Answer to closed primary problems: more of them

The semi-closed primary is not a problem for, but a prime solution to fix, Louisiana’s lagging policy-making system.

In its session, the Legislature will vet a couple of bills to remove from the closed primary roster Board of Elementary and Secondary Education contests. Currently, all federal offices plus the multiple executives of BESE and the Public Service Commission, plus the Supreme Court, fall under the semi-closed primary system (“semi” because true closed primaries don’t allow unaffiliated voters to choose a party’s primary in which to vote, which gets tricky given the jurisprudence involved). That means all local, state legislative, state single executive, district court, and appellate court races remain under the blanket primary system.

Proponents of this small rollback argue for it by saying BESE elections are the only ones on the year-before-presidential-elections calendar by which all other state non-judicial elections except the PSC occur, which creates an extra set of elections with additional costs and could confuse voters with no other blanket primary races on primary election days (the remainder of the bunch all occur during even-numbered years at the state and federal level where only closed primaries are). But this is a backwards way of considering the issue. It’s not that BESE closed primaries add cost and may confuse, but that the extra cost should absorb all state races as well in replacing the blanket primary system for all contests at every level with a closed primary of some kind.

Legislator wants to make youths dumber still

As the world moves on from myths of the past, one Louisiana legislator keeps trying to move the state backwards, to the detriment of its citizens’ health.

The latest attempt from Democrat state Rep. Candace Newell in HB 373 would create a pilot program that legalizes recreational marijuana. Essentially, it allows the legal dispensaries of medical marijuana to set up separate shops to sell weed for any use. It’s just the latest variation on several tries over the years she has backed to do what almost half of the states have done, legalize pot in some fashion.

Of course, the rules surrounding medical marijuana in Louisiana are so fast and loose that the herb almost already is practically legal for casual consumption, but this approach at least would remove the charade and hassle of getting some kind of medical authorization for its use (not that marijuana has almost no valid use as a medical treatment of some kind). Fortunately, recently legislators have begun to push back, with some help from Congress, but hardly successfully.

Facts, logic doom simplistic CCS argument

A Louisiana legislator recently delivered a spirited defense of lightly-regulated carbon sequestration, but omitted the bigger picture that significantly weakens her argument.

Republican state Rep. Jessica Domangue had a piece in The Hayride that made a subsidized economic argument for carbon storage. Essentially, she asserted that additional regulation on storage – such as having local option on whether to allow it, restricting expropriation of/expanding compensation for land used, placing additional restrictions on pipelines to transport it, or even outright bans on storage or transport, with all of these ideas encapsulated in almost two dozen bills that the Legislature will consider this session – would hamper the ability of transporters and storers of it directly or indirectly to take advantage of tax credits that cover in part the methods of capture and thereafter to take advantage of stringent environmental regulations promulgated in Europe that will provide a market for it. This is done through a credit scheme, where the storer certifies the capture and a carbon producer can buy or register the credit to stay under the limits that then allows sales to Europe.

In other words, she argues that free money is there for the taking, in the form of the tax and carbon credits, offset only by the costs of impounding and storing carbon, typically in what are called “pore” spaces (usually fairly deep) underground. Making it harder to consummate the deal, as these bills would do, impedes this extra economic development.

Generally, Landry speech promises more of same

Republican Gov. Jeff Landry didn’t say much specifically about how he would get Louisiana to go where he wanted, but when he did, he didn’t mince words.

At the start of the 2026 Regular Session of the Louisiana Legislature, Landry delivered the annual State of the State speech that governors give. Much of it reflected upon past actions of the Legislature in the past year that he had supported which produced desirable results.

He lauded the state’s rapid rise in education rankings, which in part happened through the efforts outside the direct forces of Landry and legislators through the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education efforts and those of Superintendent Cade Brumley. He lightly emphasized that increased of the GATOR educational savings accounts at a higher level, as he has budgeted, would expand choice and accountability to keep the momentum going, but perhaps knowing this was a heavy lift he didn’t get into rebuttals to criticism of the request.

Hot issues make upcoming session less predictable

Remarks by legislative leaders shows this upcoming legislative session likely will develop into the most contentious of this term – and not because of Democrats’ agenda.

When Republican Gov. Jeff Landry and the current crop of GOP legislators kicked off their terms in 2024, they largely were on the same page, such was the consensus around the excesses – both in priorities pursued and blocked – of the Democrat former Gov. John Bel Edwards Administration and the factions he empowered in the Legislature. That continued almost unabated in 2025, with perhaps a slight fraying.

However, 2026 looks to expose some significant fractures among Republicans, from the Governor’s Mansion on down to backbenchers. A vast gulf exists between the lot of them and Democrats, of course, with the minority party so enfeebled that it’s unlikely anything a majority of that party wants will make it into law. Yet several issues may divide Republicans, along axes of the leadership vs. Landry and a significant number of GOP legislators (particularly in the House) or the leadership and Landry vs. many in the party.

Bossier Council sidelines BAC, ups Boardwalk ante

While this week’s Bossier City Council meeting drew plenty of attention to the fate of the Bossier Arts Council, it undertook a much more far-reaching action.

The Council, after a two-week delay, voted formally to evict the BAC from the its city-owned digs as well as cut off any contracts or grants from the city. Another ordinance disallowed any nongovernmental organization from receiving city grants unless it did not appear on the Louisiana Legislative Auditor’s noncompliance list, issued annually in February.

Practically speaking, this means that the BAC will have to vamoose by Mar. 24 and it loses its contract to manage the East Bank Plaza, worth $50,000 annually (unless the Council shockingly reverses itself on second reading), as well as any opportunity to receive grants from the city for now. It already has drawn on in its entirety its $80,000 grant for this year. To be eligible for a future grant, it would have to get into compliance with the LLA, meaning it completes an audit for each of the last three years.

LA 2026 Senate race looking like 2008 CD4 contest

Excuse Republican Treas. John Fleming if he wants to party like it’s 2008, because to date there is considerable congruence between the election that introduced him to Congress the next year and the one that could propel him to the Senate in 2027.

In the most recent poll fewer than three months out from the GOP primary election, Fleming held a lead of nearly ten points on his closest rival Republican Rep. Julia Letlow, who was up a few points on GOP incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy. Letlow’s and Cassidy’s numbers tracked similarly to those of a poll released a few days earlier, while Fleming had expanded his share by several points.

Cassidy’s campaign dynamics are such that he really only can make a runoff by attacking and flipping votes from Letlow, which eventually may not be enough to succeed yet will detach voters from her that don’t want Cassidy, mainly for a series of poor decisions, and therefore will settle on Fleming, who at this juncture with certainty would defeat Cassidy in a runoff and probably win over Letlow if, benefitting from the endorsements of Republican Pres. Donald Trump and GOP Gov. Jeff Landry, she hangs on despite an effective ethics attack deployed by Cassidy surrogates. The reason this is a realistic, if not the most likely, scenario is because Fleming has gone through this before and come out on top.

System should complete welcome LSU change

You win some, you lose some with the Louisiana State University Board of Supervisors, who recently took a belated two steps forward and one step back in admissions policy for the state’s flagship university.

Last week at the Board’s bi-monthly meeting it adjusted LSU’s admission standards. Since 2018, the Board has been out of compliance with Board of Regents standards by granting admission to a greater proportion of students scoring below a 22 on the ACT standardized test (in other words, those in the bottom fourth-sevenths of all takers) than Board rules permit. For the past eight years the Regents spinelessly allowed LSU to flout the rules.

But now, the pendulum has swung back – at least halfway. Starting for next fall, taking the ACT will be required for admission for students with a high school grade point average of below 3.5, and then for all the year after. In the past it was optional, so for those students not taking it (or not choosing to submit a score to LSU) they were evaluated on mostly subjective criteria.

Arceneaux campaign receives good, bad news

Republican Mayor Tom Arceneaux acquired another arrow in his quiver for reelection, even as he picked up his most serious challenger to date for that.

Last week, S&P Global announced a change in outlook for Shreveport’s credit rating. Maintaining its current call of BBB+ – the lowest investment grade category – it did cite a better outlook of “stable” rather than “negative.” The latter means a downgrade was more likely than an upgrade, which would have meant higher borrowing costs in the future, with the former meaning no change either way anticipated.

This declaration in and of itself doesn’t affect anything substantively, but it carries beneficial positive symbolism for Arceneaux’s quest, especially coming from the rationale stating why the rating agency made the change. The city has maintained a commitment to its 8 percent operating reserve target in the general fund, which he fought for in the 2026 budget, against some pressure to dip more into it for increased spending.

Poll shows Cassidy still trapped in death spiral

The death spiral of Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy’s Senate career continues, according to a new poll. Worse for him, there’s little he can do about it.

The firm Quantus Insights released results polling the contest, where he faces major challengers for the GOP nomination in the forms of Treas. John Fleming and Rep. Julia Letlow, from earlier this week. They show Fleming at 34 percent, Letlow at 25 percent, and Cassidy at 20 percent, leaving another 20 percent or so undecided.

It’s hard to shoot the messenger on this one. The firm isn’t affiliated with a campaign – not that this disqualifies such a poll, for as long as the protocol (question orderings and their wordings and answers) is unbiased, the sampling frame reasonable and sufficiently large, and the contact methods of respondents can produce that desired sampling frame, it (barring unhappy randomization, i.e. a bad sample) will produce valid and reliable results for the population of voters – and this appears to be a quality poll (although a bit vague on the specific sampling procedure and claiming it captured “likely” voters, including those unaffiliated that historically have voted for Republicans as both GOP registrants and those registered without affiliation may participate in the primary, without spelling out that procedure). Unless it drew that one-out-of-twenty bad sample, this is reality.