Bossier Parish featured few
competitive contests where establishment political forces essentially ran the
table. State Rep.-elect Dodie Horton succeeded her boss, state Rep. Henry Burns
who chose to run for the state Senate, easily, while chief to the present Clerk
of Court Jill Sessions took that job with as little difficulty. Incumbents won
the other few contested races in the parish.
In contests where the major portion
of the district resided in Bossier, only Burns found himself in a runoff, with
fellow Republican Ryan Gatti who had
tried to present himself as the more conservative alternative to Burns in one
of the most conservative Senate districts in the state – unconvincingly. Gatti
appears willing as a legislator to roll back effective education reforms and
of legislative candidates was one of the top
recipients of campaign money from trial
lawyers: tort reform looks to be a legislative priority for next year, and
this support indicates Gatti would oppose reforms to improve what the American
Tort Reform Association identifies as one of the worst
state legal environments in the country.
Add to these his relationship with
gubernatorial candidate state Rep. John
Bel Edwards, who has voted as a liberal Democrat on most issues in his
career, so if Edwards can pull the upset to win the governor’s race Gatti would
be unlikely to oppose vigorously his leftist policy preferences, and
conservatives must question whether he can be an effective voice for them. Ironically,
his push to appear as a conservative coupled with Burns' long history in office with
many years of that as a Democrat gives Burns as decisive edge in the runoff
phase.
In Caddo, incumbents and their
facsimiles did well for the most part. Incumbent legislators running met with
little resistance, and former Shreveport Mayor Cedric Glover recaptured his old
House seat, breaking a streak where the five previous mayors either did not try
or failed to return to an elective office of some kind. Former appellate Judge James Stewart ran first in what
promises to be a close contest for First Judicial District Attorney.
The exception was for Parish
Commission. In recent years, the body has gained notoriety for its flights of
fanciful spending, on projects such as three-wheeled
cars and on its own members in terms of salary
and benefits, as well as its efforts to try first to abolish, then to lengthen,
term limits. Most controversially it has come under fire for an unconstitutional
scheme regarding member health benefits that has continued for nearly two
decades.
That’s not something constituents
in Democrat-majority districts have seemed too concerned about, perhaps because
relatively few tax dollars come from these to finance parish government. Those
incumbents cruised back into office, with the exception of Michael Williams,
whom a grand
jury indicted this spring for defrauding the Parish, with the trial
pending. He narrowly trailed challenger Democrat and former Glover staffer Steven
Jackson into a runoff, where he must be considered the underdog.
The two Republicans’ performances
were shakier. Commissioner Jim Smith held off Parker Ward, a perennial candidate
for local offices who performed far better this time out, while Commissioner
John Escude’ saw his political career effectively ended when he failed to make
the runoff for District 8 that will feature retired law enforcement officer Mike Middleton and Metropolitan
Planning Commission chairwoman Lea Desmarteau.
While Escude’ had served as the
commissioner from the district for much of the last two decades, with an
interlude out of office over a residency change, the conservative district
finally tired of his unreliability as a conservative, as he was one of the
biggest cheerleaders for parish government as venture capitalist and for diluting
term limits, and in defending the part-time commissioners’ lucrative
compensation. That hubris overriding good sense was what led me to run against
him in his first try for that office, and it finally caught up to him in the
electoral arena.
By contrast, a Republican commissioner
initially believed by observers to face a tough battle, Matthew Linn, won a
final term going away. He faced a presumably quality opponent in former Democrat
and Caddo Parish School Board member Charlotte Crawley, but Linn’s record was
less profligate and self-aggrandizing than the likes of Escude’ (for a travel
budget that
faced criticism, at least his expenditures seemed to reflect education in
government, while others like Escude’ apparently spent theirs on junkets). Even
though Crawley ran as an other party candidate in the conservative district,
in 2014 voters were even less enamored with the School Board than they were
with the Commission this year, and undoubtedly this impression carried over to
her nearly four-to-one defeat.
No comments:
Post a Comment