Stephanie Grace: One voice Louisiana Republicans often ignore? The state Republican party.

More than 30 years ago, when I covered my first big campaign as a reporter for this newspaper, I made a rookie mistake. One of the gubernatorial candidates I was assigned to follow had been endorsed by the Louisiana Republican Party. I assumed that would be a big deal. On paper, Quentin Dastugue was a promising candidate — a smart, witty state lawmaker with a successful business and fiscally conservative policy chops. Yet he had trouble raising money and never made it to the starting line. The candidate who did capture the imagination of Republicans that year was a populist Democratic state senator named Mike Foster, who ran as a Christian conservative gun-owning everyman (never mind that he was the grandson of a governor and lived on a plantation), switched parties and went on to be a popular — and relatively moderate — two-term governor. Let's just say it was a learning experience. This fall, the state Republican Party is again trying to point voters in its chosen direction. And again, I can't help wondering how many of those voters care. It doesn't help that the endorsement process for the fall congressional races has a Keystone Cops feel to it. After the recently adopted party primaries were abruptly canceled and the districts hurriedly redrawn following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the Callais case, voters in two congressional districts are now about to elect new representatives the old-fashioned way, via open primaries. Both districts — the 5th vacated by Republican U.S. Senate candidate Julia Letlow and the 6th by Democrat Cleo Fields — were specifically drawn to favor Republicans. You'd think that would mean they've got nothing left to fight about. Think again. Both elections drew multiple major Republican candidates. And in both cases, instead of just being satisfied that one of them will very likely go to Congress, party leaders are inexplicably picking favorites, creating a pair of circular firing squads in the process. In the Baton Rouge-centered 6th District, the party's eight-member executive committee — with no input, notably, from the much larger state central committee — narrowly voted to support one of two longtime legislators, state Sen. Blake Miguez. The problem: The other one, state Sen. Rick Edmonds, is from Baton Rouge, while Miguez hails from Erath in U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins' district, although he did buy a house in the state capital. Also, Miguez has tangled in the past with Gov. Jeff Landry, who, according to coverage by reporter Tyler Bridges, was none too pleased and leaned on the party to reconsider. Days later, it issued a revised joint endorsement. In the 5th, the same small group acting behind closed doors created another mess when it bypassed three Republican sitting legislators entirely, instead voting 4-3 to anoint an appointed member of the state Board of Regents from Monroe, Misti Cordell, over state Rep. Michael Echols, R-Monroe, state Sen. Stewart Cathey, R-Monroe, and state Rep. Gabe Firment, R-Pollock. An intriguing question is why. A more relevant one, though, is whether it matters. A party endorsement can bring national money, and the recipient gets to advertise being the favored candidate — or in the case of Miguez and Edmonds, one of the chosen two, anyway. One could argue, for example, that the party's endorsement of Landry a year before the 2023 governor race, when he still faced a number of other Republicans, set him up for his outright primary win. On the other hand, there was considerable anybody-but-Landry sentiment at the start of the race, and perhaps a more moderate candidate of similar stature — Billy Nungesser, Garret Graves, even Bill Cassidy — might have given him a run for it. There's actually something comical about the party's current infighting, because the stakes are pretty small. Unlike 1995, they don't have to worry about picking the candidate best positioned to defeat a Democrat, either statewide or in these two open congressional districts. They already got what they wanted from the Supreme Court, which gave them the ability to draw five solidly Republican seats out of six without worrying about the pesky Voting Rights Act of 1965. Thanks to Landry and his legislative allies, they also got closed party primaries that favor more ideologically pure candidates, even if they're on hold for this particular election. But it's apparently still not enough. The handful of people who sit on the GOP's executive committee don't just want a Republican. They want their Republican. So much has changed since I got my start, but even in these days of total GOP domination, a smoke-filled room is — metaphorically speaking — still a smoke-filled room. And a lot of the time, voters prefer the fresh air. Email Stephanie Grace at sgrace@theadvocate.com.