Mike Pence Returns to Campaign Trail for GOP Senate Candidate in Louisiana
The GOP hopes to increase its U.S. Senate majority.
— -- Nearly a month after the GOP won the presidential election, Vice President-elect Mike Pence is back on the campaign trail helping Republicans try to increase its U.S. Senate majority.
The Indiana governor appeared in New Orleans on Saturday with Republican Senate candidate John Kennedy to urge GOP voters to turn out for the last day of early voting prior to Louisiana's Dec. 10 runoff between Kennedy and Democrat Foster Campbell.
“I'm really here to say thank you," Pence said. "But I'm also here to ask you for your help one more time,” he told the crowd assembled in a hangar at the New Orleans Lakefront Airport.
“By electing John Kennedy as your next senator, you're going to put an exclamation point at the end of a great American victory in 2016,” Pence said.
Pence, who is also leading President-elect Trump’s transition work, is expected to play a major role in the incoming administration’s outreach to Congress.
He met with the two GOP leaders on Capitol Hill, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, on Tuesday for ongoing discussions about their agenda for next year, including plans to repeal and replace Obamacare.
“John Kennedy and [Louisiana Sen.] Bill Cassidy are going to help Donald Trump drain the swamp,” Pence said to the crowd in New Orleans today, while also mentioning the need to support Trump’s future pick for the vacant seat on the Supreme Court.
Kennedy, the Louisiana state treasurer, is hoping to ride Trump’s coattails to Washington after the runoff election that was scheduled when no candidate for Senate won at least 50 percent of the vote in the November balloting.
In a campaign ad by Kennedy in mid-November, he said, “I supported our new president from day one ... We don’t have time for political correctness anymore. The swamp in DC needs to be drained.”
For Democrats, a win in Louisiana could add another layer to the anti-Trump firewall in the Senate next year, when Republicans, who will have at least 51 senators, will need Democratic votes to pass major legislation.
It’s also an opportunity for a late victory for the Democratic Party after it underperformed in the Nov. 8 election by losing the presidential race, failing to take back the Senate and winning only six GOP-held House seats. The party had been projected to flip the upper chamber and win as many as 20 House seats.
Campbell, the Democratic candidate and a member of the Louisiana State Public Service Commission, outdid Kennedy in fundraising in the finals weeks of the campaign, raking in $2.5 million compared to Kennedy’s $1.6 million. Both candidates had roughly $1.4 million cash on hand as of late November.
Still, Kennedy is favored over Campbell. Trump won Louisiana by 20 points in November, when Kennedy secured 25 percent of the vote to Campbell’s 17.5 percent. About 50 percent of Louisiana voters picked a Republican Senate candidate from the more the 20 candidates on the ballot last month.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee has spent $500,000 to help Kennedy, and is putting up at least $72,000 in radio ads in the final week before the runoff.