Candidate Runoff: Political Smack down

Candidates in the runoff for Louisiana political offices took the stage as they did their best to gain the support Southern University faculty, staff, students, and the local Baton Rouge community, during the candidate forum on November 11, 2015 in the Royal Cotillion Ballroom. The panelist included; Publisher of the Rouge collection, Gary Chambers, former Student Government Association President and Southern Alum Willie McCorkle, and former Board of Education and Secondary Education candidate of District eight, Carolyn Hill asked all the candidate hard, hitting questions that public wanted before casting their vote on November 21, 2015.
“It’s a great opportunity for Southern University to not only get the exposure but being able to have an event at this magnitude that can affect community of Baton Rouge,” said McCorkle.
The students and general public use their “twitter fingers” to have their questions chosen by the establish trio of host to be asked and answered by the political candidates, such as Republican governor candidate, David Vitter, Democratic candidate for Lieutenant Governor, Kip Holden and BESE candidate of District Six, Kathy Edmonston. Each candidate had the pleasure of a two minute introduction to introduce themselves before any questioning began.
Holden started the forum off with an introduction, stating his accomplishments and the other candidate for the Louisiana Lieutenant Governor position, Billy Nungesser, followed.
“If you truly cared about helping people and you have loving passion for making a difference in peoples’ lives, politics was easy,” said Nungesser.
Nungesser stated that he helped create thousands of jobs in his area and has creative plans waiting in the wing to increase Louisiana’s economic growth, tourism capital and jobs. Chambers asked Nungesser his first question, which stated: “One of the chief responsibilities of the Lieutenant Governor is to oversee the state’s culture and tourism industry. What personal qualities and experiences make you the candidate that’s best suited for this role?” Nungesser replied, “you have to be an ambassador of salesman and no great thing is going to achieve anywhere without passion. And I have that love and passion for this state.” Holden stated that he’s going to continue to work with the people as a whole to make Louisiana better. The debate continued and got rather “heated” as the forum went on when both candidates were asked a question referring to persuade business or investors in the local area to donate money to build a better community and help out the struggling businesses of Scottlandville. When Holden was asked by Chambers, “since you could not bring investments to Scottlandville area, how are you planning to bring investments to the Louisiana?”, he spoke around the subject several times before replying, “you find the stats and I’ll donate one thousand dollars towards it.”
Vitter also made an appearance to at Southern University and was eager to answer the questions that the public wanted answered. He stated that his opponent that’s also in the runoff for governor, John Bell Edwards, doesn’t deserved Southern University’s vote because he did not show up. Vitter, like every candidate that answered questions at the event, spoke on what he can do if elected. He referred several times to the voters and supporters to read his agenda on his website.
In the public’s eye, the best was definitely the last as State Representative candidate of District sixty-nine, Ryan Heck, took the stage and left the crowd plenty of smiles. Heck talked to the public attacking the issues his area head with all the support he can get. He addressed that Louisiana has more potential than people think.