What appeared as a relatively dull contest when all was said and done obscures potential political intrigue surrounding Bossier City politics.
Incumbent Republican Marshal Jim Whitman won reelection comfortably last week over Republican City Councilor Brian Hammons. Whitman’s 62 percent to 38 percent margin capped a win in most city precincts, including winning overall Hammons’ own Council district.
A major reason why Whitman won by such a wide margin was he spent a record, even an excessive, amount of money on the effort. Through mid-October, he had paid out about $140,000 to retain his office, around $100,000 more than Hammons. The next closest ever city-wide spending came when GOP former Mayor Lo Walker was defeated for reelection in 2021, expending a few thousand less (and the counting isn’t over). Particularly when dealing with an obscure office with only 14.5 full-time equivalent employees, money is crucial in a campaign for it.
Money also is crucial to understanding why Whitman would go to such lengths to keep his job. State law provides marshals and constables – enforcement officers of a city court – varying but typically small amounts of money; the rest of their salary comes from the revenues they raise from their activities as defined in statute and/or what they can wheedle out of local governments.
Bossier City marshals have done well with their wheedling. Reviewing the ten most populated jurisdictions comprising nine city courts (St. George and Kenner don’t have a city court while New Orleans has two), Whitman makes the third highest compensation at just over $170,000 annually (there are smaller jurisdictions whose marshals make even more), but, unlike other jurisdictions, the vast bulk of that add-on comes from Bossier City (mostly) and the parish government. In fact, among those, even as Bossier City has the second-lowest budget, it has the highest proportion of salary paid by government subsidy of that total subsidy.
Relatively speaking, the Bossier City Marshal’s office also is overstaffed compared to those others. It has the lowest spending per employee, about one-quarter of that of Lake Charles, which has a population a quarter higher than Bossier City and a constable’s office that spends over three times as much, yet gets along with 1.5 fewer FTE employees.
This is why Whitman would go all outdoors to keep his job, tapping into Bossier establishment politicians and activists as well as current deputy marshals, to get the money and platitudes to keep his lucrative salary and jobs for his employees. By contrast, Hammons had a reform agenda that advocated cost efficiencies, including possible reduction of the city subsidy (likely involving transfer of assigned functions that could be done more efficiently by city police) that would have resulted in a lower salary subsidization to the marshal and fewer employees.
As Hammons is one of seven votes to shuttle money to the marshal’s office, and Whitman did launch some personal attacks against him in the waning stages of the campaign, that could create some tension around City Hall. And that might ratchet up quite a bit over the next couple of years should 2029 elections go a certain direction.
While Hammons turned out to be uncompetitive in this particular contest, it did give him city-wide exposure. And although his background didn’t lend itself to serving as marshal as opposed to Whitman’s many years in law enforcement, his experience as a city councilor for the past five years espousing conservative reformist and budgetary-watchdog issue preferences, and acting upon these, position him well for a promotion.
A Hammons mayoral run and win in 2029 with budget-making and veto-wielding powers would make the last four years of Whitman’s term potentially very interesting. If so, despite his big loss last week, Hammons might have the last laugh.
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