Race cannot dominate Monroe fire chief pick

Democrats on the Monroe City Council have embarked upon an unwise and disappointing course that puts ideology over good administrative practice.

At the last Council meeting, the trio rejected independent Mayor Friday Ellis’ nomination of 24-year veteran Daniel Overturf to become the next fire chief of the city. He would have replaced longtime chief Terry Williams. The two Republican councilors supported the decision.

The vote perturbed the union that represents the Monroe Fire Department’s and apparently much of the rank-and-file, a number of whom appeared in his support at the meeting. An anonymous survey sent out revealed 85 percent of respondents approved of Overturf’s nomination, and numerous professionals recommended him. He was one of 17 to take and pass the hiring exam, which was conducted through the state, for the position, ranking tenth on education and experience.

Black voter antipathy to Broome denies last term

And now Louisiana can say its second through eighth largest cities have Republican chief executives (and the ninth-largest has a non-Democrat; fifth largest will be St. George whose first elected mayor inevitably should come from the GOP), now that East Baton Rouge Parish has elected Republican Sid Edwards to boot out of office current Democrat Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome – thanks to black voters.

Broome had a fight on her hands for a third term when she trailed Edwards by five percentage points in the general election, not even cracking 30 percent of the multi-candidate field. Incumbents showing that poorly are in trouble, and this weekend Edwards, a high school football coach of renown and school administrator but rookie politician, closed the deal with voters.

He did it because of turnout. The 331 precincts can be parsed by race of registrants to determine this, assigning these to “favorable” or “unfavorable” precincts for each candidate, where from Broome a favorable precinct was one with greater than 80 percent black registrants – overwhelmingly Democrats – and an unfavorable one was where more than 80 percent of registrants were white – a plurality if not a majority of Republican typically. For Edwards, the definitions for each would swap.