.”

Jeffrey Sadow, a political scientist at Louisiana State University-Shreveport, said that while the campaign may not have hurt the GOP, it almost certainly did not help the party in Louisiana. “I don’t know if it made it any worse, but there’s certainly no impetus toward unity,” he said. “This contest did nothing to build and develop the Republican Party.”

State Rep. Kay Katz, R-Monroe, a longtime party leader, had a more optimistic perspective. “After all is said and done, I think the Republicans will come back together,” she said. “Very seldom have we had to choose between two Republicans. This is a wonderful problem to have if you’re a Republican.”

For now, a marathon campaign complete, Nungesser and Dardenne said they are heading back to work.

Nungesser said he has more to do close to home. “It’s over. I’m moving on,” he said. “I’ve got a lot of work to do in Plaquemines.”

He also didn’t rule out a future bid for statewide office.

Dardenne said he was looking forward to working without a campaign looming so near. “I’m looking forward to doing the job,” he said.

Even as the campaign becomes distant, though, the two men disagree on whether they’ll ever have a friendly relationship again.

Dardenne said he hoped he could work with Nungesser to promote tourism in Plaquemines Parish. Nungesser, though, wasn’t warm to the notion of a renewed friendship.

“It’s hard to call someone a friend that you learn so much about,” he said.

Billy Nungesser concedes at the Hyatt Regency New Orleans Saturday

BRETT DUKE / THE TIMES-PICAYUNE