we saw that...

foti waffles on breaux citizenship opinion

**updated 7:58 pm cdt friday 13 april 2007**

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BATON ROUGE -- Former U.S. Sen. John Breaux has decided not to be a candidate for governor.

“Ever since Gov. Kathleen Blanco announced she was not running for re-election I have expressed my strong interest in running for governor," Breaux said in a release through the state Democratic Party.

"I did so because I have received an enormous amount of encouragement and numerous requests to enter the race from people across our state.

"My interest would be to provide leadership in order to help bring our people together, regardless of party. The issues of health care, education, economic growth, crime and many others need to be our focus, and solutions can only be achieved with bipartisan cooperation," he said.

"Because questions were raised about my eligibility to run and efforts were made to prevent my running through advertising attacks, I said that I would be guided by an opinion of our attorney general.

"I have always felt that this issue needed to be settled as soon as possible so that the governor’s election could be about the important challenges we face and not about me personally.”

Breaux's decision came about six hours after Attorney General Charles Foti declined to issue an opinion on whether his previous residence in the state, his serving Louisiana in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate were sufficient to meet the state constitutional requirement of being a citizen.

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"I must refrain from rendering an opinion on the ultimate issue of whether Mr. Breaux meets the qualifications to become a candidate in the governor’s race."