Surprise! LAGOP Endorsements Are Political

The Louisiana Republican Party has endorsed three candidates for two congressional seats, including two Republicans running against each other in District 6. Naturally, everyone is upset. The latest round of consternation began with the party’s endorsement of Sen. Blake Miguez in Louisiana’s 6th Congressional District, followed several days later by an endorsement of another candidate in the same race, Sen. Rick Edmonds.

The process began when Blake Miguez submitted endorsement forms representing a majority of Republican State Central Committee members in the district. Before the Executive Committee could convene, Sen. Rick Edmonds also collected and produced his own endorsement forms. Early Monday morning, Miguez announced he had received the endorsement. A few hours later, Edmonds posted a scathing rebuke of the Louisiana Republican Party, saying they “mimic California Democrats.”

Several days later, the Republican Party’s Executive Committee called another endorsement meeting, and awarded a second party endorsement in District 6 to Edmonds. Meanwhile, in the same meeting, Misti Cordell secured an exclusive party endorsement in the 5th Congressional District. As expected, this prompted another round of complaints about the process, the influence of Gov. Jeff Landry, and what an endorsement from the Republican Party of Louisiana is supposed to mean.

There are legitimate questions raised by all of this. But before redesigning the Republican Party’s endorsement process, it might be useful to understand what the process actually is. Frankly, it isn’t terribly complicated.

Louisiana Republican Party Endorsement Process

A candidate seeking the party’s endorsement collects endorsement forms from a majority of Republican State Central Committee members residing within the district in which the candidate is running. Collect enough signatures, bundle up the forms, send them to the party’s Executive Committee, light a candle, and hope. That’s essentially it.

The signatures do not constitute an election; they don’t automatically award the endorsement. All that they demonstrate is that a candidate has sufficient support among members of the State Central Committee to be considered. Then the Executive Committee makes a political decision. That last part seems to be where everyone gets uncomfortable.

It’s Supposed to Be Political

The Republican State Central Committee is the governing body of the Republican Party of Louisiana. Its own bylaws state that the party exists to elect Republicans to public office and to support issues that reflect Republican principles. The Executive Committee, meanwhile, is composed primarily of officers selected through the regular internal processes of the State Central Committee. Those officers tend to be people who have spent considerable time in Republican politics. By virtue of their positions, they’re generally more exposed to candidates, campaigns, donors, elected officials and those all-important political winds.

Their job in considering an endorsement isn’t simply to recount the signatures and announce a winner. The signatures already performed their function by getting the candidate through the door. The Executive Committee is there to exercise judgment. Sometimes the political winds are subtle enough that committee members may need to bring their divining rods. However, sometimes they’re blowing hard enough to knock over the furniture.

Political Judgment Isn’t a Prediction

I know because I’ve watched this process unfold many times. In 2016, Clay Higgins was running for Congress against a field that included former Public Service Commissioner Scott Angelle. Higgins collected endorsement forms from a majority of the Republican State Central Committee members in the district. I was one of the members who signed one. Higgins had done what was required of him. His support among the district’s party members was sufficient to put his endorsement before the Executive Committee.

The Executive Committee declined to endorse him. While Angelle did finish first in the primary, Higgins defeated Angelle in the runoff and went to Congress. That doesn’t mean the endorsement process failed. It means a group of politically experienced people looked at a race and exercised their political judgment — which isn’t necessarily the same thing as predicting who will win.

And then there’s that other interesting possibility: getting it right or wrong isn’t the goal. Perhaps the committee simply saw no political upside in issuing an endorsement against a relatively powerful public official, particularly in the face of strong political winds.

Yes, the Governor Is Involved in Politics

Then there is Gov. Jeff Landry. Much of the current criticism proceeds from the premise that the governor has exercised considerable influence over the Republican Party and its endorsement decisions. Perhaps a more surprising development would be discovering that he hadn’t. It has long been understood that governors tend to get their way within their own state parties. That doesn’t mean everyone must like it. There is certainly an argument that a state party ought to maintain greater independence from whoever temporarily occupies the governor’s mansion. But “ought to” and “does” are two different things.

Louisiana isn’t unique. In early 2024, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, a niece of Mitt Romney who had led the national party since 2017, stepped aside as Donald Trump asserted control over the Republican Party machinery ahead of the presidential election. Nobody seriously wondered why the Republican presidential nominee wanted people aligned with him running the Republican Party.

That’s because political parties (well, successful ones anyway) inevitably organize themselves around political power. Presidents influence national parties. Governors influence state parties. Successful politicians help elect party officials, raise money, cultivate donors, recruit candidates, and build relationships with the people who populate party organizations. One can argue about how independent those organizations ought to be. But understanding how things are, rather than how we think they ought to be, is usually a better guiding principle for success.

The Signatures Aren’t Votes

That distinction also helps make sense of the result in the 6th District. If an endorsement form is a ballot, then endorsing both Miguez and Edmonds looks absurd. But it isn’t a ballot. It is better understood as a petition for consideration. A State Central Committee member signing Miguez’s form isn’t necessarily declaring that Miguez is the only Republican he could possibly support. He’s saying Miguez has sufficient merit to be considered for the Republican Party’s official endorsement. That’s all.

Unless the party establishes a rule that makes those signatures exclusive, there is nothing inherently contradictory about the same member believing Edmonds also deserves consideration. Once candidates satisfy the threshold, the question moves to the Executive Committee. And if the Executive Committee concludes that both deserve the party’s endorsement, we arrive at the admittedly peculiar spectacle of the Louisiana Republican Party endorsing two candidates running in the same race.

That may diminish the practical value of the endorsement. It may even look silly. But those are political criticisms of the result, not necessarily evidence that the process was violated.

Knowing the Process is Key

Misti Cordell’s endorsement provides another useful example. Cordell has said she personally contacted State Central Committee members, secured the necessary support, and talked with Executive Committee members. She says she did so without assistance from the governor. In other words, she worked the process.

That doesn’t mean her opponents can’t seek the endorsement themselves. Nor does her success prove that every feature of the process is perfect. It does suggest that knowing how the party operates remains rather useful when asking the party to endorse you.

At the congressional level, that shouldn’t be an unreasonable expectation. These aren’t candidates wandering into their first Republican club meeting — at least they shouldn’t be. Serious congressional candidates either understand the political apparatus in which they’re operating or employ campaign professionals who do.

• Collect the forms.
• Make the calls.
• Build the support.
• Submit the request.
• Then light a candle.

Perhaps One Change Is Worth Considering

Of course, no process is beyond improvement. Rick Payton has suggested preventing members from signing for competing candidates; Derek Babcock wants clearer rules and deadlines; Gabe Firment has advocated more extensive candidate vetting; and Mike Bayham has offered several reforms of his own, including discouraging endorsements in closed Republican primaries. Each idea is worth debating.

But I’m not convinced this controversy demonstrates a need to fundamentally redesign the process. If I were inclined to change anything, I’d start with something much smaller. Under the party’s existing bylaws, attendance already affects a State Central Committee member’s ability to participate in certain party business. By rule, any member who hasn’t personally attended at least one of the previous three regular meetings is unable to issue a proxy. The bylaws also use that same proxy-eligible membership to determine the number necessary for a quorum.

Proxy-Eligible Members Only

So why not use proxy eligibility for endorsements? Instead of requiring endorsement forms from a majority of every State Central Committee member residing in the district, require a majority of those members currently eligible to issue a proxy. The threshold might actually become easier for a candidate to reach. That’s fine. The more interesting consequence would be for State Central Committee members themselves.

For most rank-and-file members, the endorsement process is one of the relatively few occasions when membership carries significant individual political currency. Candidates and elected officials seek them out because each member possesses something relatively rare: the ability to help place a candidate before the Executive Committee for the official endorsement.

If members want their signatures to retain that value, asking them to attend one of three quarterly meetings doesn’t seem particularly onerous. And suddenly there is an additional reason to attend party meetings. The arrangement even contains its own corrective mechanism. A member who hasn’t attended recently and wants to participate in an approaching congressional endorsement simply needs to show up and restore his eligibility. Nobody loses his seat or is permanently excluded from the endorsement process. Show up, and your signature counts again.

We don’t need a new supermajority rule, an elaborate vetting bureaucracy, any attempts to turn endorsement petitions into a shadow primary, or any effort to strip the Executive Committee of the political discretion it exists to exercise. Just a small incentive for members of the governing body of the Republican Party of Louisiana to occasionally participate in governing the Republican Party of Louisiana.

How Things Are — the Beginning of Wisdom

There is a tendency in politics to confuse understanding how something works with approving of how it works.

• The governor shouldn’t have that much influence.
• The Executive Committee shouldn’t override the preferences of ordinary members.
• Candidates shouldn’t be able to collect signatures from the same people.
• The party shouldn’t endorse competing candidates.

Maybe. Those are all arguments about how things ought to be, and some may be persuasive. But first we have to understand how things are.

• Endorsement forms aren’t ballots.
• A majority of forms doesn’t endorse anyone.
• The Executive Committee isn’t merely a ministerial body charged with ratifying the paperwork.
• Political considerations aren’t an accidental contamination of the process — they are the process.
• And gubernatorial influence over a governor’s own political party is hardly a Louisiana invention.

The Louisiana Republican Party is a political organization composed of politicians and political activists who evaluate political candidates. We shouldn’t be terribly surprised when that produces politics. And if, after understanding the process we actually have, Republicans decide they want a different one, then by all means change it.

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