The race to fill the United States Senate seat of retiring U.S. Senator David Vitter has all the excitement of watching cracklin get hard under a heat lamp. If this sort of analogy seems very similar to last year's Governor's election then you'd be correct in your observations.

The reason Louisiana's Senate race is so lackluster at the moment is because the focus is on the U.S. President's race. That race, who the nominees are and what their perceived platform will be is going to play a part in the eventual outcome of what candidates are in the final runoff for the Senate.

Right now a runoff is the common thinking among political observers such as Joshua Stockley a political science professor at the University of Louisiana at Monroe.

And I still think the state is in a position, we could have a two Republican runoff, we might have a Republican-Democrat runoff. It depends on what kind of traction (Democrat) Caroline Fayard picks up.

Stockley's comments were reported by the Louisiana Radio Network. He went on to day that Fayard is one of three Democrats seeking the Senate seat. The others are Foster Campbell and Josh Pellerin.  On the Republican side Charles Boustany, Joseph Cao, John Fleming, John Kennedy and Rob Maness are also vying for the U.S. Senate seat. There is one candidate that is running as an Independent and that candidate is Troy Hebert.

Stockley believes after the summer political conventions this race will start to heat up like an August afternoon.

Come August, I really expect this race to heat up. The candidates will start putting their money in advertising and I think the voters will be more attuned.

Up until that time chances are you will see the candidates going about their business of fund raising and generating name recognition across the state while flying not to high on the public radar.  Then we fully expect the mud to fly and the political action committee dollars to come rolling into the state.

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