Breaking the city

With the election already upon us, I just wanted to highlight this one aspect of your presumptive next Governor's campaign I don't think has been centered in the press the way it probably should have been. Of course, there's a lot we can say about Jeff Landry's venality or his stupidity, or even his bigotry. But the most alarming matter that confronts us this month is his outright hostility toward the city of New Orleans in particular. 

A win by Landry would return unified control of Louisiana’s government to the GOP. But it would also elevate and empower a man who has tirelessly sought to undermine the political power of the state’s major cities and shield law enforcement from local and federal reform efforts.

“The place is being run like a third world-country,” the attorney general said of New Orleans during an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s show last October. “Why doesn’t the state just take it over?” Carlson asks. “It’s a great question,” Landry responded. “In Louisiana, we have one of the most powerful executive departments in the country. The governor is extremely powerful. He has the ability to bend that city to his will, and he [Edwards] just doesn’t.”

“But we will.”

This is something that has been a long time coming. The political independence of the city and its capacity to protect its residents from the worst abuses of state government has been under constant attack since Katrina. The privatization of the schools, the destruction of public housing, the rampant and unchecked gentrification has chipped away at the city's heart. 

We semi-sarcastically lament from time to time that nobody actually lives here anymore. But the truth is, New Orleans is the state's leading city in name only.  It isn't even the most populous parish anymore. More to the point, the political base it once held has reduced to a shadow.  In recent cycles, local elections have taken on a chaotic nature. The so-called "machines" and patronage networks that once defined city politics don't really exist anymore.  Their surviving remnants, inheritors of diminishing sinecures in the con-profit space, or in neighborhood churches, or in bail bonds, etc. operate in ad-hoc coalitions but none of them command the GOTV apparatus that was once overwhelming and automatic. Intra-city politics in the Cantrell era is the age of incoherence and power vacuums. 

In state politics, that manifests as a lack of clout for the city overall. Once upon a time, a gubernatorial candidate with a strong showing out of New Orleans was at least a third of the way to winning. That's no longer the case. In 2019 it took a massive, unlikely to ever be repeated, effort to shake out every last vote in order to save John Bel Edwards's reelection. Even just four years later, there are fewer votes to shake out now. The COVID and (I know it's a problematic term) post-COVID era has brought an accelerated exodus as housing and insurance costs rise, and as the threat of hurricanes and sea level rise makes life here seem ever more tenuous. The city never fully recovered from Katrina and what remains is fading away.  

And it won't end there. Like I've been saying all these nearly twenty years, now, this is more or less a deliberate project of our city and state's ruling classes who are just as happy as ever to swim in a smaller pond as long as they remain the big fish. Last year's recall petition was a flex by that class in more ways than one. Even though it didn't remove the mayor from office, it did impose a kind of discipline on the mayor by demonstrating a threat.  The fact that a millionaire can always throw the administration into chaos on a moment's notice by funding a recall establishes who is the real boss. The concurrent emergence of the NOLA Coalition and crime panic reaction shows how effective this tactic is at setting the agenda. The other thing the recall did was open up the voter rolls to scrutiny by dishonest and politically driven actors.  Regardless of who becomes the next Secretary of State, there will almost certainly be a full purge of Orleans voters in the coming term.  

The goal in view now is a state whose politics turns less on the concerns of a political base in the city and the people who live there and is more at the whim of the Governor and his much smaller base of a few millionaires and associated kleptocrats with little or no friction from outside. Kind of like some other states we know. 

.@jefflandry says his vision is to make Louisiana more like Mississippi. #lagov

— Jan Moller (@jmollerLBP) April 26, 2023

What are "pro-choice proclivities"?

 The entire premise of this Prospect article is wrong.  

Since Dobbs, voters in Republican Kansas, Ohio, and Montana have rejected far-right overreaching ballot measures and affirmed their support for the right to abortion even with curbs in place. In last year’s midterm elections, voters’ concerns about the loss of that right helped keep the Senate in Democratic hands and blunt the Republican wave in the House that overconfident prognosticators repeatedly claimed was nigh.

This fall, upcoming gubernatorial elections in Kentucky, Mississippi, and Louisiana will test just how deep the revulsion over these far-right Republican excesses runs in the South, and what those races may presage in abortion access politics beyond the region. All three states have Republican supermajorities in their legislatures. The Dobbs decision specifically affirmed a Mississippi statute devised to explicitly challenge Roe v. Wade. But many Republicans have been shaken by the backlash.

No. Louisiana's gubernatorial election will not test voters' aversion to GOP anti-abortion politics in any way.  I understand why national political analysts would like it to. It certainly could do that.  The mid-term results and the single ballot issue results this article cites do, indeed, indicate that abortion rights can be a winning issue for Democrats in supposedly "red" territory.  But that can only happen if the Democratic candidates run on defending those rights. The Democrat in our Governor's race is decidedly not doing that. 

The Prospect article wants to pretend that he is, or could be. But the closest it can come to achieving this pretense is to describe him as having "Pro-choice proclivities." 

Louisiana holds its open primary in mid-October. Gov. John Bel Edwards, an anti-abortion Democrat, is term-limited. Republican Attorney General Jeff Landry, who is running to succeed Edwards, sticks to the loud and proud extremes favored by the far-right Republicans on abortion. If he survives attacks from his Republican opponents in the already nasty “jungle” primary, he appears to be poised to romp over Democrat Shawn Wilson, an African American former state transportation secretary and first-time candidate with pro-choice proclivities and little statewide name recognition. Like their Mississippi neighbors, Louisianans mostly vote along racial lines.

To demonstrate those proclivities, the Prospect cites Wilson's extremely milquetoast rhetoric in support of rape and incest exceptions as well as the fact that he affirmatively answered a yes/no debate question about a hypothetical statewide referendum on abortion.  This is hardly anything.  Certainly it is not indicative of the "Post-Dobbs strategy" of full-throated support for abortion rights the article wants these elections to "test." 

In fact, in interviews, Wilson sounds very much like a 90s Third Way Democrat seeking to accommodate anti-abortion sentiment while also not posing a direct threat to an individual's "private decisions." 

In an interview last week, Wilson didn’t describe himself as being “pro-choice” like abortion rights supporters typically do.

The Democrat said he personally opposes abortion except in cases where a pregnant person was a victim of rape or incest – or their health is at risk. But he also believes his personal beliefs shouldn’t be imposed on others, and that individuals need more flexibility to make their own decisions about ending a pregnancy. 

When asked about abortion, Wilson said he is “not interested in preventing folks from making decisions that are private,” and “I dare not question their doctor’s expertise.”

But after Dobbs, those private decisions are already threatened. State laws that are on the books now criminalize them.  Wilson is not promising to do anything about that. He's meekly defending a status quo that doesn't exist anymore.  During the third debate, Wilson was asked why he had begun the campaign with the words "Pro-life" displayed on his website but then taken that down. All he said was, "I am personally a decision maker for me and my family." We can barely even understand what that means for his family members, let alone what it might mean for the people of the state.

What a waste. The thing is, it is probably true that Democrats can make up some ground in GOP dominated states by running campaigns that speak up for abortion rights rather than just hint a candidate's "pro-choice proclivities." The "Dobbs strategy" does, in fact, seem viable.  Shawn Wilson isn't running on that, though. 

Age of cruelty

Picking up a thought we left off on a few weeks ago, about the closing off of political possibilities evidenced by the permanent intransigence of the anti-vax phenomenon, it's time to get back to our regularly scheduled pessimism. Today we consider the same reasons we will have to live forever with anti-vax mania can explain why we will also live under an increasingly cruel criminal legal system.

Our working thesis here is that Americans do not engage politically with any expectation that public policy can open up a better future. Indeed, most Americans don't believe a better future even exists.  And so no one expects the state can or should improve our ever worsening social conditions.  Instead, everyone who expends any energy at all on public affairs just wants to make sure someone besides themselves has to suffer the most.  Which is precisely what laws like this are designed to accomplish.

Lanieux, who had been arrested for aggravated flight from an officer, was prosecuted under Louisiana’s controversial habitual offender law, sometimes known as a “three strikes and you’re out” rule. The statute allows district attorneys to significantly enhance sentences, often by decades, for people with previous felony convictions. 

The goal is to protect the public from unrepentant, violent criminals, but critics contend prosecutors have abused the law by targeting Black men. Louisiana’s population is 33% Black, but 79% of those convicted in the state as habitual offenders are Black, according to a report last year from the Public Welfare Foundation, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C.

Lanieux, who is Black, didn’t fit the profile of a violent repeat offender. He had been convicted for two drug possession felonies in the late 1990s, for which he received probation. But those, combined with the flight charge, were enough for prosecutors to apply the habitual offender statute.

“I ain’t never thought a two-year sentence would turn into life,” said Lanieux, who sat for 10 Zoom interviews with Verite News and ProPublica over six months from the Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel. “They just throw you away for any little thing.”

No, the goal of habitual offender laws in not "to protect the public" from anything. The goal is to terrorize powerless people with an unmerciful, unjust and overwhelming police apparatus. Which, as you can see, is the exact purpose to which it has been applied.  As is the case with anti-vax, this is just mainstream politics at work now.  

The Verite article quoted above explains that despite a sustained, evidence-based criminal justice reform effort in the late 2010s, the ascendant reactionary movement is inevitably and swiftly wiping out any hope of progress. 

That’s when Louisiana’s attorney general, Jeff Landry, who is considered the front-runner in this fall’s gubernatorial election, stepped in, filing a legal challenge to the law. 

It is seen as part of a growing backlash across the country against prosecutors who have pushed for an end to mass incarceration. Former President Donald Trump, who has endorsed Landry, vowed to go after “Marxist” district attorneys who he said have allowed U.S. cities to be turned into “hellholes.” Florida governor and presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis echoed his political rival, boasting in August of his efforts to remove local prosecutors he accused of failing to uphold the law. 

Landry, a former police officer and sheriff’s deputy and an Army veteran who served in Operation Desert Storm, has blasted the 2017 reforms as a “disaster.” 

“We have incompetent mayors, and these woke district attorneys want to play a dangerous game of catch and release with criminals,” Landry said last year. “As governor we are just not going to put up with that.”

Quick note about bit where your next Governor is identified as an "Army veteran who served in Operation Desert Storm."  I have no idea why that information is relevant here. But as long as the reporter/editors decided to throw it in, they should have at least put it in the correct context. 

During the campaign, Landry caught criticism for claiming to be a veteran of Operation Desert Storm. It was technically true, but it had the effect of leaving many, including some in the media, with the mistaken impression that he had served overseas. In fact, he was stationed in Ft. Hood, Texas, reportedly working as a driver for a general.

Landry refused to acknowledge the obvious rhetorical puffery. “The only reason I didn’t go (to the Persian Gulf) is because the war ended so quickly,” he said. “I certainly never tried not to go.” 

Anyway, back to this matter of all politics being about finding someone to punish now. To illustrate this, let's take a look at what the "Marxist" District Attorney New Orleans elected under the mistaken impression he would change things here in the "hellhole"  is up to now. 

Upset with what he argues are low bails set in magistrate court, Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams threatened to pull his prosecutors from first appearances if its commissioners don’t take accountability for decisions about jailing people suspected of crimes.

In a Tuesday letter to Criminal District Court Chief Judge Robin Pittman, Williams wrote that the court’s magistrate judge and its four commissioners often delve well below the bail recommendations of his prosecutors.

“I have strongly considered instructing my [prosecutors] to no longer appear at first appearance dockets,” Williams wrote, suggesting a move made by his predecessor, Leon Cannizzaro, to abandon those proceedings.

The guy who ran on a promise of ending cash bail says the bail is not high enough! Does Jeff Landry know about this?  Do you think he would like Jason better if he did? Hard to say, but just to be safe he's all charged up to throw some more kids into the dungeon. 

Williams’ call for higher bail amounts comes even as the city's jail population has swelled to its highest levels in at least four years — even as murders and other reported violent crimes, except for rape, have declined, according to publicly available data.

On Thursday, more than 1,220 people remained in custody at the Orleans Justice Center — a number last seen in August 2019. The jail population has increased by more than 20% this year, the data shows.

Despite Jason Williams's enthusiasm for high bail and mass incarceration, the leading candidates for Governor* continue to hammer away at his Marxist hellhole.  So far I've watched three gubernatorial debates this election season. During these, the Times-Picayune's newly endorsed Stephen Waguespack repeatedly called for harsher measures in New Orleans. Waguespack says he wants more surveillance and more arrests. During the LSU debate, he said that the French Quarter is "out of control" and endorsed Billy Nungesser's proposal to turn it into a state park. Jeff Landry's intentions toward the city are similarly aggressive. He recently told Tucker Carlson that “The place is being run like a third world-country," adding that as Governor he would use the most extreme measures available to "bend it to his will." 

Which raises the question, how much more cruel and punitive do Wags and Landry want our burgeoning police state to become? Because if conditions at the Parish Prison are any indication, things are pretty bad right now. 

Four jail supervisors walked out during their shifts inside the Orleans Justice Center on Friday following multiple fires, at least one stabbing and a feces-throwing incident in the lockup, the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office has confirmed.

The deputies returned to their posts later that day after speaking with sheriff's office brass.

OPSO spokesperson Casey McGee said low staffing, coupled with a swelling jail population, have created an environment conducive to fights, disciplinary infractions by incarcerated people and uses of force.

Uh oh the Sheriff's office is understaffed. I think we know what comes next.  Actually, it's already happened. Recall that earlier this year, Sheriff Hutson asked voters to approve an additional $13 million in property taxes to help her run these torture chambers. They said no but, clearly, it doesn't end there.

This is a classic scenario.  The more people they cram into the jail, the more staff the Sheriff needs to hire, the more money the Sheriff can demand.  It's the vicious cycle people were told they were electing this Sheriff and this DA to end. But here they are. Definitely not ending it. Instead they are each caving to political pressure to run the other direction.  No doubt the result of this fall's election will push them even further. 

Today, The Lens points out that the jail population is approaching a "cap" imposed by City Council in 2019.  What happens if it runs over?  Nobody knows. But given that our politics only favors more and harsher punishment for the least powerful, our guess is, probably nothing.

*FWIW the Democrat on these stages, Shawn Wilson responded "yes" to one of those rapid fire yes/no questions asking whether the State Police, in light of the fatal beating of Ronald Greene, have a racism problem.  A few moments later, however, Wilson ducked back in to apologize for that answer which he would like to change to "it's complicated." 

The little lords are mad now

See, this is what we were getting at with this.  I don't really know what any of these people are like. But the general notion is this. One assumes that Frank, who built the business, or his son Don who took it over and ran things during the golden age, were the real patricians. One assumes they would have just quietly allowed the little jet plane controversy play out without them. It's really Jeff Landry's problem to deal with.  They're fine no matter what.  But here's third generation Greg (retired, by the way, which makes it even worse) getting absolutely red and mad on Facebook. 

 

@AGJeffLandry/@JeffLandry’s “private citizen” buddy, Greg Mosing, is big mad. #lalege #lagov https://t.co/4STWQw0dp8 pic.twitter.com/Juwzcz7XvL

— FactCheckAGLandry (@ag_landry) September 8, 2023

Greg notes here that he retired "after developing successful businesses." He's not talking about THE family business empire; the source of his inherited fortune and seed of these businesses he says he "developed."  This doesn't mean Frank and Don were the good guys or anything. It's just that they had better things to do than fly all the worst people in the country around on "Rockstar One" and angrily clap back at anyone who asks about it.

Surely, a winning slogan

Put it on a dang billboard

.@jefflandry says his vision is to make Louisiana more like Mississippi. #lagov

— Jan Moller (@jmollerLBP) April 26, 2023

Billy is in trouble again

Billy is always in trouble.

The oversight of Louisiana's nine museums is plagued by lack of leadership, no coherent budget and low morale among employees that may be affecting museum operations, Legislative Auditor Mike Waguespack said Monday morning. The report says the state Office of State Museum has not had a permanent director since 2016.

The review also said the office lacks a comprehensive plan for exhibits and lacks a clear budget for museum programs and exhibits. It said staff reductions totaling 42% since 2009 pose a major challenge for the sites. The Office of State Museum is part of the Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, which is led by Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser.

The auditor's report is available here if you feel like looking through it. 

Also for some background on that vacant director's job, Billy fired the last permanent director. Soon afterward, we had this episode where the consultant then holding the interim position resigned in protest over Nungesser's "pretty strange crap" management. 

Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser has been using a Lower Pontalba Building apartment and space in other state museum buildings in the French Quarter for his personal benefit and has engaged in a pattern of political interference with the agency's operations, the Louisiana State Museum's interim director said Monday while resigning in protest.

Nungesser’s interference includes attempting to override museum officials and board members who objected to plans to loan U.S. Sen. John Kennedy artworks for his office in Washington, D.C., and threatening to sell museum works of art on eBay to raise funds, said Tim Chester, a museum consultant who took the interim position in October.

“I have never encountered anything like this in the 40 years I’ve worked in the field, ever,” Chester said. “I’ve seen some pretty strange crap come down in museums, but this one takes the cake.”

There's just something about those Pontalba apartments, right? Anyway, a few years later, there was more consulting from another consultant. Their feedback was also bad. 

A 2019 report by the consulting firm Lord Cultural Resources said the current arrangement "creates political interference and tension, makes fundraising a challenge and could risk OSM losing accreditation."

Eventually (inevitably?) the FBI got involved.  In response, Billy implied the investigation was initiated by political opponents like, for example, Jeff Landry, who was expected to face Nungesser in this year's gubernatorial election.  And that's all very plausible. Although, Billy's crystal ball obviously needs a little polishing.  Here's how he saw things playing out at the time.

He also said he doesn’t believe Landry will run for governor, saying “he’s got bigger problems.”

“In an open primary, he can’t win,” Nungesser said. “I always thought John Kennedy gets re-elected and he runs (for governor). And listen, I welcome anyone to run. But let’s run in a fair race and let the people of Louisiana choose. If they close the primary you’re going to get the far right and the far left. And we got enough divisiveness in Baton Rouge.”

A spokesman for Landry declined to comment. A message to the Louisiana Committee for a Conservative Majority was not immediately returned Saturday.

Nungesser’s fiery speech came after FBI agents interviewed one of his staffers as well as legislators in a probe of his office, he said. Nungesser said he didn’t know what the probe was about, but heard it was at least partly related to grants from his office.

He added that investigators have been calling lawmakers and others who stayed at the Lower Pontalba apartments in the French Quarter, which his office operates. He said he doesn’t know whether the FBI or state auditors are looking into that.

“I'm not blaming anyone for that, but it's a coincidence that I haven't seen any polls but everybody tells me, 'They can't beat you for governor if you run in an open primary.' Because I help everybody. And I don't crucify anybody just to make a political grandstand.”

Well, here we are in March 2023 and Kennedy is not running. Landry is running. And Billy, who was told by "everybody" that he was unbeatable is the one with bigger problems now.

Of course right up until then it was fine

Jeff and Shane have decided they are gonna put off the deal where they give each other bullshit gigs for a while. 

Guidry is Landry’s top political ally and a major donor to his campaign. Landry also hired Guidry to serve as a “special agent/investigator” for the Attorney General’s office.

Landry reported making between $50,000 and $100,000 in 2020 and 2021 from his role on the Harvey Gulf board, where he provided legal advice. Several experts said the arrangement may run afoul of a law that says the attorney general must devote his full time to that office, as well as of ethics laws that prohibit public officials from getting certain payments and gifts outside of their state salaries.

Landry’s campaign did not respond to messages seeking comment on his resignation.

“He just felt he needed to resign from the board in 2022 to run for governor in 2023,” Guidry said, adding that Landry didn’t provide a lengthy explanation for his decision. Guidry said he replaced Landry with a former schools superintendent from Michigan. The company’s website indicates the new board member is Ronald Wilson.

We'll see how they feel after the election. 

Starting to think none of these Republicans wants to be Governor

I guess the big tell was when Landry and Kennedy declined to run. There's still plenty time for them to change their minds, of course. But the way I read their current stance plus the lack of overall strategy happening here, is they must not actually think they can win.

Hey, Louisiana Republican Party, how’s that uniting-behind-a-single-gubernatorial-candidate thing going?

Not so well, apparently.

Party elders are openly pining for a single candidate, the better to avoid a divisive primary fight and unite votes against Democratic incumbent John Bel Edwards. But so far two candidates, U.S. Rep. Ralph Abraham and businessman Eddie Rispone, have launched campaigns.

And now comes word that a third might join them. Former U.S. Rep. John Fleming, who left Congress following a failed bid for U.S. Senate and joined the Trump administration, says he’s considering a run, according to LAPolitics.com. Fleming, of Minden, has been working as a deputy assistant secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services. Last year President Donald Trump nominated him to be the Commerce Department’s assistant secretary for economic development, but he never got a confirmation vote. His name has now been resubmitted.

Here are some additional facts about John Fleming.



Fleming describes himself as a doctor. But most of his $6.3 million income (as of 2011, anyway) comes from the sandwich shop and parcel store franchises he owns.  In Congress, Fleming quickly associated himself with the 'Tea Party" movement and a virulent opponent of the Obamacare law which he described as "the most dangerous piece of legislation ever passed in Congress.” He was also among the Louisiana Republicans who infamously voted against relief for Hurricane Sandy victims in 2012. While in Washington, Fleming also became momentarily famous for thinking an Onion story was real.

He ran for Senate in 2016 and fared poorly.  At one point in that campaign, Rob Maness accused "the thugs behind the John Fleming campaign" of trying to bribe him to drop out. This was probably true, although with Maness, one never knows.  

So anyway, good luck to John if he want to run.  Meanwhile one of the announced candidates is already dealing with a controversy of his own today.

Running for Congress in 2014 as a political outsider, Dr. Ralph Abraham made a pledge that resonated with voters in his conservative northeast Louisiana district: He would not collect his salary if he went to Washington.

“It Should Be An Honor And A Privilege To Serve Your Country And NOT A Paid Position,” Abraham said on his campaign website. “YOU Should Not Pay A Penny For Representation.” He said he would donate his salary to charity. Abraham won the race, but it turns out that voters in Louisiana’s 5th Congressional District are indeed paying for his representation, at a cost of $174,000 per year.

Okay well, Ralph made a stupid campaign promise that turned out to be impractical for a bunch of reasons.  That's embarrassing. But it's not the actual scandal here. This is. 

Roll Call, a Washington newspaper that covers Congress, estimated a year ago that Abraham had a net worth of $4.8 million, making him the 65th wealthiest member of Congress.

The actual number of millionaires who should be in Congress is zero.  Here we have a millionaire Congressman and a millionaire ex-Congressman who want to be Governor. But neither of those should even exist in the first place. What are we even doing here?

The Ralph Abraham full employment plan

Well if you are a Republican political consultant or job seeker wondering where all the money will be next year, Ralph Abraham has provided some help there. 

U.S. Rep. Ralph Abraham, R-La., will run against Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards in 2019, he said in a press release Thursday (Dec. 6). “I’m running for Governor, and I intend to win,” Abraham said in a written statement.

Word from Abraham comes three days after U.S. Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said Kennedy would not run in the election. Many had assumed Kennedy would join the race and be the GOP frontrunner before he declared otherwise. Now the field is considered wide open, with a chance for lesser-known Republicans to gain traction.

Businessman Eddie Rispone, a Republican who has never held elected office, has already said he intends to qualify for the governor’s race.

Rispone is more or less a vanity candidate. And even though Lane Grigsby has been talking him up, I would expect he's probably not going to raise or spend a whole lot of money that isn't his own.  So Ralph is making an early bid to pile up the real stuff. Other Republican B-listers like Sharon Hewitt are thinking about getting in as well. But without Kennedy or Landry, it's likely these campaigns will be more about building resumes than they will be about winning the governorship.&nbsp

Of course, this is Louisiana and anything can happen.  We talked about this last week already. But, presently, the conventional wisdom indicates that John Bel is a relatively safe bet for reelection.  I say relatively safe, not so much because this is supposed to be a "red" state as we're told over and over, but because John Bel tends to play just about everything safe. A little too safe, maybe, which can cause problems

Take minimum wage for example. An extremely conservative estimate this year puts the minimum living wage on which a family of three could expect to barely scrape by at something like $23 an hour.  But Louisiana lawmakers are resistant to even $15. This has to do, in part, with the degree to which your typical state legislator is in the pocket of business interests. But it also has a lot to do with the Governor's failure to lead.

This year, voters in Missouri and Arkansas passed ballot measures that phase in raises to (still quite insufficient) $11 and $12 wages in a few years. Edwards, who himself has only ever asked for is a gradual raise to $8.50, took that as cover to meekly chime in, on the need for a "modest increase" in Louisiana. John Bel is a former high school quarterback and veteran of the US Army's 82nd Airborne Division so it wouldn't make any sense for us to call him a wimp.  Instead we're just not convinced he cares all that much that the minimum wage is a true living wage. If he did, he might take a harder line in negotiations.

Maybe the Governor needs to take a cue from LaToya Cantrell here.  This fall the mayor has been fighting publicly with the tourism Brahmins over the hotel/motel tax. New Orleanians have complained for years that revenue generated by the tourism economy which could be used for the greater benefit of the city is mostly funneled back into the hands of a few state boards controlled by the owners of that industry's profits.  In recent years, those complaints have finally reached the ears of politicians.  Some of us never would have dreamed we'd see the Mayor of New Orleans take this matter on with any degree of seriousness. But here we are.

Cantrell began by criticizing a Convention Center plan to subsidize a private hotel development. But even as the Governor stepped in to try and quiet her down, she upping her demand that a greater share of the hotel/motel tax revenue be dedicated to critical city infrastructure. Then, even as the tourism agencies themselves offered an alternative plan, Latoya made sure to let them know that wasn't going to be good enough.  

The announcement appeared to be an effort to mollify Cantrell as she seeks to convince state leaders to redirect some of the $200 million in tax money collected in New Orleans that now goes to the Convention Center, Superdome and tourism promotion groups including New Orleans & Co., the new name for the former Convention and Visitors Bureau.

But the announcement appeared to just provide more ammunition for Cantrell, who so far has been largely unsuccessful in convincing state officials to back her plan.

“We’re not asking anybody for a favor. Last year, our people generated more than $200 million in hospitality revenue — but less than 10 percent of that came to the city.  Seventy percent of that $200 million went to just four hospitality agencies,” the mayor said in a news release.

“I will continue to fight to get our people all that they deserve,” she said.

Now, I fully expect that, if LaToya does wring some money out of the tourism cabal, it's still not going to be "all that (we) deserve."  But at least she is on a path to get us more than the inadequate $6.7 million currently on offer. This is not only because what they're volunteering isn't good enough but also because it's less than they can afford to give.  Always reject the first offer, right?

All John Bel can say to the first offer is, thank you.

Thank you @OchsnerHealth! https://t.co/MHrGRUjkGB

— John Bel Edwards (@LouisianaGov) December 6, 2018

The Governor doesn't even have to be aggressive about it if that isn't his style. All he has to say to Ochsner is, "That's much better but, hey, why not $25?" Seems a modest enough ask of the state's largest employer. At least Ochsner holds that distinction during non-election years, anyway. Maybe if a few more Republican candidates jump in the race, the numbers might change.

They've already got the Governor they want

John Neely Kennedy spent the past few months flogging one poll that suggested he might beat John Bel Edwards head to head.  Looks like he must have figured that was enough to prove his point.

U.S. Sen. John Kennedy has announced he won't run for governor next year, after toying with a run to unseat Gov. John Bel Edwards for months.

Kennedy, a Republican, said in a news release Monday morning that he wants to remain in the U.S. Senate, where he has served since 2017.

"I love being in the United States Senate," he said in a statement. "It is such an honor to represent the people of Louisiana in the United States Senate. Right now, that’s where I think I can do the most good."

John is going back to D.C. to.. uh... spend more time with his family, by which we mean his fans in the national political press.  We all love a good soundbite, after all.  Either that or he's been promised a committee chairmanship but there's no need pick just one reason. For example, we also have to consider the point that a lot of Republicans seem to be deciding they're fine the Governor they have now.

While Republicans are angling to find an opponent to challenge the reelection of the only Democratic governor in the Deep South, some of the GOP’s biggest names are aligning with Gov. John Bel Edwards. They include a former GOP gubernatorial candidate, two top aides to former Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal and several of the party’s A-List donors. Edwards faces reelection in October 2019.

“The governor was dealt a hard hand to play and he’s done a great job,” said Jay Blossman, of Mandeville. “If he was a far-left, screaming liberal, you’d have a problem … But he’s not. He’s willing to work (with) both sides.”

The former chairman of the Public Service Commission ran as a Republican for governor in 2003 and flirted with a run in 2007. He gave Edwards’ campaign the maximum $5,000 in December 2017. For Blossman, who Edwards appointed in June to the LSU Board of Supervisors, it doesn’t matter who else is in the race.

I like that Ballard includes the bit about Blossman owing his current position to John Bel. Incumbency always comes with a fair amount of patronage advantages. Which is a mild way of saying our system is built on legalized bribery and little else. Remove any question of justice or morality from politics and these contributions are strictly business.

When it comes to awarding contracts and setting regulatory policies, a Louisiana governor generally has more power than chief executives in other states. So, it behooves businessmen to adopt an outlook more practical than partisan when it comes to supporting a gubernatorial candidate, said G. Pearson Cross, a political scientist at the University of Louisiana Lafayette. And sometimes that means spreading contributions across several campaigns.

New Orleans banker and developer Joe Canizaro held an event for the governor in October but texted Thursday that “at this time I do not know who I am going to support.”

Craig Spohn, head of the Cyber Innovation Center in Bossier City, gave Edwards $5,000 but hasn’t made up his mind yet.

“It’s too early. The field hasn’t come into formation,” Spohn said.

All that matters to guys like Joe Canizaro is that whoever is Governor remembers who bought the canapes at the fundraiser when it comes time to decide what to do with the next Charity Hospital type project or who gets the next big sack of free Convention Center money.  When it comes to doling out favors to big money developers or polluters or security contractors  or just looking out for the interests of the right wing business lobby in general, John Bel is as reliable a Republican as anybody.

Of course there's still plenty money to spread around.  So, even if they aren't running an A-lister, the state GOP will still have plenty cash to pass out to ambitious young Republicans who want to pad their resumes staffing for vanity candidates like Eddie Rispone or, I guess, more likely at this point Ralph Abraham. Ralph is supposed to let us know what he's thinking on January 1st. Sharon Hewitt seems to be waiting for a higher power to decide for her.

.@SenJohnKennedy is a strong voice for LA & I’m grateful that he will continue to advocate for us in the #ussenate. I’m still strongly considering a run for Governor & continue to pray for God’s guidance on the best way to serve my community & help turnaround our great state.

— Sharon Hewitt (@sharonhewitt) December 3, 2018

Still, even though today's news seems pretty good for John Bel, he shouldn't just take reelection for granted.  Assuming Kennedy stays out and that Jeff Landry doesn't hop back in, the lack of a big name Republican really only guarantees a chaotic field. And 2019 might still be more chaotic in Louisiana than it seems from here.  Remember last week when Cameron Henry tried to scuttle the revenue estimate simply because oil prices do not always go up? What happens if he and the rest of the radicals controlling the state House decide to manufacture another budget crisis during an election year?  Or what if oil prices really do crash? 

Despite the above-mentioned advantages of incumbency, sitting Governors can and have been taken down during times of uncertainty.  Dave Treen (1983) and Buddy Roemer (1991) were knocked off during oil gluts and recessions. Edwin Edwards (1987) and Kathleen Blanco (2007) were felled or decided not to run in the wake of scandal and disaster.  A little bit of mischief goes a long way in Louisiana.  With no anointed Republican in the field, there could be plenty of room for mischief.

Theoretically this would be a terrific moment to throw a truly leftist candidate into the mix.  But no such person exists in Louisiana, nor does the infrastructure necessary to make such a campaign remotely viable.  So we'll have to content ourselves with watching the Republican B team struggle to get its act together. Even as their supporters tell us, in so many ways, that they already have the Governor they want.

John Kennedy is okay with tear gassing babies

John is supposed to tell us if he's running for Governor this week.

CORRECTION:

Kennedy is gonna say something on Monday.

Update:

Well in light of everything else that's happened, this is kind of a surprise. At least to me now.

U.S. Rep. Ralph Abraham is leaning toward entering the race to challenge Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards in 2019, his spokesman Cole Avery confirmed Thursday (Nov. 29).

Abraham, a Republican from Richland Parish, said as much in an interview with Greg Hilburn with the USA Today Network.

“If I had to make a decision today it would be that I was running,” Abraham told Hilburn.

That, "if I had to decide today.." bit is kind of a hedge but I thought they were clearing the field for John.

Also.. from the USA Today article: 

"I think we all thought John would have given us an answer by now, but he has to make his own decision," Abraham said. "His decision won't have any impact on mine."

Abraham has given himself a Jan. 1 deadline to announce his decision. "I haven't fully made that decision," he said.

So John will say something on Monday and Ralph will throw a party on New Year's Day in case you needed to synchronize your calendars. 

On to 2019

Yeah so the midterms aren't over yet but it's never too early to start watching the next election(s).  At least, that's what the money people do.  And, as we all know, those are the people who determine how these things turn out so let's watch that, I guess.

U.S. Sen. John Kennedy hasn’t yet said that he’ll be a candidate for governor next fall, but some of his fellow Republicans aren’t waiting to line up for him — or against.

First Lane Grigsby, a Baton Rouge businessman and big-time Republican donor, let it be known that he’s not impressed with Kennedy’s brief tenure in Washington. Grigsby told The Advocate’s Mark Ballard that he thinks Louisiana’s junior senator, in office less than two years, isn’t ready for the Governor’s Mansion.

“Louisiana needs leadership, not another politician looking for another lily pad,” said Grigsby, who is backing the only announced Republican challenger to Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards, fellow contractor Eddie Rispone. “(Kennedy) hasn’t done much yet but appear on Fox News.”

Man, losing the Grigsby primary to Eddie Rispone is a slap in the face, alright. But Kennedy is still signaling he could run.  

Publicly Kennedy has said how much he likes his Senate job. “But, it’s hard to stomach what is happening to Louisiana right now,” Kennedy said in prepared statement. “Private sector job growth is among the lowest in the country. Too many of our kids can’t read their diplomas.”

Armed with an internal poll showing that he could beat Edwards, Kennedy is making the rounds of funders to say he agrees with them that Edwards’ policies are bad for Louisiana’s economic future, then adding that Rispone is largely unknown and can’t beat the Democrat.

Meanwhile rivals like Jeff Landry and his allies have been trying to "clear the field" of formidable candidates and it's looking now like Grigsby is on their side.  So it's with that in mind that we should consider the persistence of the "Kennedy might not run" rumors that float about the subtext of a lot of these stories lately. Is that line coming from Kennedy? Or is it coming from someone trying to discourage him?

Update: It says here that John is going to make up his mind by December 1 so mark your calendars.

The "adults" are running out of time to do any adulting

It's already March.  Carnival season is over and it's time for media outlets across South Louisiana to fire up their clickbaity... okay, useful but still clickbaity... crawfish price index thingies.  WGNO's is the first one to come up in my google search result so I guess they are winning right now. Let's see what they've found.

The average for live crawfish is $3.12 per pound, while boiled is running $4.46 per pound, as of Thursday, Feb. 22.

Yeah, I think that's high too. Still, it's not as bad as I thought it might be given the freeze last month.  But I'm no expert on aquaculture. I only know what I read in the papers.  And that says the freeze may delay production this year but it won't necessarily hurt it once things start rolling.  In any case, I'm hoping there's still enough available come early July. That is when we will need to have a big crawfish boil on the state capitol grounds. It will be fun way to pass the time during the shutdown.

With the special session just hours away, neither House Republicans nor Democrats had come to a clear agreement on whether it would successfully pass anything. Edwards has said that he doesn’t believe that the Legislature will pass a budget during the regular session that begins March 12, without an infusion of additional revenue because the cuts would be too drastic. That would force another special session after the regular session ends June 4. A budget must be approved by July 1 or there would be a state government shutdown.

The cycle should be familiar by now.  Thanks to a decade of gimmick budgets and costly tax giveaways to wealthy special interests, the state is broke.  Every year brings a new round of devastating cuts, primarily to health care and higher education.  Every year the legislative session ..and the accompanying special session(s).. features a mad scramble to plug a budget shortfall.  This is accomplished precariously through more gimmicks and cuts and temporary sales taxes nobody likes setting up another round of the same battles the following year. This is the year several of those compounded tricks and gimmicks come due as a number of revenue measures are set to sunset creating what has become commonly referred to as a "fiscal cliff."

While it's tempting to regard the absurd cycle with a fatalist sigh about political incompetence or pithy comments about our state's supposed backwardness, there's actually a more straightforward explanation. We have not arrived at the legislative impasse by accident. We are here as a result of deliberate strategy executed by the Republican leadership. If it continues to be successful, and there's little reason to believe it won't, we're more than likely headed for a shutdown in July. Which, again, is why it's a good idea to keep an eye on crawfish prices.

Less than a year into Barack Obama's first term as President, Mitch McConnell famously declared “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” McConnell may not have accomplished that goal. But there's a strong argument the Republican strategy for obstructing Obama's domestic agenda was largely a success. Most notably, Obama's signature achievement health care reform was watered down, delayed, and is now on the verge of unraveling thanks to Republican stubbornness. McConnell was even able to steal a Supreme Court nomination from Obama by sitting on his hands for months. There are numerous other examples but suffice to say the GOP #Resistance to Obama provides a model of how to effectively run an opposition party.  If the Democratic #Resistance movement manages to flip the Congress this year, it will be interesting to see if their party's leadership learns anything from it.

In the meantime, though, Louisiana Republicans understand the model quite well. It's been an open secret around Baton Rouge that their legislative strategy has prioritized limiting John Bel Edwards to one term as Governor above all other concerns. They've managed to resist progressive budgetary reforms for the past two years and are preparing to leverage the continuing crisis against Edwards during the next election.

Now that the next election is already beginning to take shape, the incentive to maintain the bugetary status quo has become even stronger. The current special session has been punctuated with cameo appearances by potential Republican gubernatorial candidates offering advice. On the day the session opened, Ralph Abraham gave a talk where he said he was against any "new taxes." This week, Steve Scalise said the problem has something to do with "the vestiges of Huey Long." John Kennedy said something stupid about art. Jeff Landry has been relatively quiet, but he's been dealing with a lot of things lately. Rest assured, he'll have something to say eventually.

For his part, the Governor has been doing some campaigning as well.  Last week he took some time during one of many extended House recesses to tell the St. Tammany Chamber he would be "as flexible as I can about how we fix the (fiscal) cliff." But added, "I will not be flexible about whether we fix it, because we have to." And that pretty much lays out the stakes of this session, politically.  The Governor needs to fix the cliff. The Republicans need him to fail. All of the breakdowns and antics we've seen during the session proceed from that conflict.

Republicans opened fiscal cliff negotiations (such as they have been) demanding a number of things that don't actually have anything to do with fixing the cliff. Mark Ballard describes some of them in this column. He also momentarily capitulates to the conceit that any of these is a "fiscal reform" but nevermind that for a sec.

A wrinkle is that Republicans have insisted that any tax bills that come out of their chamber include a rider that says the tax increase won’t go into effect unless one of their fiscal reform measures also passes.

These revamps — the so-called Ohio checkbook, a hard spending cap, and changes to Medicaid — provide political cover for those who were elected chanting “the state has spending problem, not a revenue problem.”

But the riders are kind of insulting to the age-old legislative process of people giving their word and keeping it, state Rep. Major Thibaut, D-New Roads, said when the first one was amended onto Dwight’s bill.

If the riders make it easier for House Republicans to vote for sales and income taxes, though, then James said he’s OK with them. “They’ll be stripped off when the adults get these bills in the Senate,” he added.

Some version of that "adults" comment shows up during every legislative session and it always makes me laugh.  It's true that the Senate can and often does undo some of the stupidest damage done in the House. But they've never been able to un-fuck the budget. And recently it seems their efforts are more and more likely to end in tears. This session, the "adults," haven't had an opportunity to do much of anything at all.  And time is running out so when or if they ever get around to fixing the House's mess, it might just prove too much to negotiate.

And make no mistake, wasting time is the primary purpose of the Republican bills.  The "Ohio Checkbook" Ballard refers to is just a website.

As president of LABI, Waguespack is paid to ensure that legislators prioritize tax cuts and exemptions for corporations above anything else, which is why, rather than confront the immediate crisis of a $1 billion shortfall, he is pitching a website that tracks government spending.

Never mind that Louisiana already has such a website; it’s too “clunky.” Ignore the fact that the non-partisan organization United States Public Interest Research Group ranks our state’s current website seventh in the entire country, praising “Louisiana as a ‘leading state’ in offering an easy-to-use website and providing data on an array of expenditures,” as Devon Sanders of LSU’s Manship News Service reported only two weeks ago in The Daily Advertiser.  And pay no attention to the fact that it will take years before it could even be operational. Louisiana Checkbook, we are told, will help us finally solve our budget woes by shining a brighter light on wasteful government spending.

As a "transparency" tool it is redundant.  As conservative propaganda it might serve some purpose... at the expense of Louisiana taxpayers, of course.  As for Medicaid reforms, there are two bills in play. One of them imposes more strict eligibility requirements. The other one... well, it turns out the other one doesn't actually do anything.

The Louisiana House voted 69-29 for legislation Friday (March 2) that was originally aimed at requiring some Medicaid recipients to work to receive their government health benefits, but that has been altered such that Medicaid recipients who refused to work couldn't actually lose their health care.

During committee debate Republicans continually insisted that their work requirement bill was not an attempt to deny health care to anyone. So Marcus Hunter (D-Monroe) called the bluff with an amendment that explicitly says no one can be separated from Medicaid for failing to meet the work requirements. The amendment passed and so here we are with a bill that doesn't do anything... besides cost money, of course. These "fiscal hawk" Republicans do seem to love their wasteful spending bills.

The reason we're still having to deal with any of this nonsense during a fiscal session is because the fate of those bills along with a measure to tighten the state spending cap were attached to the key revenue bills in committee by something Ted James (D-Baton Rouge) called the "Michael Jordan of amendments." 

But then came the “chain” amendment, shackling passage of Dwight’s bill to passage of seven others: HB 2, HB 3, HB 11, HB 12, HB 29, HCR 2, and HB 15. Those include work requirements for Medicaid, as well as co-pays and premium payments. In addition, the Speaker’s measures for lowering the state spending cap and for establishing the Louisiana checkbook must pass for Dwight’s bill to take effect: all or nothing.

Baton Rouge Representative Ted James began laughing, incredulously.

“This is amazing!” he said. “This is like the Michael Jordan of amendments! Dwight, are you okay with this amendment?”

Stephen Dwight's (R-Lake Charles) bill would "clean" four pennies of the existing sales tax which is to say it eliminates certain exclusions and exemptions. It also extends a quarter of the otherwise expiring fifth penny. The Democrats say they absolutely hate having to balance the budget with higher sales taxes because, as they correctly assert, the sales tax is the most regressive way the state can raise money. It overburdens the poor at the same time that the state tax code is full of special carve-outs and subsidies for global industrial corporations, movie production companies, and various other business"incentive" schemes of questionable benefit. Naturally, the House Republicans are fine with all of these giveaways.  It remains something of an open question whether they're even going to list them on their spending "transparency" website. In any case there's a lot of revenue potential left on the table while the legislators argue over pennies.

This is one reason the Black Caucus has drawn a line in the sand demanding at least some sort of income tax adjustment. 

The House Black Caucus, which holds most of the House Democratic votes, told Barras Monday morning that its members would only vote to keep a higher sales tax rate in place for three more years if a measure to raise income taxes passes as well.

The Republicans don't like voting for any taxes, but find a sales tax hike less offensive than other options. The Black Caucus said sales tax increases are harder on poor people, and its members would prefer an income tax increase. 

The only bill that does anything with income taxes was filed by Walt Leger.  House Bill 8 would reduce the amount in federal itemized deductions Louisiana taxpayers could take on their state returns. So it's technically not really an income tax increase. But it is a slightly more progressive means of raising revenue than the sales tax.  It's the closest anything will come to meeting the Black Caucus's demand, anyway.

But Leger's income tax bill also has a "Michael Jordan amendment" attached.  This is thanks to the efforts of Alan Seabaugh (R-Shreveport) who has been doing his best to submarine both the sales tax and income tax bills and therefore the entire session.

Rep. Alan Seabaugh, R-Shreveport, said he also heard a deal had been struck, "but I'm not part of it."

"I'm going to object (to the income tax bill) and make people vote and note those who take a walk," Seabaugh said. "There's no way I'm letting that bill out without a vote, and anybody that does vote for it is likely to find themselves voted out in the next election."

Seabuagh also managed to irk Democrats by adding yet another sunset provision to the sales tax bill and by calling the Governor a "bald-faced liar" from the House floor.  Reporters were saying that Edwards asked to meet with Seabaugh in his office afterwards but that meeting never happened. Donald Trump is considering Seabaugh for a federal judgeship.

Given all of this, it's no surprise House members spent "Do or Die Friday" not doing a whole lot. They gaveled in late and almost immediately gaveled out for meetings.  The meetings were not very productive so they went to lunch. They tried to pass Leger's bill but that darn Michael Jordan amendment took to blocking some shots. They met with the Governor. They huddled. They mini-huddled.  They walked in and out of the room. Some of them even managed to vote from outside of the room. 

Members are only supposed to vote for themselves according to House rules, but Henry's vote on the income tax deduction changes was recorded, even though he was absent all day. Present or not, Henry has said he won't be voting for any tax bills this session so his vote wouldn't help get the vote passed.

Eventually they decided they weren't getting anything done so they will have to try again on Sunday.
They'd better get this mess over to the Senate by then. Otherwise the "Adults" might never get a chance to fix it.

Senate President John Alario, R-Westwego, said the Senate won't be able to accept tax bills after Sunday night and get them legally through the full legislative process before the Legislature's session ends Wednesday.

There's very little reason to expect that they will make that deadline. As anyone who has been paying attention will tell you, fixing the mess isn't what any of this is all about. Barry Ivey has been paying attention.

Rep. Barry Ivey, R-Central, said some of his colleagues have been driven by politics and the goal of preventing Edwards from being a successful governor. (An assertion that Harris later rejected.)

"We don’t want a Democrat to get re-elected, and we don’t want to give him a political win by doing tax reform – that was something that was told to me,” Ivey said. "We've placed politics ahead of our constituents. We should all be ashamed. Myself included.”

That's been the strategy since Day One of the Edwards Administration and there's little reason to  believe the Republican leadership is going to deviate from it now that the next election year is so near up on us.  In other words, we have every reason to believe we're headed for a big posturing government shutdown come July.  We're gonna need a lot of crawfish.

Loose ends

Here's one of several Gubernatorial election summaries I have collected. I'll post more of in the next few weeks.  It references one of several loose ends that may never be fully drawn out.

But I believe the real event that ended Vitter’s political career—and many people scorned me for saying that he was done in politics—allegedly occurred at the IHOP in Hammond, Louisiana, three days earlier than the Royal Blend fiasco.

According to Sheriff Normand, Vitter’s chief PI, not the junior PI who got caught hiding behind an air-conditioning unit, but the “Big” PI, met with a woman at the IHOP near I-12 on Oct. 20. There Vitter’s paid PI allegedly solicited an affidavit to discredit Jason Brad Berry and Wendy Ellis. Berry is a first-rate investigative blogger who videoed Ellis telling her story. She claimed to have had a long-term relationship with Vitter, which included allegations of a child fathered by the Senator, despite his request that she have an abortion.

What made the IHOP story so compelling was the video, recovered on a clandestine recording device, which happened to be the same device the gumshoe used to record Sheriff Normand. The Sheriff maintained the recording had been deleted but his forensic technicians recovered the video.

Why would a PI record himself doing something highly questionable that could bring down his boss, a US Senator? I suppose we’d have to ask Richard Nixon.

The video and other information was turned over to the FBI by Sheriff Normand.

(I went ahead and added that one link in there.)

What happens with that stuff now?  Will this mean serious federal charges for Vitter and his spooks?  Also are we ever going to find out why Vitter was following John Cummings around? What about all these questions Jason asked after all the shit had hit the fan?  Who follows up on that? 

One hour until the polls close

Some tweets.

I'm thinking we might see something like 51-49 Vitter. But we won't know for a while.  Keep refreshing The Lens until they put the map up.

Please participate in our exit poll

Here is the final poll before the election.

— skooks (@skooks) November 21, 2015

Some surprising results so far. Not sure what it means as far as final projections go, though. I look at a lot of social media on election day so I get a lot of anecdotal stuff that tends to worry me. A charter school teacher says she's voting for Vitter because she believes that will preserve her livelihood. Some folks reporting what looks to them like heavy turnout in Vitter-friendly white precincts.  That kind of thing.

Also it's raining in a lot of places. If Vitter is going to pull this off, it will be by the slimmest of margins; probably within one percent of the vote.  Should be an interesting night.

Election Day Party Bus

This is it, y'all.  Despite our long history of bad experiences with having one, we're on our way out to make a new Governor.  I'm typing this post up late on Friday evening. We're voting on Saturday. So, in Carnival terms, this is the Lundi Gras of the election. Accordingly, it's been pretty low key. Everyone has an early morning and long day ahead of them.

Monday night (or.. I guess.. the "Muses Thursday" of the Carnival schedule) was a different story as the gubernatorial candidates met for a final.. um.. energetic debate. David Vitter and John Bel Edwards struggled to make themselves heard over the hooting and hollering of charged up spectators. I'm not sure but I got the impression the noise began with Vitter partisans packed into the building specifically for the purpose of making a scene.  But the Edwards supporters were making themselves heard was well.  Anyway, it was a raucous atmosphere. I'm a little surprised no shoes were thrown.

This was a fun debate. Which is surprising at this point in the campaign.  We've heard the candidates' plow through their standard pitches so many times on TOPS, on the transportation trust fund, on the seemingly perma-fucked state budget, so many times that our eyes glaze over when they go through those motions for the n^th time.  Not that those things aren't important. It's just that.. it's been a long campaign. One supposes all that stuff is worth going over again for the benefit of those just now tuning in.  But, in all likelihood, that audience isn't joining us now to hear about the Inventory Tax Credit.  They're there to see some fireworks. And that's what the candidates provided Monday.
 
Granted, a lot of that was stupid.  For instance Edwards called Vitter out for "lying" about John Bel's position on Syrian refugees.  Despite Vitter's "distortions" Edwards assured the audience that he is willing to assume a posture every bit as hateful and suspicious of the homeless victims of ISIS who aren't actually coming to Louisiana right now as Vitter's.

Nevertheless, Vitter continued full steam ahead with his nonsensical harangue about "unaccounted for" Syrian refugees let loose in Louisiana and now ominously descending on Washington D.C. to receive a fist bump from President Obama. Vitter continued with this the next day in an email blast despite some rather glaring factual difficulties and.. um.. uncomfortable ironies.

Ironically, David Vitter's wife Wendy is the general counsel for the Archdiocese of New Orleans, which means she also is the lawyer for Catholic Charities — the people who are bringing in refugees. Apparently the senator is so desperate that he doesn't even mind throwing his wife and Archbishop Gregory Aymond under the bus for a few cheap political points.

For the record, the Syrian man that Vitter and the GOP say is “missing” and “unaccounted for” is totally accounted for. He had to fill out multiple forms before moving around in Baton Rouge, let alone before moving to Washington D.C. to be with his family. (See The Advocate's story HERE confirming all this.) It's noteworthy that The Advocate story came out a full day before the GOP sent the hysterical email, which means they had to have known they were spreading lies in order to foster hysteria — and raise money.

Salon ran a Bob Mann column with a headline stating that Vitter had (again) thrown his wife "under the bus" as well. This bus thing is an interesting choice of imagery given that Vitter had spent the debate making multiple references to the "purple party bus" the Edwards campaign apparently used to ferry attendees at a campaign event in New Orleans over to City Hall so they could vote early.  Seems pretty cool to me. But Vitter clearly intended some sort of racial dig by it.  In Vitter world, driving black voters to the polls at all is suspicious activity. Later in the week, Vitter was asked to square his position on Syrian refugees with his wife's relationship to Catholic Charities.  He said he thought the question was "mean spirited."

It's likely that Vitter's mean spirited xenophobic and racist flavored attacks have done him some good this week. The polling averages could suggest a narrowing of the margin by which he still trails, although that's in no way definite.  He might have made more noticeable progress had his momentum not been blunted by the news of Bobby Jindal's decision on Tuesday (Hermes/Krewe d'Etat Friday on the Carnival calendar) to end his Presidential campaign. 

Not only did Jindal interrupt the flow of the campaign with his announcement, the outgoing Governor also quite inconveniently decided he was in the mood to also do a little governing.  On Wednesday (Endymion Saturday of the campaign) Jindal unveiled a package of emergency cuts to address a mid-year budget shortfall. The legislature approved the plan Friday. They had little choice but to do just that. Still, both candidates publicly urged them not to. 

Jindal's sudden budget action especially disrupted Vitter's plans on Thursday.

A press conference on the refugee crisis originally planned to be held in front of the Catholic Charities’ refugee assistance office was scraped at the last minute in favor of one focused on the budget on the state capitol’s front steps.

Vitter may have been seeing a shift in voter sentiments, “but then Bobby Jindal parachuted in,” said Edward Chervenak, director of the Survey Research Center at the University of New Orleans.

According to our Carnival calendar, Thursday would have been the Thoth/Bacchus Sunday of election week. Most people agree that event-packed day is probably the real climax of the Carnival season.  The campaign version lived up to this billing. 

Vitter had wanted to talk about refugees all day. Jindal forced him to talk about the budget instead.  And when Vitter was his typical overly aggressive self in going about this, Jindal and his staff executed the most exquisite rope-a-dope of the entire campaign.

Jindal, who hasn’t endorsed either of his potential successors, challenged both to release plans of their own.

“Leadership often requires a willingness to make tough choices, but both David Vitter and John Bel Edwards are suggesting they may take the easy way out by raising taxes, even though they won’t quite come out and say it,” Jindal said in a statement. “It’s easy to be a critic, but critics are not leaders. Both candidates have been light on details and should outline their solutions in more detail.”

During his news conference, Vitter implied that he didn’t have a detailed plan because he didn’t have enough information from the Jindal administration.

Commissioner of Administration Stafford Palmieri responded online, saying that her door is “always open to discuss the budget.”

Actually this article leaves out the best part of the exchange. Here is the rest of Palmieri's response.

@JohnBelforLA You are of course invited as well but I know you'd probably call me instead of holding a presser

— Stafford Palmieri (@SOPalmieri) November 19, 2015

Ouch!

So what's gonna happen on Saturday? I don't think anyone knows.  On Friday night I watched Jeremy Alford and Stephanie Grace struggle on Informed Sources. Alford referred a few times to the tightening margins and said something about "white voters coming home to Vitter" this week. That sounds probable but, like I said earlier, it's difficult to see in the polling with any certainty.

Here, in Huff-Po's chart you can see the averages narrowing in the final week.



But the numbers are so tight that it's hard to know what to read into that.

Sabato analyst Geoffrey Skelley moved the race into the "leans Democratic" column this week but, in the text, he emphasizes that they "can't say we're supremely confident" in this call.

Here, Tyler Bridges visits the "bellwether" House District 50 and just goes around asking people who they're voting for.  There's nothing conclusive here but that's by design. Still it's worth paying attention to why voters say they're making the choices they make.

Here, Adrastos explains why there are still probably more Vitter voters than people think there are.

In addition to my concerns that Vitter’s racist and xenophobic slurs might work, I’m convinced that Vitter is underpolling. Most recent surveys have him 15+ points behind Edwards. I’m convinced that there are a substantial number of Vitter voters who are too embarrassed to admit that they’re voting for the sleazy Senator. I’m not the only one.

On the positive side, there was one pretty conclusive poll taken this week. It's probably an outlier, though.

Tracking poll please indicate your #lagov  preference

— skooks (@skooks) November 20, 2015

All indications are, your vote will definitely matter so do not neglect it. Part of me is rooting for the election to come down to something like 1,000 votes so we can do some recounts and lawsuits and spend the next several years arguing about who stole it and how. Seems an appropriate way to finish this.

Saturday is the Fat Tuesday of Election Week.  Do what you wanna otherwise but please get out and vote.  The polls are open from 7 am - 8pm. If you want to know where to vote, click here. If you need a ride to the polls, just keep an eye out for the big purple bus.

Why does NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune/Advance Media/Greater Alabama Region #Content Production hate Louisiana?

They really must hold us in utter contempt.

David Vitter is an accomplished veteran of the Louisiana Legislature, the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. At each level, he has worked to safeguard taxpayers' money and upend the political status quo. He brings a keen intelligence and tenacity to his job. And he understands the difficult changes that must be made to make our state a better place to live.

These are the qualities Louisiana needs in its next governor.

Of course it's hard for them to match the level of contempt in which the candidate himself holds Louisiana voters. 

.@DavidVitter campaign email on Syrian refugees from this morn. #lagov pic.twitter.com/iHmVyJZbry

— Elizabeth Crisp (@elizabethcrisp) November 15, 2015

David Vitter says there are "a lot" of Syrian refugees coming into Louisiana.  He doesn't say how many exactly although he does imply it is a scary number.  (Let alone the fact that he assumes it's scary that there are any at all.)  But the email is intended to capitalize on an erroneous report by the Vitter campaign's bought and paid for propaganda website The Hayride which claimed as many as 10,000 refugees had already come into Louisiana through New Orleans.   The actual number is 14.

No matter. Vitter will milk this late burst of Islamaphobia for all it's worth the rest of the week.  Is it enough to reverse his flagging fortunes before election day?  We took an informal survey.

Well OK if we're gonna play this game what would Louisiana prefer to have?

— skooks (@skooks) November 15, 2015

Technically the polls are still open on that one as of this posting, but it doesn't look good for Vitter so far.