Election reformist tide swamps BC insiders

The clean sweep starting in 2021 of Bossier City elected majoritarian branch officials that was completed last week also resulted in a near clean sweep of Bossier political insiders in favor of reformers, the latest city elections produced.

Exactly four years ago the city was being run by a mayor with 16 years in office and a set of city councilors who had among them 127 years of service. Come Jul. 1, it will have a mayor of 4 years in and combined service among councilors of just 12 years. None will have been in office more than four years.

Moreover, this rolling revolution will put a majority of reformers outside of the current political establishment in charge of the Council, a first in the city’s history. In their rookie terms, both Republicans Chris Smith and Brian Hammons left no doubt as to their reformist chops. They will be joined the GOP’s Cliff Smith, who through his activities as a concerned citizen left no doubt of that status.

There is the possibility that two other newcomers would cement that majority. Republican Joel Girouard said all the right reform things in his campaign, such as it was since he ran unopposed for a vacated seat. His political donation history shows just two gifts: one for GOP state Sen. Adam Bass, a former Bossier Parish School Board member who is part of that in crowd, but also to Republican state Rep. Michael Melerine who has reformist credentials from his time in the Legislature and as a member of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Not sharing such credentials in education is Republican Craton Cochran. While he also said all of the right reformist things in the campaign, and as a result picking up the endorsement of Chris Smith and Hammons, he ran as an independent previously for the BPSB in a district basically overlapping his father Jimmy’s who always has run as a Democrat. Nor in his short time on the BPSB did he vote differently from the get-along-go-along crowd there.

That potentially either of these two could disappoint is what makes the election of Democrat challenger Debra Ross over independent incumbent Jeff Darby crucial to reformist sentiments. The Darby clan – two of his siblings are in elective office currently and another just retired from one – have been dug in like ticks on a hound since the 1980s in the District 2 area. Yet not only did Ross defeat Darby, she waxed the floor with him, much like nearby District 1 did to its incumbent Republican Scott Irwin in 2021, paving the way for Hammons. Ross was an ardent member of the term limits coalition that blew up the establishment.

That means there are with surety four reform of seven councilors, and perhaps as many as six. And it came within fewer than 40 votes of being a possible clean sweep, with the GOP’s Vince Maggio barely staving of Republican challenger Ruth Pope Johnston by that much. Given his trajectory of spending (at least $25,000 of his own cash), he’s likely to break the record of most bucks spent per voter, as well as most ever spent on a Council race. In 2017 Irwin spent just over $20 a voter to win his last reelection. It wouldn’t be surprising to see Maggio go over $50 a vote.

This widespread rejection of the powers that be started in 2021 with the election of Chris Smith, Hammons (in a special election later that year), and GOP Mayor Tommy Chandler as a complaint against a perceived dynastic rule (dumping 39 years of councilor experience and 16 years of mayoral experience, represented by an octogenarian who wanted a fifth term that would have taken him to 91 years of age) and all voicing support for term limits as a solution to that.

Then, that struck something of a chord with voters, which went on steroids over the next four years when the four Council graybeards who had reentered office teamed with Maggio to conduct the most over-the-top, scorched-earth campaign (that eventually drew judicial disapprobation) to block citizens efforts to enact strict term limits. The Bossier City public, disproportionately transient and newer to the area that made it notoriously apathetic, was roused enough by such an arrogant display of self-interest that they began paying attention to a raft of policy decisions that also smacked too much of insider elected official self-interest and not enough in the people’s interest, resulting in several determined candidates all of whom except Johnston triumphed by ballot or by discouraging incumbents to continue their careers.

Much more can be said about the future direction the city will take now that reformers have seized, perhaps decisively so, control of the Council, as well as the factors behind and the meaning of voter rejection of the attempted new “amended and restated” Charter. For now, however, the big question is this: does the solidly reformist Council now “free” Chandler to act as a reformer that arguably having five votes against him squelched this to the point that he didn’t even try? Or is the cypher Chandler who might as well have been a cardboard cutout in his office except to acquiesce apparently in stupid decisions who will govern the next four years. Inquiring voters would like to know.