With only three weeks left until the critical runoff vote in Louisiana for her Senate seat which she failed to recapture last Tuesday, Sen. Mary Landrieu is throwing what some are calling a ‘Hail Mary’ pass in hopes that voters will forget the ire with which they rejected her.
The Keystone XL pipeline project, which proposes to connect oil rich Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, has been stalled in the Senate for six years with Harry Reid and Democrat giving deference to the far-left environmental agenda of the Obama administration by refusing to pass the House’s approval of the project.
Until now, this has been a convenient situation for Landrieu in which she could talk in pro-petroleum terms to her constituents in oil-rich Louisiana while sitting comfortably in DC knowing her Democrat Senate colleagues wouldn’t force a vote on the matter.
But with only weeks left in the fight for her political life, a vote on the pipeline looks to be the only chance she has of currying favor with the voters, and it means she’ll have to publicly oppose Democrat leadership in the Senate which will remain in control through the end of the lame-duck session.
Calling on Democrats to move on the project, Landrieu blasted from the Senate floor this week, “I don’t think we necessarily need to wait until [the next session]. I’m going to do everything in my power here and at home on the campaign trail, where I’m still in a runoff, as you know, to get this project moving forward.”
After her three-hour rant from the floor, reports indicate that Landrieu secured commitments from House and Senate leaders to hold a vote on an override of the Executive Branch to approve the pipeline next week. But whether that eventuality will be enough to make up the difference between her approval rating and that of Republican opponent Bill Cassidy remains to be seen.
