So far U.S. Sen. David Vitter’s gubernatorial campaign has been sadly lacking in substance

The frenetic end to this year’s governor’s race has gotten me pining, strangely enough, for its beginning.

Months before the airwaves filled to the brim with nasty attack ads, the four major candidates spoke to an industry gathering of engineers and contractors about how Louisiana government works and doesn’t. Here was my take at the time: “Each was able to talk in detail about funding roadwork and coastal restoration, reforming the rainy day fund and revising capital outlay. … In short, each showed off an impressive mastery of the complexities of state government.”

Even before that, I’d noted that U.S. Sen. David Vitter, then and now the dominant force in the campaign, was showing signs of softening his notoriously harsh, partisan edges. Vitter had cracked open the door to expanding Medicaid, in contrast with Gov. Bobby Jindal’s no-compromise position, and he’d started paying occasional lip service to the concerns of the poor and vulnerable. He’d also broken with Jindal on framing the debate over the Common Core education standards as one more battle in the great culture wars — a stance he later reversed. He seemed, for a time, to be positioning himself as something like a healer.

I know the primary is less than three weeks away, but is it too late to get that governor’s race back?

Read more: http://theadvocate.com/news/opinion/13630115-63/stephanie-grace-so-far-us