La. GOP begins ‘new world’
They’re rolling in from across the state Monday to begin what U.S. Sen. David Vitter, R-La., has called a “brave new world” of a Louisiana run by Republicans.
Gov. Bobby Jindal and the other six state government officials elected statewide are GOP. Twenty-four of the state’s 39 senators and 58 of the Louisiana House’s 105 representatives are card-carrying Republicans. They’ll all take their oaths Monday.
If Republicans vote party line, then they will win passage of most bills, which require 53 votes in the House and 20 supporters in the Senate. Some issues need a two-thirds vote: 70 in the House and 26 in the Senate.
Ten of the senators are new, though five have previous state legislative experience. Thirty- one in the House are newbies. As always, the newcomers will arrive in Baton Rouge with a “bucket list” of things they want to accomplish.
Page Cortez plans to bring his parents, mother-in-law and family to see him inaugurated. He was a Republican state representative from Lafayette and won election to the state Senate without facing an opponent.
Cortez, whose family owns two furniture stores in Lafayette and one in Baton Rouge, said he applauds Jindal’s focus on changing how the public schools operate in Louisiana. Philosophically, Cortez said he favors the privatized “parental choices” that Jindal most often discusses: charter schools that give taxpayer dollars to private administrators and “scholarships” that give parents tax-supported vouchers to help offset tuition at private schools.
“But the devil is in the details,” Cortez said. “I want to make clear that we don’t create a problem long-term, for the public schools.”
Ted James knows his way to the State Capitol. He was an aide to Gov. Kathleen Blanco and was a lawyer on the House Labor committee.
James was elected in a runoff to represent House District 101, which was moved from east New Orleans to north Baton Rouge during redistricting in 2011.
James said he wants a seat on one of the money committees. As a tax lawyer, James said he actually understands what the seemingly innocuous moving of a comma in a statute means in dollars and cents.
Democrat Troy Brown, of Geismar and owner of a home-health business that employs about 400 people, was elected to state Senate District 2 to serve in his first public office. He also is bringing his parents and family to see him sworn in. His district runs along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and LaPlace, and includes petrochemical manufacturing plants. Brown said that, with the low price of natural gas, he expects the corridor’s industries to boom over the next few years. “I want to make sure a lot of those jobs go to local people,” he said.
Much work needs to be done to more closely connect the workforce needs of industry with training available at vocational-technical schools and universities, Brown said.
To be successful in a pretty thankless job, eager legislators must learn to temper their dreams to gain the necessary support of their legislative colleagues. More importantly, they learn, at least in Louisiana, to give the governor whatever he or she wants.
Louisiana’s Legislature long ago ceded most of its control to the governor for hundreds of appointments, the state’s construction budget and the state’s spending plans. Before the final votes were counted in this fall’s legislative elections, Jindal announced whom he wanted to see as leaders of the House and Senate: Chuck Kleckley, R-Lake Charles, for House speaker and John Alario, R-Westwego, as Senate president.
Cortez, James and Brown, like most of their colleagues past and present, say legislators need to recapture their independence as a separate branch of government equal to the Louisiana governor. Do any of them plan to reject gubernatorial dominance by voting against Kleckley or Alario? Uh, no.
To quote British author Aldous Huxley, “That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.”
Mark Ballard is editor of The Advocate’s Capitol news bureau. His email address is mballard
@theadvocate.com.