Political Analyst Dishes the Dirt on Shreveport Mayor's Race

Local policital analyst Elliot Stonecipher gets down to the nitty-gritty in the Shreveport mayor's race.

He told KEEL's Robert and Erin that an ad agency has been making inquiries on rates at local radio and TV stations on behalf of former Caddo Schools Superintendent Ollie Tyler. Stonecipher called that "interesting and important."

"Not only that she is, therefore, the Cedric Glover/Mary Landrieu machine candidate, but it's also important that there seem to be some establishment folks in downtown Shreveport who are getting on the Ollie Tyler bandwagon right from the top," he said. "And frankly, that surprises me, because anybody who scratches just below the surface will find out that there are a lot of very, very tough questions already surfacing about whether or not Ollie Tyler can actually, and should actually, be a candidate for mayor."

Stonecipher said some of them are things that can be talked about openly, like Tyler's job performance when she was schools superintendent. Others are personal issues that would become public should she become mayor.

"These are extremely upsetting kinds of rumors that are out there that, frankly, in all the years I've been doing this, I've never heard of these kinds of things. And it makes me wonder - I know she's not unpopular. Why would people go there, which is way over the line into personal issues?" he said. "I think there are a lot of questions that need to be answered. There's certainly a lot of charges that are being levied. I'm certainly not going to be spreading them until we know whether or not there's anything to them."

Stonecipher said former mayor Keith Hightower, who's said to be weighing a decision on running, would be the wild card in this race.

"He affects much of what happens to another of these candidates, Patrick Williams," he said. "Everything flows from whether or not there is a, bluntly, white candidate in the race because of what that means, obviously, in the crossover vote between black and white voters."

A lot remains to be decided, with the election not coming up until November 4. Listen to what else Elliot Stonecipher had to say: