Presumed strength turns to weakness in CD 5 race

The clash of experience vs. enthusiasm renews in the Fifth Congressional District contest, resulting in a hair-splitting exercise that shows, as usual, experience can give you a leg up in these showdowns.

The central problem for both candidates in the race, Republicans state Sen. Neil Riser and newcomer Vance McAllister, is to distinguish themselves from each other as their announced conservative ideologies create little policy distance between the pair. As the frontrunner from the start, various opponents prior to the runoff tried two related strategies to contrast themselves with Riser.

One was predicated on the existence of large distaste for elected officials in general, or in practical terms trying to paint Riser as some part of political establishment. The problem was that Riser didn’t fit this profile well, having only been in office a grand total of six years and prior to that and continuing being a successful businessman. Thus only McAllister, an equally successful businessman who was unlike the other major candidates who all had elected office experience, could get any traction out of this strategy.

Voters school Caddo Commission for its arrogance

When the Caddo Parish Commission decided to ask voters to lengthen term limits from three to five, it gambled with extension of the property tax for debt on capital improvements on the same ballot. On Oct. 19, it lost in the worst way possible.

Hubris has crept over the Commission in recent years, fueled by the natural gas bonanza. Pay has crept up to a level far beyond what part-timers should earn running an outfit far smaller than Shreveport or the Caddo Parish School District, courtesy of it being tied to parish employee salary increases. The large surpluses of the people’s money they socked away began to loosen their wallets differently when they found a way to give millions of dollars to a manufacturer of three-wheeled automobiles turned down by other governments. But while the roughly $50 million banked was enough from which to speculate, it wasn’t enough to scale back or eliminate the renewal of the 20-year levy projected to bring in almost $24 million over that span put in front of the voters

And perhaps because of the $22,000 annual part-time salary, under the cover of the recent charter review panel that said the question could be looked at, the move was on first to eliminate term limits, but then in the face of negative public reaction and from some commissioners, that was compromised to present voters with a charter amendment to set the number at five – demonstrating the feet of clay of the commissioners who had opposed wiping out limits entirely, for few members in the 175-year history of the parish of the Commission or its predecessor ever served more than 20 consecutive years. Substantively, it was little different from having none at all.

Legislators should cut losses over scholarship records

Members of the Louisiana Legislature were sticking pins into their New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu dolls after his making them look foolish in their effort to prevent release of consent forms signed by students that score a Tulane University scholarship that are doled out by legislators.

Landrieu without quibble released all of these forms from his years as mayor, where he has assented to 20 different recipients for a year’s worth over the past four years. The mayor times five and each legislator are allowed to present an annual full scholarship to a Louisiana resident in an ancient arrangement between Tulane and the state. City regulations actually present Landrieu a choice from a list of eligible recipients vetted by a board frequently refreshed designed to erase as much politics as possible from the process.

Contrast this with the sinking ship policy presently being perpetrated by Legislative staffers, who surprisingly and contrarily to the opinion of every other lawyer or person who can read the English language have declared such documents are not a public record, despite a broad waiver of confidentiality by applicants and a court ruling nearly two decades old that seems to leave little ambiguity as to these being public records. Yet neither House Clerk Butch Speer (who was on the losing end of the 1994 case) nor Senate Secretary Glenn Koepp could give any convincing reason related to the law (R.S. 44:1 et seq.) that would justify their refusal. Even so, they exactly have refused to release such records from 2010 as requested by media outlets.

Continue quest for right-sized LA govt with Library review

This Saturday the 2013 edition of the Louisiana Book Festival will come off, and the circumstances of its reemergence provide an example to Louisiana government in general, and to the State Library of Louisiana in particular.

The Festival is an all-day affair that showcases Louisiana-authored books, those connected with the state, and those who write about it. Beginning in 2002, through 2009 it relied mostly on state funding, but with the Pres. Barack Obama-inspired non-recovery of the country’s economic fortunes, budget pressures on Louisiana cut out that funding and 2010 saw no such event.

But Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne, who also has the portfolio of overseeing tourism and culture efforts in the state and as such also has the State Library under his aegis, took the lead in arranging for private funding of the event that was leveraged into obtaining federal government funding. Since 2011, the Festival has gone on without any state funding.

Partisan diatribes disserve improving LA outlay results

How the state ended up committing $1.825 million to build a Louisiana first, a kind-of gubernatorial library/parish historical center, illuminates both the political intricacies that can imprint themselves on the capital outlay process and how observers who do not or who do not care to understand that process can end up promulgating a distorted and unserious view of it.

Last week, five months after the idea first surfaced in legislation, the legacy media became aware that the state had authorized this amount, in conjunction with $75,000 from the city of Franklin, to renovate the top floor of its town hall for a combination archive of documents from and historical center presenting information about the gubernatorial terms of former Gov. Mike Foster. Additionally, it is planned to present some information about the terms of his grandfather, former Gov. Murphy J. Foster, in that office, as well as items about parish history that include a number of other prominent political figures.

This upset the partisan chattering class, although not without reason. Nearly $2 million is a chunk of change that can make a substantial difference, and whether this use of it as opposed to alternatives certainly is debatable. But the tenor of the commentary heaped sole blame on Gov. Bobby Jindal, whose first jobs in state government were as an appointee directly and one step removed by Foster, postulating that their long-standing friendship provided motive for Jindal by his own fiat to implant that money into the budget, and then subsequently to get an initial $300,000 of it appropriated through the State Bond Commission to get the project underway, which only afterwards the issue seemed to come to public consciousness.

Obamacare implosion to sink Landrieu chances further

Veteran political observer John Maginnis declared that the partial government shutdown of the first half of October produced no real political winners or losers among Louisiana federal government elected officials. He’s quite correct, but the real story is how this will be a non-issue compared to the ongoing issue and the reverberating ramifications of the internal contradictions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) on the fortunes of Senate candidates.

Maginnis notes that while polling data in Louisiana, from the Democrat-aligned firm Public Policy Polling, conducted toward the end of that period showed by 47-32 percent respondents were less likely to want to vote for GOP Senate candidate Rep. Bill Cassidy and gave incumbent Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu a 48-41 lead, data from the Republican-oriented firm Harper Polling revealed Landrieu led only 46-44 and 45 percent said they would vote for a Republican for Senate while just 41 percent for a Democrat. This poll, however, was conducted just before Oct. 1.

Interestingly, the PPP numbers actually improved for Cassidy from the middle of August, when he was supposedly down to Landrieu by 10 points and he gained a point in projected vote. Further, the latest still showed Landrieu could not crack 50 percent approval among voters; historically, incumbents who cannot do this a year from an election almost always end up losing. And this was with Cassidy rated unknown by 55 percent of voters and the 45 percent who ventured a likeability rating on Cassidy about split; typically, as quality challengers become better known, they gain proportionally more in liking than disliking among voters, to the detriment of the incumbent’s vote share.

Runoff dynamics for CD 5 favor Riser substantially

Now the question is whether political newcomer Vance McAllister can do it again, by defeating state Sen. Neil Riser in the runoff for the Congressional District 5 special election on Nov. 16. Chances are the same dynamics that led to his upset second-place showing in the general election will keep him out of the office.

McAllister won a runoff spot because in a general election field of 14, in an election that was standalone for many voters, he mobilized two constituencies large enough to get him over the 15 percent of the vote needed to capture it. One was the anti-politician crowd, especially incensed at the big spending that hallmarks the Pres. Barack Obama Administration that Congress (with too little Republican resistance to stop) continues to endorse, who looked for a credible non-politician to back. The other was people less reliably interested in politics but turned on by his affiliation with the family that stars in the reality television show Duck Dynasty, differentiating him from the other reliably conservative Republicans like Riser in the race. By apparently plowing hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own funds into the contest, much in the last week, he made himself visible enough to have those kinds of voters activated or aware he was out there.

But the lightning is unlikely to strike twice given the nature of the election will be different. He will have nearly triple his vote proportion, with a limited base on which to expand. Other Republicans in the race tried to position themselves as Washington outsiders, but they only got about 20 percent of the vote. Some may gravitate to McAllister, but others went with the other pair of candidates because they preferred more experience and their issue preferences. Many of them will sit it out or side with Riser. And it’s not likely that significantly more casual voters can be mobilized using the celebrity factor than were there for the general election.

LA legislative term limits continue to demonstrate value

The headline reads “Term limits have Louisiana politicians searching for new elections.” And that’s a good thing, despite that some contest that the overall term limits experience for Louisiana has been positive.

At the state level, the limits in question concern the three consecutive term limit for a legislator in the same office. It is diluted, because it allows limited members in one chamber to try to win election in the other, subverting to some degree the idea and allowing politicians to continue serving in an office nearly identical in power and scope. Because of this, interestingly the average length of continuous service in the Legislature at the beginning of 2004 for the typical senator, the last term before limits went into effect, was slightly shorter (just over 7 years) than in 2008, the first term affected by limits (almost 7¼) because of all that jumping.

(Keep in mind that now Pres. John Alario brought 36 years with him, skewing the average up by almost a point. When all was said and done, the 13 successful jumpers averaged a shade over 12 years in House experience, while the returning senators averaged just under 5 in their chamber. At the beginning of 2012, with 10 more jumpers successful – totaling now after a couple of early departures 21 of 39 – average years served by then nudged up almost a full year to over 8.)

Surplus spoken for; no increased spending from it

Cautious optimism may have sprouted from a recent estimate that Louisiana finished fiscal year 2013 nearly $163 million in the black, but caution dictates this money and other projected savings go to fulfilling an unusual legal requirement so fantasies of beefing up state spending remain just that.

On the heels of the production of the state budget for FY 2014, which gives expenditure totals close to what actually occurred  from July of last year through this past June, revenue estimates as of now made by Gov. Bobby Jindal’s Division of Administration show this surplus. Final numbers won’t be in until the end of the year, but this should not drift much lower. Shortly before then, the Revenue Estimating Conference will meet to produce the official numbers that may be used for budgeting for FY 2015 next year.

Any leftover surplus can be used for just a small selection of purposes, all of which deal with long-term expenditures. But even as legislators mused about what to do with it, state Sen. Jack Donahue had the right idea from the eligible purposes – put the money into the Budget Stabilization Fund, the state’s savings account that can be used to offset state-generated revenue declines – even if he and the state really have little choice in the matter.

Surprise Riser runoff opponent rides anti-politician wave

Perhaps we should have seen this coming when the early voting totals showed little interest, but while practically every prognostication concerning the Fifth Congressional District special election focused only on some combination of state Sen. Neil Riser and any of a few other candidates with electoral office-holding backgrounds, one name that seldom came up because of his unknown quality was businessman Vance McAllister. And then the odd dynamics of this contest intervened to put these two Republican businessmen into the runoff.

With about a third of the vote, Riser moves on to the Nov. 16 runoff. But joining him about 14 points behind, a couple ahead of the third-place Monroe Mayor Jamie Mayo, was McAllister. Turnout appears only to have been little more than 20 percent, of which half voted for candidates other than this pair moving on.

That low turnout was key for McAllister’s surprise besting of Mayo, three state representatives, and a Public Service commissioner, for of these others, he appealed to the narrowest constituency most intensely interested in the election. Not that some of the other candidates wanted it to turn out this way, because they wanted at least part of that constituency.