Race-baiting Richmond feeling suprising heat in contest

With the contest for the Second Congressional District staying closer than almost anybody had imagined it would be at this point, both incumbent Republican Rep. Anh “Joseph” Cao and Democrat challenger state Rep. Cedric Richmond have turned up the heat as it still remains too close to call.

While a recent Public Policy Polling effort gave Richmond a 49-38 percent lead (margin of error of four percent), the PPP, which does work exclusively for Democrats, has its polls sampled and questions written and ordered in a way to favor Democrats to the tune of, historically in Louisiana at least, about 10 points when compared to independent polls. Thus, an independent poll (none have been done recently) probably would show Richmond with a narrow lead.

Cao realizes he’s on the cusp yet maybe slipping away – especially since candidate for lieutenant governor and liberal lawyer Democrat Caroline Fayard got into a runoff and therefore can excite her New Orleans base to turn out for Richmond – and launched a media initiative questioning Richmond’s ethical comportment. After all, this strategy, in a much more understated fashion, got Cao past then-indicted, now-convicted former Rep. William Jefferson in 2008.

But while being indicted is one thing, Richmond’s ethical lapses are seen by many in his district as other, trivial things. A number don’t care about his ignoring reporting requirements, law license suspension, lying about his residency for candidate qualification purposes, or bar fights. And while allegations that Richmond used his position in the state legislature to steer money to favored nonprofit recipients and commercial enterprises wouldn’t draw a yawn, in fact it would be expected as part of the mentality shared by many in the district that government is there first and foremost to provide spoils to victors as part of a broader mandate to redistribute wealth.

More interesting is Richmond’s response to Cao’s bringing this information to wider public attention. Defending himself in relation to the revelation that taxpayer dollars allocated to him for office space rental that was going to landlords that are his political supporters, Richmond claimed the rates he got from them were below market.

This nugget of information ought to perk up state auditors and Louisiana’s Board of Ethics. By charging him less than what the going rate would appear to be, and by his accepting that, it could be argued an improper influence relationship was created in that they gained influence not available to others by giving him a break on rent, a situation Richmond should have realized. This doesn’t exactly refute the ethical qualms raised about him.

Richmond also went on the attack, asserting through a spokesman that Cao’s publicizing of the information in the media was akin to “trying to take New Orleans politics back to the bad old days of Leander Perez and the White Citizens Council. Mr. Cao clearly thinks that an orchestrated whisper campaign based on racist stereotypes of African-American men will help him win votes, but those shameful race-baiting tactics have no place in today's New Orleans.”

This is a fantastically ignorant remark. If Richmond knew any history at all, he’d know that Perez and members of the WCC were white supremacists prejudiced against Asians as well. If he really thinks there would be some kind of community of interests between the Vietnamese Cao and these folks, or that Cao as a member of a community that has faced its own discrimination by race would condone appeals of the same, he is as stupid as a lot of his votes in the Louisiana Legislature have been.

As he is engaging in a post-modern race-baiting, Richmond must be feeling the heat. You know it’s going to be a bad year for Democrats when a member of the district’s majority racial group likens the campaign by a member of one of the district’s smallest ethnic groups as “racist.”

Legal challenge magnifies need for special session

The deficit drizzle soon may turn into a downpour which strengthens the argument for a special session within a few months of the Louisiana Legislature.

The first order of business is to deal with the results of the mandated Oct. 1 review of the past fiscal year, which for the first in years showed a deficit, of $108 million. Gov. Bobby Jindal is empowered to cut as much as three percent unilaterally from any budget unit with anything past that requiring legislative approval. Doing so on his own across the board would still leave around $28 million to be lopped off but other cost-saving measures might make up the difference.

However, what Jindal should do here is protect the two large areas of state spending that do not rely on constitutionally- or statutorily-protected funding sources, health care and higher education which already have been brutalized way out of proportion in response to previous deficit and reduced revenue forecasts. This would mean having to find even greater cost savings in order not to have legislative involvement.

But it may get almost twice as worse if another revenue source for this year’s budget gets shuffled out of contention by court order. A lawsuit has been filed arguing the Budget Stabilization Fund, from which $198 million was used to balance this fiscal year’s budget, must be refilled from excess mineral revenues this year. Those revenues were counted upon being spent on operating activities instead of going into the Fund.

While Senate lawmakers argued that a 2009 statute removed that requirement, and Jindal signed off on that assertion with his assent to this year’s operating budget, House legislators warned this could not override the Constitutional procedure. That now will be tested in court, and it would take some creative jurisprudence for the state to avoid payback this year, creating another deficit.

(Although it all may be moot, depending on the impact of the needless oil exploration moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico. The refreshment provision kicks in only after $750 million in severance, royalty, rental, and bonus money is collected. The latest forecast pegged that figure at around $1.245 billion, but the moratorium could make it much lower. Still, gas leasing activity may keep things propped up enough.)

This could be altered, amending the Constitution so that the refreshment doesn’t occur in a year in which the Fund gets tapped, but this would require the enabling legislation to put it on the ballot and before the fiscal year is up. That means an April election for amendment approval which means a special session is the only alternative given the timing.

But why not? There’s already good reason to have a special session in order to change the straitjacketed way in which revenues are allocated for spending, requiring statutory and constitutional solutions prior to the end of the fiscal year in June. So now there’s one more imperative to schedule a session no later than the beginning of next year to cue up April statewide votes and hopefully passage of them.

No need for Jindal to give, Dardenne to get, endorsement

It’s simple as to why Gov. Bobby Jindal feels no real need to endorse Sec. of State Jay Dardenne in the special election for Louisiana lieutenant governor: Dardenne doesn’t need the help, and Jindal doesn’t need the potential headache.

As Dardenne is a Republican like Jindal, one might think an endorsement might slip quite naturally from Jindal’s mouth since his opponent is Democrat Caroline Fayard. However, this forgets a political axiom that an elected official shouldn’t endorse somebody unless it helps both the endorser and endorsee politically, a lesson Jindal seems to have learned with his continued silence on the U.S. Senate race to be decided with this contest.

With incumbent Republican Sen. David Vitter running far ahead of challenger Democrat Rep. Charlie Melancon, Vitter doesn’t need the help and Jindal prefers not to associate himself additionally to Vitter as a result of Vitter’s admission of a “serious sin” believed by many as an alleged use of prostitution services years ago. The dynamic on Dardenne’s side is the same here: this is a race he will win easily.

Some people looking at the primary results appear impressed that the newcomer Fayard was able to do so well while the established politician Dardenne didn’t do better. As a commentary on the chances of each in the general election, where some think it might be close, this ignores a few salient points, beginning with the fact that Republican candidates took home 65 percent of the vote in the primary. Given Fayard’s history of financial support of (apparently even in her teens, writing huge campaign contribution checks for) liberal Democrats and her and her family’s close connections to national Democrats, all Dardenne must do is remind voters of this and most voters who went Republican (despite a few with ulterior motives regarding Dardenne) in the primary will pull the lever for Dardenne.

Also, Fayard’s showing appeared more impressive than it really was because of the dynamic in this fall contests at all levels that boosts the chances of “outsiders” to politics. Note how well these people did in this contest: in declining order, 24 percent, 19 percent (although he had run before), 8 percent (although he was an elected official nearly 30 years ago), and 3 percent, or a stunning 54 percent of the vote. As for those currently in office (elected or party), they drew 28 percent, 8 percent, 7 percent, and 4 percent. This vein runs deeply and Fayard ended it up tapping it best not because of any real quality as a candidate, but because she by far outspent the other “outsiders” and best introduced herself to voters looking for a new name.

This might help her out but any assistance this gives her will be more than cancelled by the fact that the Nov. 2 electorate will differ significantly from that of Oct. 2 because the enthusiasm of Republicans and independents voting for the likes of Vitter and GOP House candidates disproportionately will draw them to the polls compared to dispirited Democrats. These voters, typically less interested in politics as indicated by their staying home on Oct. 2 but especially keyed in on partisanship in a year politically toxic almost everywhere for Democrats, will see the “R” next to Dardenne’s name compared to the “D” next to Fayard’s and press his button. Had one of the “outsiders” with an “R” like Sammy Kershaw made it past the primary, then Dardenne would be trouble. Instead, he got the perfect runoff candidate to contrast himself with.

Thus, it would not be surprising for Dardenne to pick up at least 60 percent of the vote, and Jindal knows this. But Dardenne also is Republican whose past votes have revealed an agenda more to the center than the right, and Jindal knows he must preserve his conservative credentials that an endorsement of Dardenne could tarnish. So he gains little by an endorsement. Therefore, it wouldn’t be surprising either if Jindal doesn’t deliver one in this race.

Payment debate instructs on confusion over govt role

What we must understand about government is that it is a necessary evil, and the debate over Louisiana payments to fallen and disabled servicemen provides instruction on how its inherent nature perverts even the best of intentions.

Former Pres. James Madison pointed out that if men were like angels, then no government would be necessary. But given our fallen natures, we are not and thus we contract to government our God-given right of autonomy in exchange for certain things to protect us from ourselves that allow us to maximize our life prospects. But the mistake that often gets made in the process, codified in liberalism, is that what benefits directed to us through government intervention, at the expense of the autonomy of others, are themselves rights even as we fail to understand they are not God-given, but government-given.

In 2007, the state generously decided to award to families of members of the Louisiana National Guard killed in wartime duty $250,000, and to those permanently disabled $100,000. Unfortunately, the program among some has generated envy since it has paid only for casualties since its inception. Others want it extended all the way back to when the hostilities in essence began, Sep. 11, 2001, to award families and affected Guardsman who suffered as far back as then. State officials, recognizing the state is short on money, said they would try to allocate the roughly $8 million to accomplish this.

Notice how suddenly this all became an issue of “fairness.” By creating this extra benefit, the state created a set of beneficiaries which had the effect of allowing others to claim failure to give them the same was a kind of discrimination, confusing the concepts of “benefit” and “right.” Further, this appropriation of what is a “right” for some has mutated into the belief that the state is obligated to supply the resources to allow them to engage in expensive personal growth exercises, such as when one plaintiff says she needs the money to travel the world to attend ceremonies honoring her son and as a “way for us to get through the grieving process.”

Where does it end, this presumed mandatory largesse from government, funded by the confiscation of people’s property? What about the dead and maimed from the Gulf War? And farther back? And shouldn’t police and fire personnel killed in the performance of their duties merit the same amount of aid as a direct appropriation from government? Or what about others who have faced misfortune who didn’t even volunteer to be put into a position of danger? Just within the past two days around Baton Rouge, a stray bullet killed a teenager, a sheriff’s son was victimized in a drive-by shooting, and people gathered to honor the life of a girl also killed by senseless violence. What are these families owed (by government, not by the crimes’ perpetrators), by this logic?

And how about those whose life prospects, through no fault of their own, were radically diminished from their potential from birth? How about a woman like this, should she be given money because of her government-sponsored, legally-caused disability? Or should I get funds to help my “grieving process” when my wife, born with a mutated gene that has robbed her of most of her muscles and forces her to breathe through a machine, finishes her lifespan far shorter than that of the typical person without muscular dystrophy?

There’s a lot of sadness and misfortune in the world and to perceive government as the provider of the resources to compensate for it misunderstands the purpose of government, and places an illegitimate claim on its citizens that turns what should be a gift into an obligation. But that attitude is what happens when we forget what the real nature and purpose of government is and when we allow certain politicians to exploit that or to encourage an inappropriate idea about what government is all about.

Dardenne on ballot, Richmond off ballot big winners

Sec. of State Jay Dardenne continued his political career upwards by drawing the perfect runoff candidate for the lieutenant governor’s job, but perhaps at the sacrifice of any chance that Rep. Ahn “Joseph” Cao had of keeping his job.

The Republican Dardenne led the field in the special election with almost a third of the statewide vote, while political newcomer Democrat Caroline Fayard managed second place with a little under a quarter, edging out entertainer and former candidate Republican Sammy Kershaw. The remainder were in single digits for an office that sparked more intrigue than usual because of widespread belief that current Gov. Bobby Jindal might find himself on the national GOP ticket in 2012, where a win would create a vacancy for the lieutenant governor to move up.

Of course, whoever wins this election must also win next year’s regular election but the Nov. 2 victor certainly would have a leg up in that effort. And that is almost certainly to be Dardenne, who showed the broadest base of support and whose only vulnerability was from the right. Had conservative forces coalesced around a single candidate, with Kershaw clearly being the strongest, he would have finished second to that candidate and the runoff would have been a tossup as Dardenne, whose politics are more to the center than the right, would have attracted voters from the left.

But with perhaps the most liberal candidate opposing him in the runoff, the field his clear for Dardenne to pick up most of the conservative vote now left without a real conservative in the contest. Some who dislike Dardenne and/or who like Jindal may be tempted to vote for Fayard, in order to keep Dardenne out of a position where he could ascend to the governorship and/or to discourage Jindal from being selected as a vice presidential candidate and leaving the state in the hands of (if she were to win in 2011) a liberal Democrat. But this thinking is unrealistic and self-defeating for true conservatives: better to suffer a moderate than liberal as governor and if national Republicans think Jindal is a key to recapturing the White House in 2012, Jindal will cooperate even if it means leaving a liberal in charge after his departure. So, Dardenne is the overwhelming favorite next month.

Still, even in defeat the Orleanian Fayard’s candidacy will serve a useful purpose for Democrats, which was why national Democrats and Orleans Parish Democrats were eager to bring about her candidacy. With lackluster school board races (because the Orleans Parish School District hardly controls any schools any more) and a Public Service Commission contest that would be settled after yesterday, an area liberal candidate willing to spread lost of campaign resources around the black community could help push their challenger to Republican Cao state Rep. Cedric Richmond into office.

Cao has done a good job with constituent relations and national tides are such that what looked to be hopeless a year ago has turned into a winnable contest for him. The key to his win last time was depressed black Democrat turnout (due to lack of enthusiasm over their indicted incumbent) and given the coming catastrophic losses legislative Democrats have earned themselves nationally, that reality might cause the same phenomenon from which Cao could benefit in a month. But with Fayard’s candidacy continuing its life to stimulate black turnout (almost a third of her vote came from Orleans Parish, while only around 10,000 of her votes statewide, less than 15 percent, did not come from the three large plurality black parishes in the state, Orleans, East Baton Rouge, and Caddo), this may have ended Cao’s chance for reelection.

Little things matter when running for political office

Little, idiosyncratic things can decide why people vote the way they do, and even decide elections, especially at the local level where issues often are deemphasized in favor of personalistic kinds of criteria.

For example, a friend of mine from the past who unfortunately not long ago went on to her reward, Elizabeth Rickey, ran for the Republican State Central Committee in 1988 when we lived at the opposite ends of House District 93. These are very low turnout elections and of course both of us voted for her and I also got my building manager, who had no idea of the contest, to do the same only at my behest. In a three-way race, she won by three votes out of 356. Later, she used her position on the RSCC to question very properly David Duke’s legitimacy as a conservative Republican which was instrumental in uncovering him as a fraud.

House District 5 is having a special election to replace retired Wayne Waddell. Two Republican candidates, banker Harold Turner and lawyer Alan Seabaugh are vying to replace him. Seabaugh ran in 2007 against state Sen. Sherry Smith Cheek for her job and by dumping a lot of his own money into the contest almost knocked off the incumbent insider.

On the surface, the candidates sound the same themes and rhetoric. But temperament also matters, because one would hope their elected representatives make sound judgments. Rash statements often leave an unfavorable impression.

Which is why I never forgot about a post to a college baseball fan message board in 2002. My brother sent me a link of where he had posted 10 reasons why his alma mater, Rice University, was going to win its upcoming super-regional (best two-of-three games) with LSU. This drew a vigorous response from username “Seatiger,” which started off by calling him a “moron” in the subject line and never got better. The name associated with that handle was Alan Seabaugh. I can’t with absolute certainty say it was this candidate Alan Thomas Seabaugh but how many Alan Seabaugh’s went to LSU, as did the candidate for his two degrees?

Of course, Jonathan was right and Rice swept the series with a pair of shutouts. While it appears Seabaugh’s judgment, if I have the correct one, is not so good about analyzing college baseball, that doesn’t necessarily correlate to his political judgment. Still, the intemperate nature of that note means if I lived in that district seeing that name on the ballot would have me head in another direction.

As undesirable as lack of calm temperament is in a candidate, outright flouting the law is another. One of the three Republicans running for the Bossier School Board District 12 slot, Katherine “Kay” Padgett Byrd, had a number of signs appearing in illegal spots. There’s a lot of gamesmanship in the placing of small signs on public property – a common tactic is for them to mushroom along divided roads right before election day – but it’s discouraging when there are blatant violations long before election day in residential areas.

The Unified Development Code for Bossier Parish that includes Bossier City in Art. 8 Sec. 2 Paragraph 2I states that in residential areas the maximum square footage for a campaign sign is nine. In three residentially-zoned places I witnessed signs of hers that exceeded that, and there may have been more. One of her opponents that I talked to said he was aware of this but her campaign was doing nothing about it.

After a couple of weeks, I contacted the Byrd campaign myself. I reached the candidate who said “somebody from Bossier City” told her the larger signs were permissible. I informed her of the presence of the regulation and urged her to investigate it. While sometimes these rules aren’t obvious, we should expect someone serious enough about wanting and capable enough to run government would have the initiative to find out about them, and, even if discovering them after the fact, to follow them.

Days later, as of press time, the signs remain up. Meaning the question that District 12 voters must ask is whether they want somebody elected who deliberately breaks the law in her campaigning. Recall Luke 16:10: if she does so with small matters like this, what does that mean for the far greater matters that she would face as an elected official? At least Shreveport mayoral candidate City Councilman Bryan Wooley, prodded by judicial proceedings, realized he was not being Solomonic by dividing illegally-large signs and removed them.

Jindal berm bet pays off with coastal restoration help

This summer, Gov. Bobby Jindal went all in when he pursued a controversial plan to respond to the calamitous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico this spring. Yesterday, he played the winning hand.

Jindal’s plan focused on the building of sand berms to catch oil. Some have been partially completed but most of the approximately 100-mile artificial barrier islands have not been built because of delays by federal government agencies to allow the permitting process to move forward. What has been built came under emergency permits, with the money provided by the operator responsible for the spill, BP.

Critics from when the work under the temporary permit began through the permanent permit application process argued that the berms would be ineffective in catching oil, they would be too fragile to last, they would be good only as long as the leak continued, they would be environmentally destructive in their building, and they diverted funds from better uses. Logically, these kinds of arguments failed because of the inappropriate prioritization they supported, and time now has revealed these assertions in fact as equally flawed.

Landrieu efforts low on substance, high on propaganda

While the uninformed and partisan breathlessly cooed over Pres. Barack Obama’s signing of legislation pushed by and an initiative taken by Sen. Mary Landrieu, in reality they got all worked up over propaganda exercises with no substantive benefit to the country or to Louisiana.

The ceremony involved the Small Jobs Business Act, which will end up creating jobs – but only in government. As has been reviewed in this space, the new law creates small business incentives that few of them can access and which last almost no time, in exchange for giving government greater control over lending to small business that will end up lowering lending standards and raising default rates paid for by taxpayers.

As Republicans pointed out, if Democrats Obama and Landrieu really meant to help small business, they would support preventing tax increases on almost half of all small business profit set to trigger at the end of the year. Instead, Landrieu, despite being chairwoman of the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, has expressed opposition to this and with the rest of Congress plans to hightail it out of town soon without making any effort to stop the tax increase from going into effect. After all, as Democrats have choked off any meaningful economic recovery with promises of greater debts, taxation, and regulation in the future, what’s a few more casualties among small business to them generally, or to Landrieu specifically?

Perhaps Congress will convene before its end after Democrats take a beating in midterm elections with a growing probability that they will control neither chamber of the next Congress and actually deal with the looming tax hike. But time already will have run out on them concerning the budget, which by law they should have completed by Oct. 1. Instead, it looks like a punt by the Democrat leadership on this as well, fearing to reveal a budget that produces more recessionary economic performance in exchange for empowering government.

Which makes Landrieu’s refusing to allow the nomination of a new head to the Office of Management and Budget, vacant after the abrupt departure of its former head who was one of the architects of the economic slowdown, until the Obama Administration moratorium on deepwater oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is lifted nothing more than a publicity stunt. There’s no expediency required on this matter so long as Democrats dawdle on the budget as a whole.

Further, it’s an empty threat. By taking this recess instead of working on the budget and eliminating the tax hike, this invites Obama to make a recess appointment that would allow his nominee to stay on the job until the end of next year (if he even lasts that long, given the downward trajectory of the Obama Administration). Obama shows no signs of wavering from his meritless, ideologically-driven path to suppress drilling so if the matter is important to him, he’ll just bypass the Senate.

So, properly understood, Landrieu’s efforts to pass useless, if not actually harmful, legislation while ignoring the real problem of the upcoming tax hike, and in making a symbolic gesture that will change nothing in the actual production of an on-time and sensible budget or in removing job-killing moratorium, are short on substance and long on propaganda.

TEA Party impact likely muted in upcoming state races

So with some state and a slew of local elections coming Louisiana’s way at the end of this week, how will the TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party phenomenon play itself out in these contests? The short answer is, not very distinguishably from traditional political dynamics.

Because a plurality of Americans sympathize with the economic conservatism goals of the movement, it is tempting to view it as less-structured but traditional mass-based political party that shapes the party’s leadership, responds to its appeals, and uses cues like party labels to make voting decisions. But it’s not; instead, it is an almost-totally decentralized regime rather than a formal organization whose very leaderless nature creates fluidity in deployment of mainly volunteer-based resources. In other words, it’s a number of like-minded people whose primary response to political stimuli is based not upon acquisition of power in order govern, but instead to evaluate candidates on the basis of issue preferences and to vote accordingly.

As such, preferences of economic conservatism such as reduced government spending and regulation with the commensurate reduction in its power over people’s lives, smaller deficit spending, holding the line on if not rolling back taxation and, overall, the sense that government has become too intrusive in dealing with people’s property rights drives their decision-making, not whether supporting a certain candidate maximizes their chances at governing and thereby increases their chances of receiving rewards bestowed by government. Understanding this is the key to realizing why it will not be a distinctive force in Lousiana’s state and local elections.

In order for the movement to coalesce, sharp ideological conflict had to illuminate the differences in issue preferences between the movement joiners and the power structure in government. That happened with the election of Democrat Pres. Barack Obama and an increased Democrat congressional majority. Obama ran a brilliant campaign designed to obscure his real agenda and to prompt himself to be viewed as an empty vessel into which voters could pour their best intentions and optimism about what they hoped he would do. But the hard leftism of his actual beliefs and their consequences quickly became apparent after he took power, aided by a Congress that now could legislate without consequence lacking any more a Republican president that could rein in its excesses.

In a matter of months and since, national Democrats’ agenda has become entirely exposed as fundamentally at odds with the beliefs of a majority of Americans. The swing to the extreme left sensitized and activated those who would join the TEA Party phenomenon and its energetic opposition to big government emanating from Washington, DC.

However, in Louisiana, few similar situations have manifested themselves. At the state level, at stake Saturday is perhaps the least ideological office and the one that has the least to do with government involvement in people’s lives, the lieutenant governor’s. There’s a contest for the obscure Public Service Commission and a number of judicial contests which by their nature tend to turn far more on personality than on issues. The kind of spark that activated the phenomenon for national office candidates barely exists in this environment.

Local contests, for municipalities and school boards, promise more potential for issues mainly pocketbook in nature to be relevant and for conflict between competing visions of how much latitude people should have in making decisions about what they earn and spend, but this often will be muted. Besides a sharp contrast in economic and property issues, the other precondition for TEA Party influence would be for its identifiers to make up a significant portion of the electorate in a jurisdiction. But because as we get to smaller and smaller jurisdictions, heterogeneity within them begins to disappear to create situations where TEA Party influence either is insignificant to the process or whose attitudes already are shared by a dominant majority of the electorate.

For example, in Shreveport the distribution of issue preferences among the public means, given the large Democratic registration and majority black registrants among the city’s voters, TEA Party sympathies are unlikely to determine who will win the mayor’s race. This dynamic increases in validity when considering some city council contests with similar demographics. However, there are others where influence might be wielded, where Republicans are expected to win.

Even so, the impact likely is to be slight. As the level of contest gets lower, economic issues in particular and ideology in general becomes diluted by more personalistic kinds of factors in making voting decisions. Organizational resources besides volunteer activism also become magnified in importance and traditional party or candidate organizations look much more like the overall TEA Party model at this level, negating any advantage that might convey.

In summation, for TEA Party influence to shape election contests, there must be clear ideological differences on economic issues and on amount of government power among candidates for that kind of office and the TEA Party adherents themselves must represent a critical mass within the jurisdiction without being part of a larger, overall dominant political culture in it. These are the case in federal elections in Louisiana, and are why Republicans are going to win every federal office in this election cycle with the probable exception of the Second Congressional District precisely because that district’s characteristics make it difficult to achieve the critical mass standard.

However, these conditions are present in almost no state contests and not often in local races on this ballot. This does not mean that TEA Party sympathies cannot substantially shape these kinds of elections – 2013 city elections in Bossier City, after many years of the city’s poor prioritization of spending led it to a 2009 budget meltdown, should produce a great test case – but that this time out in the main it should not be expected.

Lucky local govts need long-term thinking on largesse

While the consumption decisions of individual recipients of Haynesville Shale largesse might be described as any or all of intriguing, humorous, or boorish – dining out habits going from hot wings and light beer to shrimp cocktail and Budini malbec, driving choices from economy cars to souped-up pickups and boat-like luxury cars, lots more gold chains – it becomes more alarming when governments start approaching Beverly Hillbillies territory.

Such increasingly seems to be the case with school districts blessed with this bonus in places such as Red River, DeSoto, and Bienville parishes. Salaries have rocketed upwards as has sales tax receipts, with some leasing activity thrown in, to enrich these governments. For contrast, rookie teachers in DeSoto make more than a 20-year tenured professor in higher education.

Some jurisdictions have bumped these salaries with regular bonuses, while actually have permanently written them into salary schedules. There are worse things on which to spend, with the classic example being the drunken sailor behavior of Bossier City for the past decade-and-a-half that led to an ugly day of reckoning. But who knows how long this extra revenue will last? And with there being little relationship between teacher quality and pay (although this may change if the state moves to a realistic and effective evaluation system), it’s questionable whether these schemes best serve taxpayers.

Unfortunately, it best serves school board members. Happy teachers with padded pay stubs and their families tend to vote for incumbents. This same Santa Claus dynamic also discourages a potentially much better long-term strategy, suspending portions of sales taxes and giving smaller increases, in order to encourage economic development. Because boards are concerned parochially only with education, they have no incentive to look towards the greater economic benefit of the area and its citizens which in the long run would boost tax revenues. Even if all other geographically coterminous and enveloped local governments also suspended part of their sales taxes, likely school boards would not follow because they see their constituencies as educators, then children, with the people dragging the rear.

So, the next best thing would be to create a special fund into which the relative excess of revenues should flow. Salary supplements can be reduced with that not apportioned out put into these funds. Over the next couple of decades, if the shale activity lasts that long, a tidy sum can be accumulated and the interest earnings off of it can be there for supplements when activity does slow, or if it continues can be used for other education purposes. This will prevent trying to squeeze more tax revenues out of the public and might make the public more amenable to continuing funding any existing property tax levies; without such funds, more astute members of the citizenry might call for and succeed in getting the levies expired by a negative public vote since, they can successfully argue, shale money could make up the difference.

It’s what Bossier City should have done with its gambling windfall, but failed to do so. Let’s hope that not just school districts but all local governments so blessed have greater wisdom going forward on this matter.