Louisiana Senate hopeful Chet Traylor is finally ready to start taking a few swings at incumbent David Vitter, just ahead of their August 28 primary.
Traylor, according to his campaign chief Roy Fletcher, will have at least $500,000 on hand by Sunday, when the current fundraising period ends.
But that leaves him precious little time to close an enormous gap in the polls. Traylor, a business-connected conservative and former Louisiana Supreme Court justice, entered the primary at the last possible moment, prompting speculation that Vitter may have a fight on his hands.
That was a month ago. Now the question is whether or not too much time lapsed while Traylor raised funds for him to get his name out, or even make a dent in Vitter’s electoral armor. Thus far, he’s mostly notorious for a report detailing how he broke up one wife’s previous marriage and, in the wake of his wife’s death, entered a romantic relationship with his soon-to-be-ex-daughter-in-law.
Nonetheless, Traylor still says his best hope is that Republicans worry that Vitter’s even-more-scandalous history will cost the GOP a Senate seat.
“I think they are very afraid that they’re going to have another Democratic vote in the Senate,” Traylor told the Times-Picayune.
Brian Beutler
Brian Beutler is TPM's senior congressional reporter. Since 2009, he's led coverage of health care reform, Wall Street reform, taxes, the GOP budget, the government shutdown fight, and the debt limit fight. He can be reached at brian@talkingpointsmemo.com.
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