GOP retaining House majority gets Landry off hook

As Republican Gov. Jeff Landry tries to shepherd home far-reaching reforms in Louisiana’s fiscal structure that would enhance his political stature, it looks as if he avoided a major hit to that with his party retaining control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

While the solid victory of GOP former Pres. Donald Trump will return him to office next Jan. 20 and appeared to aid in a pickup of four U.S. Senate seats, it’s looking largely stasis for the House. With about a dozen races still not definitively decided at this writing but several leaning the party’s way, it seems the House will remain in Republican hands and, in fact, projected to have the same number of seats, 220.

That, of course, is good news for the state’s Republican majority delegation, but really good news for GOP Reps. Mike Johnson and Steve Scalise. Johnson serves as the speaker and Scalise the majority leader, the top two positions in the chamber. The unprecedented tenure of the pair coming from the same state in those positions can continue only if Republicans retain control of the House.

Shreveport pollster goes big, goes home big

If you think Democrats with Vice Pres. Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket just suffered a disastrous showing, wait until you hear about the launch of the Shreveport-based polling firm that went all in and then some predicting the opposite for her campaign.

Vantage Data House operates on a subscription-based model. Rather than a one-shot picture in time of a particular race or a few, subscribers have access to an entire database and can pick from many contests nationally. It claims a proprietary method that relies upon information about a respondent’s residence, party registration, race, age, and gender. The firm appears to have been running in background for perhaps a year or more, apparently gathering a national panel of voters up to 40,000 a state through the web. It claims it called correctly 29 of 30 Louisiana contests last year in a test run, and so recently rolled out the entire operation focusing on national contests this year.

It announced itself about 10 days prior to the election with a lengthy web document predicting not only that Harris would defeat Republican former Pres. Donald Trump in the so-called “swing states” minus Wisconsin plus Florida, but that nationally it would be a “blowout” in her favor. It went to length justifying its conclusions, along the way stating “Many [independent polls] prefer to be wrong with the crowd rather than risk standing as outliers, so they adjust their numbers and reinforce the faulty averages,” “Republicans are in serious trouble, though few are willing to acknowledge it,” and “A significant widening of the gender gap and Harris’ growing support among independents … is propelling her toward a potential 300+ electoral college victory.”

Except EBR, LA wraps up unexciting elections

Louisiana’s unexciting 2024 election season ended mostly with a wimper, discouraging political consultants and media outlets that endured races with little competition and controversy that stimulated less spending for their services and an early end to almost all further opportunities.

That’s because any national or state race of consequence ended this election day with little suspense. With the Supreme Court contest already decided through litigation, Republican state Sen. Jean-Paul Coussan rolled over the competition to secure the Public Service Commission District 2 post (and a good thing he won’t take office until next year, as GOP Gov. Jeff Landry can use every vote from the political right in the Legislature to help his fiscal reform package into being during the special session beginning this week). That reinforces the PSC’s Republican majority of 3-2.

This was the biennial interval without a Senate race, and all congressional incumbents won back their seats handily. In the one race not featuring any the only question was whether black Democrat state Sen. Cleo Fields would win outright without a runoff in a majority-minority district built for him (for now) when he headed the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee. He did – barely over black Republican former state Sen. Elbert Guillory.

LA case set to redefine reapportionment law

Louisiana will find itself at the epicenter of reapportionment jurisprudence, the U.S. Supreme Court signaled this week.

The Court essentially scheduled hearing Robinson v. Callais, consolidating two cases. Two years the Court decided a case, the Milligan decision, that elevated race as a primary consideration over others in reapportionment, relying on past interpretations that didn’t explicitly do so. That framework was used in the Louisiana Robinson case to justify enjoining, without a full trial, reapportionment of congressional districts that didn’t include two majority-minority districts of the state’s six on the basis that black population proportion roughly be reflected in district demographics.

The state responded by drawing a new map, but creating a congressional district that made race the obviously dominant criterion, in violation of the law and past Court decisions. A special three-judge panel ruled as such in the Callais case. The new combined case, where the Robinson plaintiffs and the state, which claims all it wants is clarity in how to proceed, have sued the Callais defendants, allows the Court to evaluate the decision throwing out the two M/M map.

Left tries to reverse LA retreat surreptitiously

As Louisiana’s political left fights to halt a retreat that has accelerated over the past year with the election of Republican Gov. Jeff Landry and the most conservative Legislature ever, its tactics have begun to rely more heavily on subterfuge and “useful idiots.”

Although thought to have originated from Soviet strongman Vladimir Lenin to describe non-communist sympathizers to communism, the term seems to have come from Western European communists referring to other leftist political parties. It has evolved these days into a term more closely associated with economist Ludwig von Mises’ “useful innocents,” or people generally unaware or uncaring of the implications of a radical political agenda but who agree with its propagation for their own reasons unrelated to the underlying ideology.

Where the left understands it cannot control majoritarian political institutions or public opinion, it seeks out indirect ways, using nondemocratic agents if necessary, to try to advance its policy agenda. Some recent examples in Louisiana demonstrate the left’s willingness to find more ways to skin a cat to force its unloved agenda into policy.

Bossier schools myths prevent real tax cuts

A little more in desperation mode, the Bossier Parish School Board followed the Bossier Police Jury’s formula regarding property tax rates, relying upon an old mythology undoubtedly implicitly adhered to by all if not eagerly propagated by at least one board member willing to display his ignorance in public.

This week, the Board met in special session to establish rates on five millages for 2024. It had been levying 65.10 mills, behind only Zachary Community, Grant Parish, and Caddo Parish schools (2022-23 data). This meeting had been postponed from last month, when the Board seemed poised to roll forward rates. Every quadrennial reassessment levied rates automatically roll back to a point where those times total value of all properties not improved and under the same ownership equals that value from four years ago times previous rates; to roll forward and go above the rolled-back rates requires a two-thirds or better votes by the taxing entity.

Bossier Parish had sent the same signal, only to back down by raising four of their five but reducing its library rate more than the total rolled forward, in essence lowering overall rates. The Board played follow-the-leader and did something similar. Of its five, only four were subject to rollback, as the debt service one at 14.50 mills is exempt, and of those four the 10.31 mills salary and benefits and 10.31 mills operations and maintenance were ineligible to roll forward because they were just recently renewed, leaving just the constitutionally-set millage of 3.41 mills (due to roll back to 3.07) and the other 26.57 mills salary and benefits (due to roll back to 23.92) available to roll forward.