Hopefuls reveal views

• By GERARD SHIELDS
• Advocate Washington bureau
• Published: Feb 25, 2008

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Editor’s note: This article highlights the Democratic Party candidates for Louisiana’s 6th Congressional District. An article featuring the Republican Party candidates in the race is set to run Tuesday.

WASHINGTON — The Democratic Party primary election to succeed former U.S. Rep. Richard Baker has attracted five candidates, including two lawyers who are state representatives, a former state Senate candidate, a construction worker running as an “average Joe” and the former director of Louisiana’s hurricane recovery agency.

The candidates are jockeying to see who will succeed Baker, R-Baton Rouge, who left Congress on Feb. 2 to become the head of a national hedge fund association.

For the first time in recent state history, congressional candidates will run first in party primaries on March 8. If candidates do not gain 50 percent of the vote in their party election, then the top two vote-getters will face each other in a runoff election on April 5 with the winner of that race going to the May 3 general election.

Democrats and independents can vote in the Democratic Party elections. Voters in the Libertarian, Green or Reform parties cannot vote in either party primary or runoff.

 All of the Democratic Party candidates want to reduce federal spending, cut taxes and bring the troops home from Iraq. But they hold differences on other issues, such as the nation’s tax structure, immigration and providing health care.

Here is a wrap-up on where Democratic Party candidates stand on the following issues:

TAXES: Former Louisiana Recovery Authority Executive Director Andy Kopplin said he would support some of the provisions in the President Bush’s tax cuts, which are set to expire in 2010.

Kopplin would also vote to repeal the alternative minimum tax, created 30 years ago and targeted to wealthy income earners. Because the tax has not been adjusted for inflation, he said, it has affected middle income earners.

“We ought to extend as many of the tax cuts as we can to those who need it most, such as families and married couples,” said Kopplin, who supports the “pay-as-you-go” rules of congressional Democrats.

Joe Delatte, an electrical construction worker, said he would only support one tax: a 10 percent income flat tax across the nation, an idea that has been proposed in the past but has not gained traction in Congress. “To me, there is nothing else,” he said.

State Rep. Don Cazayoux said he would support Bush’s tax cuts that help the middle class. Cazayoux, D-New Roads, also likes the “pay-as-you-go” rules and would support a law much like Louisiana’s requiring a balanced federal budget, an idea that has been offered but has not gained momentum in Congress.

State Rep. Michael Jackson said he wants an overhaul of the current federal tax code to make payments fairer. Both Cazayoux and Jackson, D-Baton Rouge, would not support a full repeal of the AMT but a restructuring of it.