Refugee Flap Overtakes State Issues in La. Governor's Race
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) -- The Louisiana governor's race has taken a surprising turn into foreign policy ahead of Saturday's election, as TV political ads and campaign rhetoric shifted this week to the Paris terrorist attacks and the wisdom of allowing Syrian refugees into U.S. borders.
Republican candidate David Vitter sees the national discussion as an opportunity to gain ground in a runoff campaign where he's fallen behind. It's his latest effort to tie his Democratic rival John Bel Edwards to President Barack Obama in the deeply conservative state.
Vitter, a U.S. senator, is traveling around Louisiana to talk about Syrian refugees, running an ad on the topic and striking repeatedly at Edwards on the resettlement issue in emails to supporters and robo-calls to voters. Vitter backers sent out statements hitting Edwards, a state lawmaker, on the subject, describing a dangerous threat of more refugees coming to Louisiana.
"John Bel and Obama are not the right men to handle this Syrian refugee situation," the Republican Party of Louisiana said in a statement Wednesday.
The candidates' positions on the issue don't offer striking contrasts.
Both Edwards and Vitter said they would act as governor to block Syrian refugees from settling in Louisiana. Term-limited Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal and sitting governors in other states have announced such moves, but immigration experts say federal law gives them no authority to block the immigrants.
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