Cazayoux touts health plan

• By SARAH CHACKO
• Advocate Capitol news bureau
• Published: Apr 27, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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If not for the blue-and-yellow signs covering the front of the small Main Street office, it would be hard to guess that inside are the workings of a congressional campaign.

“You can see that this is a working headquarters,” said 6th Congressional District Democratic candidate Don Cazayoux, seated on an old couch behind the front window as staff and volunteers work the phones a few feet away. “It’s certainly not for show.”

The office — with a giant handmade calendar stretched across the wall, stakes for yard signs piled in a corner and small tables set up along the walls for phone calls — is a clear example of the “retail politics” all the candidates are undertaking in this election.

Cazayoux, Republican candidate Woody Jenkins and three candidates outside of the major parties — Peter Aranyosi, Ashley Casey and Randall Hayes — will be on the ballot for the May 3 general election.

Under a congressional election format new to many Louisiana voters, the candidate with the most votes — even if the total is less than 50 percent — will win outright.

Cazayoux’s campaign manager, Katie Nee, said she is keeping the campaign focused on the candidate’s message, choosing a network of people over a slew of signs. 

Asking friends to invite friends for house parties and throwing themed volunteer nights at the headquarters, the campaign is building its own events to get Cazayoux face time with interested and informed voters, she said.

“If you can talk directly with a voter, person to person, I think that’s the most effective way,” said Cazayoux, a state representative from New Roads. “Now, it’s not the most efficient way, but I think it’s the most effective way.”

Cazayoux, 44, said his personal, pro bono work as a small-town lawyer in New Roads led him to politics.

“A lot of time it was helping people through the bureaucratic maze of government and just organizations that are bigger than them,” he said. “It was, to me, a natural progression to go in a legislative direction.”

Cazayoux’s father is a small-business owner in New Roads, and his mother is a retired teacher. Cazayoux graduated from Catholic of Pointe Coupee, going on to earn psychology degrees from LSU and a law degree from Georgetown Law School in Washington D.C. He and his wife Cherie have been married for 21 years and have three children.

Cazayoux said he focused his eight-year legislative career on issues he believed would make a difference in society, including early childhood education, Internet sex crimes and ethics.

Cazayoux said he tested the ethics reform waters with financial disclosure bills before Gov. Bobby Jindal introduced his own ethics package this year.