Perkins Senate run may backfire politically

The big question was whether Democrat Shreveport Mayor Adrian Perkins would throw his hat into the ring for U.S. Senate. His affirmative announcement doesn’t answer all the questions.

Because behind the question of whether somebody runs is why. You run only for a reason, the most of trite of which is you want to win. Even though incumbent Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy has good polling numbers and lots of dough to fend off any challenger, you can’t win if you don’t play, and maybe something weird would happen that could allow Perkins to win.

However, that’s subject to cost-benefit calculations. Simply, you run if you think you’ll get more out of it than what it costs you, politically. Part of the benefits come from winning, but tempered by your expectancy of victory. In Perkins’ case, unless deluded or unquestioningly taking some very bad advice, he must know his chances aren’t great.

On virus, Edwards still ignoring data, science

Passing through another policy inflection point, evidence continues to mount that Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards and his Administration haven’t responded competently to the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic in Louisiana.

When in the world of the hard or soft sciences a researcher discovers a significant outlier, it often behooves further investigation to understand the phenomenon under study. Considering Louisiana by the reported numbers, its pandemic response truly stands out – and not in a good way.

The state, with a handful of others, the virus hit hard early. In these instances, all had events and commercial patterns that brought a lot of visitors to them and provided opportunities for them to congregate; in Louisiana’s case, Carnival. Since then, almost all have ratcheted down the early spikes in cases and hospitalizations.

Monroe mayor result hard to replicate for GOP

Does Monroe’s recent mayoral election provide a model for Louisiana Republicans to follow to take back governance of many of the state’s large cities?

Last week, independent Friday Ellis not only defeated 19-year incumbent Democrat Mayor Jamie Mayo, but he did it without needing a runoff. And he did it as a white candidate in a constituency with 63 percent black registration.

Ellis – military veteran, former city employee, small business owner – at first would seem typical of the low-profile candidates who almost exclusively challenged Mayo since his winning a special election in 2001 and whom Mayo usually brushed aside easily. But Mayo was more vulnerable this year than most.

LA on brink of huge new spending commitment

Lost in the counterproductive Wuhan coronavirus pandemic policy of Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards is how it further kicks and enlarges Louisiana’s unemployment insurance bill down the road.

With his declaration last week that rolled back ceilings on gatherings, closed bars, and required wearing of face coverings in public places that he said would address rapidly increasing positive infection case numbers and declining hospital capacities, he also threw another monkey wrench into one of the worst state economies already hampered by business restrictions. Its latest unemployment rate of 9.7 percent more than doubled last year’s at this time. Worse, its employment/population ratio fell below 50 percent and was the nation’s seventh worst, indicating a disproportionate part of the working-age population had exited the workforce entirely.

As a result, the state has drawn deeply upon its unemployment insurance reserves, about halving the balance it had with the federal government in the past three months. The only bright spot is it has emptied a bit slower than anticipated, with the latest numbers indicating it won’t have to borrow from the federal government until the end of September.

Perkins challenge Cassidy? Not so fast ...

The weakest link in a purported plan for Louisiana Democrats to front Democrat Shreveport Mayor Adrian Perkins as a Senate pump-primer is his willingness to go along with the deal.

As qualifying for the fall Senate election for Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy’s seat looms, no Democrat of any significance has signaled intent to challenge him. No major party likes to give a free pass to an incumbent from the other in either gubernatorial or senatorial contests because you have to keep giving your voters a reason to call themselves your voters. Making them troop habitually to the polls by serving up candidates with at least a chance of winning, however remote, keeps the ground fertile for future opportunities to flip that office.

Thus has circulated the idea that, to offer up somebody who could pull more than a quarter of the vote, Democrat donors and activists led by Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards have pressured Perkins to challenge Cassidy. Not only could this provide a quality candidate, given Perkins’ current status, but it also would provide a public relations boost for state Democrats because, despite blacks having comprised the majority of the party’s base for years, its leadership only once has given serious backing from the start to a black candidate in a major statewide contest – convicted former Rep. Bill Jefferson’s run for governor in 1999. Even within the past three years, getting it to rally behind a black candidate for any statewide office has been like pulling teeth.

Edwards keeps politicizing virus issue

As always when Louisiana Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards exhibits his arrogance, understand that what he alleges of his opponents serves as a distraction from realizing he does exactly what he accuses others of doing.

That trait manifested yet again concerning Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry’s opinion about, specifically, a face covering requirement issued by Democrat Shreveport Mayor Adrian Perkins but expanded to address Edwards’ recent proclamation 89 JBE 2020. That order issued a masking requirement for anybody age 8 or older in public indoor places with “commercial establishments” responsible for enforcement (the Perkins version for Shreveport added penalties such as turning off the city-run water at noncompliant businesses), as well as closing bars, all in response to rising infection and hospitalization rates from the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic.

The opinion provided the legal justification to sentiments expressed here: the masking requirement – not just as it relates to individuals but for the supposed enforcement – didn’t have enough justification to permit the curtailment of liberties ordered. It doesn’t cancel the order, but provides a basis to a court challenge and leaves the legality of enforcement in doubt.

LA should redefine qualified immunity

Just because a previous effort didn’t suffice doesn’t mean Louisiana legislators shouldn’t look seriously at altering the concept of qualified immunity for state and local officials.

Qualified immunity, first articulated by the U.S. Supreme Court over a half-century ago, is a judicially created legal doctrine that shields government officials performing discretionary duties from civil liability in cases involving the deprivation of statutory or constitutional rights.  Government officials are entitled to qualified immunity so long as their actions do not violate “clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.”

Thus, at the state and local level, plenary organs may establish what kinds of acts fall under this kind of protection, if any. It doesn’t extend to criminal behavior, but prevents levying monetary judgments against government officials who cross boundaries and reasonably knew that. In doing so, this protects officials – almost always law enforcement officers – from punishment when thrown into nebulous situations with imperfect information available for decision-making.

Court returns reason to race impact on policy

As parts of the country hurtle into policy-making based upon spurious claims of racism, at least the part of the federal judiciary that oversees Louisiana kept its wits about it.

At the end of June, a panel of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, and convincingly, a 2017 Louisiana Middle District ruling that declared the judicial election method used for the state’s 32^nd District unconstitutional. That district encompasses Terrebone Parish.

There, voters across the parish elect judges who run in any of five slots. The at-large, parish-wide selection in five sections until 2014 had produced only white judges when a black Republican – like the other four winners running unopposed – took a seat on the bench. Terrebone’s black population makes up a bit under a quarter of the parish.

Chess game with Edwards continues over outlay

Still smarting over his many legislative defeats this year, Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards was perturbed enough to conduct some gamesmanship on capital outlay.

The Louisiana Legislature has its Joint Legislative Committee on Capital Outlay to approve of forwarding items from its capital outlay bills to the State Bond Commission. Practically speaking, since the state’s executive branch or local governments carry out the actual projects, for state items it approved it relies upon the governor’s office to carry out the steps towards project completion, including sending these to the SBC to garner debt financing.

Typically, the highest-priority projects and those that already have money spent and need more perfunctorily move to the SBC. But the Edwards Administration said it wanted to hold off starting work on $136 million worth, about a fifth of the total and far above the usual amount. Those not included didn’t have a full cash commitment, except for seven specially-designated projects. In essence, this holds back capacity for projects that Edwards can choose that could allow lower-priority projects to leapfrog others.

Edwards again overreaches on virus policy

Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards has often made policy ignoring laws concerning human behavior, such as in the world of economics supply and demand. But when it comes to his response to the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, he faithfully follows the law of the instrument, which causes problems.

He gave Louisiana another demonstration of that this weekend, when he abruptly retrenched somewhat on reopening the economy and impinged on personal liberty. He proclaimed that bars could provide only take-out service, with the exception of worship a limitation of 50 on crowds in areas without adequate spacing, and mandating face coverings in public places except for worship and with age, health, and consumption exceptions, to last from Jul. 13 to at least Jul. 24.

The rationale he gave focused on a recent increase in the number of cases and hospitalizations with the former disproportionately among younger people and the latter creeping towards full capacity. Supposedly, too many young people were going out and transmitting the virus then passing it along to their elders.