Timing fails again for helpful LA amendments

Reform-minded Republicans thought attaching beneficial constitutional amendments to a red-hot Republican Senate primary election this year would push these items to victory after some similar measures met with defeat last year. But the left’s heckler’s veto won out.

For the spring of 2025, the Republican-led legislature forwarded four items to voters – the first springtime election for amendments in well over three decades. The only measures on the ballot in many parts of the state, in others sharing only with local races and items, they met with big defeats.

That happened for two reasons. First, augmented with loads of money coming from outside the state in opposition from the political left – which didn’t want to see fiscal reform that would reduce the size of government as well as blanching at criminal justice reform based on tougher measures – the left skillfully found fissures, creating mountains out of molehills, among conservatives to peel some support from them. Second, in recent years conservatives had larger turnouts in higher-stimulus elections, and for most of the state this was about as low-stimulus an election as you could get.

Conservatism sees mixed results in LA elections

Conservatives had as many reasons to register disappointment as satisfaction at the results of May 16 elections.

Sure, they might be pleased at the Republican Senate semi-closed primary election outcomes. That saw incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy draw just a quarter of the partisan electorate’s vote, an abysmal showing that had him become the first reigning senator knocked out in a party primary in 14 years.

This would boost conservatives’ morale because the result eliminated an unreliable, inconsistent conservative. Intellectually lazy analysis attributes Cassidy’s failure to make the Jun. 27 runoff solely to his vote to convict GOP Pres. Donald Trump on specious impeachment charges just after Trump left office in 2021, causing a backlash among Republican voters.

Illegal meeting shows Bossier Jury dishonesty

Pick your nastiness colloquialism: thumbed its nose, poked them in the eye, gave them the Bronx salute, held up its index, middle, and ring finger and told then to read between the lines, lifted its hind leg, whatever, but the Bossier Parish Police Jury just did that to parish residents.

Prior to its meeting last week, the Jury, for the first time in over two years, met as the parish’s Library Board of Control. This February, it had made “appointments” to it by making as members all 12 jurors, as well as assigned as officers those positions as held on the Jury.

The matters attended at the meeting were prosaic, but the mere fact of having the meeting in this fashion was not. For one thing, the Jury didn’t have the legal authority to appoint a couple of its members to the Board because terms of previous appointees had yet to expire nor had they been removed in a public vote. More seriously, all 12 couldn’t serve because state law limits voting membership to seven at most (with nonvoting status set aside for the Jury president). Because of these inherent illegalities, any action taken (which if citizens missed the Zoom-transmitted meeting only will have the minutes, which probably will not be posted on the Internet, available for a description of those actions) therefore is legally challengeable and likely would be undone if taken to court.

Pass bill reining in unions exploiting taxpayers

Louisiana seems prepared to forgo an opportunity to use better taxpayer dollars and to reduce privileging special interests.

Increasingly, states are reeling in the ability of public unions to squeeze the citizenry and leverage those resources to increase their political power. A number recently have passed legislation to prohibit deducting dues automatically for employees, whether union members, within the bargaining unit, giving paid time off to perform union business, preventing withholding dues – locals can deduct from non-members in many states unless they specifically designate disallow that outside of infrequent windows – and to require more than a small portion of the bargaining unit to specifically approve of recertification of certification is revoked.

But Louisiana remains stuck in the past. SB 312 by Republican state Sen. Kirk Talbot, addressing parish (except public safety personnel) and school district employees, sought to prohibit collected dues from being used for political purposes, to have salary deductions renewed automatically, and to transfer government administrative costs to the union. All of these were amended out.

Scoundrels' last refuge should not derail fix

Those angry from having had their privilege disappear who insist on keeping themselves locked in the past will prove a mere distraction to the big question those who wish to progress to the future will have to answer in Louisiana getting right constitutionally with its congressional districts.

Last week, the Senate Governmental and Affairs Committee started vetting various bills to accomplish this, with resolution anticipated this week. This has become necessary after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the current map an unconstitutional racial gerrymander because no compelling reason – that is, intended discrimination merely because of race – existed for race to be the primary element in its drawing.

This quest has upset black Democrats in particular, the most spleen-venting of the bunch being state Sen. Gary Carter. He caterwauled bitterly in his questions as a committee member, for the obvious reason that black Democrats no longer could use race as a fig leaf to draw districts favoring them but also because his uncle, Democrat Rep. Troy Carter, could have an even money chance of losing his seat with a map that had one or no majority-minority districts planned out, as opposed to the current two.

Pass bill that eliminates heckler's veto tactic

A bill heading to the finish line in the Louisiana Legislature that vetoes a heckler’s veto not only will protect law enforcement officers from abuse but also will increase the safety of the abusers.

HB 132 by Republican state Rep. Brian Glorioso would add a third part to the state’s definition of battery, joining using intentional force on another and throwing a poison or noxious liquid on another: directing sound at an injurious volume reasonably knowing that at somebody else. It only has to garner a favorable Senate vote to head to GOP Gov. Jeff Landry’s desk.

Free expression should have maximum latitude, when possible, but the judiciary recognizes limits to this First Amendment right. Colloquially called “time, place, and manner” restrictions, as long as a government restriction is content neutral, narrowly-tailored serving a significant government interest, and permits alternative communication channels, courts don’t perceive this as a constitutional violation.

Fleming bests Letlow in LA GOP Senate debate

The U.S. Senate Republican primary debate was informative, combative if cordial, and displayed how the candidates tried to play to their strengths.

The debate, sponsored by the Moon Griffon Show, featured only Treas. John Fleming and Rep. Julia Letlow. Incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy, despite numerous invitations, didn’t attend.

The math, as most recently evidenced by the latest independent poll, has these two running neck-and-neck with Cassidy several points back. Polling suggests that if Cassidy were to make the inevitable runoff he would lose decisively to either, so it was in the interests of both candidates to attack each other in the hopes Cassidy could crest over the opponent.

Landry map swap looking more likely to pay off

It’s been over two years, but Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s reapportionment gamble looks to be paying off, bigger and bigger and wider and wider.

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Louisiana v. Callais that the 2024 congressional map drawn in a special session at the very start of Landry’s term unconstitutionally used race to create two majority-minority districts out of the state’s allotted six. The decision placed guardrails on the use of race, reaffirming that it does not have preferential treatment over other traditional principles of reapportionment in the absence of observable intent of racial animus in mapping.

That 2024 map came after a district court voided a 2022 map with only one M/M district without a trial on the merits, saying it violated the law. The Court enjoined any further action pending an Alabama case it resolved in 2023 that largely but not directly tracked the Louisiana case that also addressed the Voting Rights Act which ruled against the existing map, although the resulting judicially-drawn map eschewed doubling M/M districts to two and instead created two opportunity districts (where blacks had a plurality but not majority).

LA can beat clock, use better map for fall

If you are reading this during the first weekend of May, chances are, right this very second, certain elected officials of Louisiana government and their staff and/or contractors are huddled up trying to get an already-delayed set of congressional elections pushed back further while putting together a new congressional map that stays one step ahead of opponents and congruent with the law and U.S. Constitution.

In the wake of last week’s U.S. Supreme Court decision that ratified a lower court panel which declared the state’s latest version of the map unconstitutional, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry issued an executive order declaring a state of emergency, as by statute. Also by statute, GOP Sec. of State Nancy Landry certified the contents of the order and thus early next week the House and Governmental Affairs Committee and the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee will convene jointly and almost certainly approve of the certification, with the governor’s agreement.

The current map contains two majority-minority districts of six, but the decision likely makes it impossible to draw one with that many. As two Democrats hold those seats and Republicans are highly likely to win any not M/M, the left has gone ballistic over this turn of events and will try anything to stop the GOP pickup of a seat. As things stand, it can’t through any legal maneuverings. Louisiana’s Constitution nor its statutes define “emergency” and it can be argued that under powers to ensure the “integrity” of elections an emergency use may justify implementing these procedures.

CD5 GOP nod to turn more on hopefuls than issues

Republican candidates for Louisiana’s Fifth Congressional District, perhaps appropriately given the job for which they audition (as least as it stands for now), had to hop around its elongated boundaries last week in about 24 hours to participate a couple of forums, which perhaps turned more on presentations of competence and knowledge than on policy.

Thursday before last, all seven, including the main four – Board of Regents head Misti Cordell, state Rep. Mike Echols, and state Sens. Rick Edmonds and Blake Miguez – appeared at one sponsored by Livingston Parish GOP women’s clubs. Last Friday, all but Edmonds, who is from the southern terminus in Baton Rouge and begged off because of dealing with the shooting tragedy there, participated in another sponsored by Monroe’s public radio station KEDM, the University of Louisiana Monroe, and two local chambers of commerce. Cordell and Echols are from Monroe, while Miguez is domiciled outside the district about 75 miles south of it.

Edmonds might have used the opportunity, as the only independent poll to date of the contest has him behind second-place Echols by ten points, who trails leader Miguez by three, and Cordell is way back in single digits. However, almost half of respondents didn’t name a preference, leaving plenty of chances for candidates to collect voters through performance in somethings like these.