Here’s who showed up on Day 1 of qualifying for statewide office

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - The campaigns for statewide office can officially get into election mode. Each candidate putting pencil to paper today has just about 100 days to convince you they deserve your vote.

Several seats including state treasurer, insurance commissioner, secretary of state, attorney general, and of course governor is all up for grabs. The first of the gubernatorial candidates to show up was the independent candidate, Hunter Lundy.

Lundy rejects the idea of being a longshot candidate and says it’s up to all of us if we want more of the same in Louisiana.

“If you want more of what we’ve had in the past they you go vote for the top cop or you go vote for your road builder while we have the worst roads in the nation,” said Lundy.

Those were political jabs at the two perceived leading candidates in his race. The top cop being Republican Jeff Landry, set to qualify later this week, and the “road builder” being transportation Secretary Dr. Shawn Wilson. Dr. Wilson is a Democrat who’s running on the message he’ll build bridges literally and figuratively.

“I would compare my record to building roads and spending $5.5 Billion producing over 7,000 miles of improvement to the crime statistics that we’re seeing today for what you’re saying is the top cop. Go look at the record over the last 7 plus years and see who brought resources,” said Dr. Wilson.

Former State Treasurer John Schroder took a different approach and said he’s running to end the corruption that infects our states politics. Adding the state is run more by various board members than actual elected officials.

When reporters asked if he could give specifics Schroder said, “No that’s your job. I’m not here to point anything out to anybody. I know it’s happening, you know it’s happening, I shouldn’t have to be here and tell you who is and who isn’t, that’s yall’s job”, before taking more questions.

Though none of the other big-name candidates for governor showed up today. A surprise candidate jumped into the race, Democrat Oscar Dantzler. Dantzler claims John Bel Edwards and the Democratic party’s’ decision to endorse Shawn Wilson was motivated by a personal vendetta he and the governor share.

“The governor controls the democratic party, so the governor was not going to endorse me. He went and made sure that the democratic party was not gonna endorse me because have filed various different complaints against the governor’s office, I ran against his brother the sheriff of Tangipahoa parish. And I think that it’s wrong. That’s why I’m running to bring these changes,” said Dantzler.

Republicans Jeff Landry and Senator Sharon Hewitt are expected to show up Wednesday. No word yet on when we can expect to see Richard Nelson (R), Steven Waguespack (R), or any of the other candidates this week.

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