The Landry steamroller is just getting warmed up. There's so much coming so fast that it is a struggle to get a bead on what specific historical period of horror our reactionary Governor and Legislature are trying to revive. Is it Jim Crow voting rights and incarceration policy? Or is it Gilded Age spoils politics and industrial scale corruption? Whatever it is, they do exhibit a special fondness for the post-Reconstruction era. At the moment, they seem particularly focused on union busting.
Emboldened by Louisiana’s election last fall of Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, the state’s GOP-controlled Legislature will try over the next few months to weaken public-sector unions and slash worker benefits.
A cluster of at least 15 proposed laws takes aim at public-sector unions’ ability to bargain with employers, the system for compensating workers sidelined by injury and a requirement that child laborers must receive lunch breaks. Others would cut unemployment benefits and limit how much doctors can make when treating people for workers' compensation claims.
That's a lot at one time. Last year I heard some low key talk among political watchers that maybe Jeff Landry as Governor wouldn't be quite so bad compared to someone like former LABI head, Stephen Waguespack. The thinking there was that, although, Landry is a fire breathing reactionary, he's also kind of stupid compared to a dead-eyed operator like Wags so maybe he wouldn't get quite as much done. Well, it turns out that was all cope. When there are Republican super-majorities in the Legislature, they could put Neuty the Nutria in the Governor's chair to sign off on everything and the agenda would sail on through undisturbed.
The other thing they've got going for them is their decision to go for a maximalist agenda right off the bat. The first year of a new Governor and legislature is always the best time to do this. There hasn't been enough time yet for the inevitable power conflicts among lawmakers and between the legislature and the Governor to develop. That stuff usually starts to set in after the first round of budgetary decisions have to be made. Money has a way of breaking party solidarity even within a large majority. The policy decisions made now are likely to cause a fiscal reckoning down the road. But right now, it all just feels like patronage payola so it glides right through.
Anyway, as we've already said about the crime session, each measure passed this year represents a rollback of decades worth of organizing and agitating undone. Every single thing they break will be its own eternity of hard work to put back together. It's exactly the same with these anti-labor bills. And just like the crime package, they're all coming, as Clancy Dubos says here, through a big "firehose."
Instead, Landry has embarked on a fast-paced, hard-right push that includes more culture wars, less government help for those struggling at the bottom, expanding the state’s already-generous corporate welfare programs, further privatization of public education and removing layers of consumer protection.
He also wants to rewrite Louisiana’s “bloated, outdated, antiquated, and much-abused” constitution. To that end, he’s pushing lawmakers behind the scenes to adjourn their annual session early so that they can convene for a third special session to hurriedly adopt an agenda set by the governor.
The current “regular” session began only last week, and many lawmakers are already tired of having to drink, metaphorically, from Landry’s firehose of proposals — little to none of which he talked about as a candidate last autumn.
Maybe he didn't talk very much about it as a candidate (there was barely a campaign anyway) but it isn't like nobody could have predicted this was going to be the agenda. Landry's proposals are all drawn from longstanding LABI wishlists as well as model legislation being enacted by GOP controlled governments in many other states right now.
In fact all of this (including the constitutional re-write) was "on the ballot," so to speak in 2019. That year saw what was left of the State Democratic Party by that point band together in an all-hands-on-deck effort to re-elect John Bel Edwards and stave off Eddie Rispone. That campaign made it clear to voters that what we're seeing now as the Landry agenda was on the table then. In 2023, they barely said or did anything at all.
Which brings us to the question, whose fault is all of this, really? It's one thing to step back and shake our heads at how bad it is when the bad people get to run the government. But if we're going to do anything about it, we have to ask why didn't anyone try to stop the bad people from running the government in the first place? That's what today's party leadership elections are all about.
Once the results roll in from the Louisiana elections Saturday, March 23, we’ll know who voters have chosen to be on the Democratic State Central Committee, which should vote for party chair and other leadership positions next month.
There’s a total of 210 seats on the committee, two for each state House district. About half of those seats had only one candidate qualify to run, so they’re automatically on the committee. Another 24 had nobody qualify, meaning the next chair will appoint people to these seats after the April leadership election.
In other words, 84 seats are up for grabs on Saturday.
Vying for many of these seats are members of Blue Reboot, a group of both incumbent and new candidates committed to electing a new party chair. More than 40 Blue Reboot candidates also ran unopposed. In some of the New Orleans races, U.S. Congressman Troy Carter, a Democrat, has backed opponents of Blue Reboot candidates.
Some in the party blame current chair Katie Bernhardt for Democrats’ disastrous showing in the fall elections, often citing ads she made early last year in which she appeared to be considering a run for governor. There have also been many cases of infighting.
So far former state representative Randal Gaines, a Democrat from LaPlace, has officially thrown his name in the hat. Public Service Commissioner Davante Lewis is considering a run, and some have mentioned two-time statewide candidate Caroline Fayard’s name as well.
After Saturday, we’ll have a better idea of how strong momentum is for the Blue Reboot reform candidates from seeing how well they fare against longtime party players, some of which have more name recognition, and others in the state’s most liberal and conservative districts.
Perhaps you can tease out from those few paragraphs that even if "Blue Reboot" scores a win today, it's highly likely the Democratic "infighting" will continue. Clearly, Louisiana deserves a more forceful and organized opposition to Landryism than what they're getting from the Democrats as currently constituted. Merely firing the Chair is one very small step in what promises to be a long struggle for that. Some of the Blue Reboot candidates appear committed to the longer project. I'm not sure all of them are.
Anyway you can see a list of Blue Rebooters here. But there's more to the story than just their slate. Antigravity has undertaken the immense task of telling as much of that story as can be uncovered. Their voter guide features blurbs on every DSCC and DPEC candidate on the ballot. (Insofar as there is enough information available on them.) Meanwhile, DSA has its own take which includes a more narrowly focused slate of endorsements and recommendations. These races can feel like bewildering inside baseball to most voters. All of those links should help.
But electing more and better Democrats to party positions isn't going to stop Landry's anti-labor intolerable acts. That's going to require more immediate and direct action. Not sure what form that takes just yet.