BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) – A failed effort to push approval of the Keystone XL pipeline through Congress behind her, Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu now faces an even greater challenge to win a runoff election next month.
After narrowly leading the field on Nov. 4 as her party lost control of the Senate, Landrieu had pinned her bid for re-election on championing approval for the long-delayed Canada-to-Texas pipeline during the lame-duck Congress. While the pipeline would not pass through Louisiana, it would serve as a ready-made example of her clout in Washington for voters in a state with a robust oil and gas industry.
“I took to the floor of the United States Senate and used the power that comes from being a senator representing one of the great states in this nation to force a debate on an issue that I felt strongly about,” Landrieu said not long after she and pipeline supporters in the Senate fell one vote shy of the 60 they need the advance the measure.
Complicating matters was the fact that Landrieu’s runoff opponent, GOP Rep. Bill Cassidy, is able to tell voters that the Keystone XL pipeline bill he authored was approved with ease in the Republican-led House. “The Senate should have approved it today,” Cassidy said in a statement. “It should have approved it six years ago.”
As Landrieu now looks ahead to the Dec. 6 runoff election, the raw math of the Louisiana electorate remains a hurdle. Even before the pipeline effort failed, there was evidence in the results from the first round of voting on Election Day that a Keystone XL success wouldn’t have been enough to help Landrieu in the parts of Louisiana where it would matter most.