Campbell Stakes All On One-Note Campaign
by Stephanie Grace - Times-Picayune (excerpt)

The front of Foster Campbell's campaign pushcard says all he really wants voters to hear.

The phrase "end the state income tax!" runs just below his picture, highlighting Campbell's decision to stake his entire gubernatorial campaign on one controversial idea. Campbell wants to eliminate state personal and corporate income taxes and replace the revenue with a fee on oil and gas processing and distribution. Doing so, he'll tell anyone who cares to listen, would provide money to build roads, improve schools and rebuild the coast, and would set off an economic boom like none Louisiana's ever seen.

"There's no possibility that it won't pass," even with a full-on lobbying effort by the industry in opposition. Even the most business-friendly legislators, he said, "will have to choose between the oil companies and the people like they never have before."

Campbell chafes at those who talk about more incremental change. Noting that his proposal would tap into money from the very industry that contributed to coastal erosion, he says that "it just kills me to know there's a solution and they spend time keeping it from happening. If I was from here I'd never shut up about it."

Yet at a forum in New Orleans Tuesday sponsored by a consortium of African-American Baptist Ministers -- prime Democratic territory -- his big idea wasn't what got heads nodding.

Instead, the large crowd seemed to react to his comments on other issues: his support from unions; his opposition to introducing any privatization into the indigent care system; his proposal to extend school hours to nights and on weekends; his successful efforts to steer tobacco settlement money into the classroom, crack down on pay day loan operations and allow battered women to open utility accounts without deposits.

Those nuts and bolts issues, rather than grand proposals, are the type that often decide elections.