Sacramento Adult Entertainment: What’s the fuss over lieutenant govs?
Races for lieutenant governor have rarely been controversial in Louisiana, says Louisiana State University political science professor Wayne Parent. The last three lieutenant governors — Landrieu, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (who went on to become governor) and Melinda Schwegmann — were all well-known to voters, because of previous political campaigns or their family names, Parent notes. “We’ve had a pretty colorful history” in Louisiana, Parent says, “but the lieutenant governor has never been part of that colorful history.”
The same is certainly not true in Illinois. Revelations about the checkered past of Scott Lee Cohen, winner of the Feb. 5 Democratic primary for lieutenant governor, mark only the latest in a long list of mishaps involving lieutenant governors and candidates for the position in the Land of Lincoln. Cohen, a pawnbroker who boasted in TV commercials of the job fairs he hosted for unemployed Illinoisans, dropped his bid when news accounts revealed that Cohen had once been arrested for holding a knife to a girlfriend, who had been charged separately with prostitution, among other allegations.