*Promoted from the Diaries. – Aaron*

Once again, Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana for the person on Twitter who once called me out for not listing in the first mention that she was a Democrat) is trying to retain her seat in the U.S. Senate by doing the exact same thing she’s done the rest of the race – say nothing.

Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu is out with a new campaign ad touting the importance of her seniority in Congress, spoken by a Louisiana shipbuilder who is also a Republican.

“Even though I’m a Republican and don’t always agree with her, Louisiana can’t afford to lose Mary Landrieu,” says Donald “Boysie” Bollinger, whose shipyard in Lockport, La., employs 3,000 workers.

Bollinger is a former state finance chairman of the Louisiana Republican Party.

It should not shock you that the above write-up is from USA Today, which is always glad to let us know when a Republican agrees with them on something.

The ad is a pretty run-of-the-mill endorsement from someone no one in the state actually knows. All you need to know is that he’s a Republican who supports Landrieu. Why? Because she’s the chair of the Senate Energy Committee and that is the most important position someone from Louisiana can hold.

Like most advertisements Mary Landrieu has run this campaign season, it mentions nothing about what she’s actually done to help the energy lobby in Louisiana, which is a substantial force in Louisiana lobbying. Big Energy is most certainly gunning for her to win, considering she knows exactly what to do to bring them extra money.

What the ad conveniently omits, just like the last ad that touted her spot on the Energy Committee, is that she voted for the approval of Rhea Suh’s nomination to the Department of the Interior. Suh, a wonderful fit for the Obama Interior, once said ““The pace and magnitude of this [natural gas] development is easily the single greatest threat to the ecological integrity of the West,” which, if you didn’t know, is exactly the opposite of what Louisiana energy industry needs someone in the Department of the Interior to say.

But, she’s on the Energy Committee! She chairs it! That means something, right?

Her first ad (which most news outlets either forgot or ignore, and which her campaign pulled from online) touted her efforts to tell Obama to keep his “if you like it, you can keep it” promise. She also had the Senate Majority PAC (which has ties to Harry Reid) and the Patriot Majority USA PAC running ads attacking both Bill Cassidy and the Koch Brothers. She’s got nothing to run on of note, basically, and needs others to campaign for her. So far, Americans For Prosperity and the National Republican Senatorial Committee are the only ones to run any attack ads against Landrieu, with all three GOP candidates retaining their money for the moment.

However, as I will say regarding every post I write about Mary Landrieu, do not underestimate Mary Landrieu in an election.