State Sen. Elbert Guillory recognizes that he and his latest political partner are a bit of an odd couple.
“It is an unusual combination,” he says. “But this is not a Republican-Democrat thing. It’s really not a black-white thing. And I think it’s good because there’s too much Democrat versus Republican and conservative versus liberal; it’s time for people of different ilk to work together for the benefit of the people, and that’s what we did in this case.”
Guillory, a black Democrat from Opelousas, has partnered with the religious-conservative advocacy group Louisiana Family Forum Action in releasing a detailed plan for how state Senate lines should be redrawn following the 2010 census. The Legislature won’t officially take up the business of reapportionment until next year, after the census numbers are in, but that isn’t stopping Guillory and the LFFA from getting an early jump on the debate. Using the most recent census estimates from 2008, Guillory’s and LFFA’s so-called “Demographic Equity Plan” calls for redrawing districts in accordance with post-Katrina population shifts, with an emphasis on redistributing the state’s 10 black-majority districts across the state.
The plan eliminates three existing majority black Senate districts — two of which are in New Orleans — and draws up three new minority districts in central Louisiana, Acadiana and one southwest of Baton Rouge surrounding St. James Parish. The new central Louisiana district would combine the southeast portion of Rapides Parish with parts of Avoyelles and Point Coupee parishes. Acadiana’s new minority district would run horizontally from north Lafayette all the way east to pick up parts of West Baton Rouge Parish. This would also move Elbert Guillory’s District 24 out of Lafayette entirely and redraw it as a five-parish horizontal sprawl running from southern Evangeline Parish across St. Landry and into parts of Iberville, West Baton Rouge and Point Coupee parishes.
Family Forum President Gene Mills explains the premise for the proposed redistricting on LFFA’s Web site. “Today, only four of Louisiana’s eight geographical regions have majority Black Senate districts,” he writes. “This plan gives minority representation to other regions. Demographic equity is an idea whose time has come.”
Despite this democratic pitch, the plan is generating no shortage of controversy from some of Guillory’s Senate colleagues, who see the plan as an affront to New Orleans’ long-established districts and as a Trojan Horse for a hidden Republican agenda that will turn a majority of redrawn Senate districts more conservative. Helping fuel that speculation is the fact that Guillory was a registered Republican as recently as 2006, and even served on the Republican State Central Committee, before switching parties and running for office.
“In my eyes, it’s probably the most ridiculous, ill-thought-out plan I’ve probably ever seen,” says Sen. J.P. Morrel. The New Orleans Democrat would be directly impacted by the proposal, which calls for consolidating his District 3 seat with District 2, currently represented by Sen. Ann Duplessis. In addition, the neighboring districts 4 and 5, represented by Sen. Edwin Murray and Sen.-elect Karen Carter Peterson, would also be consolidated. Morrel says that overall the plan reduces the number of senators representing the city of New Orleans from five to two. “I mean there’s no question that New Orleans will lose possibly two House seats and probably a Senate seat [with reapportionment],” Morrel says, “but the wholesale consolidation they have spelled out in there is completely ill-thought-out.”
“If you look at the way the districts are all drawn up,” he continues, “the objective is to move all the districts as much as possible to rural areas which as a whole are more conservative. And New Orleans is like the bastion of liberalism as far as the state’s concerned, so it would be in the Family Forum’s neoconservative best interest to try and dilute the vote here as much as possible.”
Morrel says this same agenda also is revealed in a congressional redistricting plan put out by the Family Forum last year. That plan, based on the assumption that Louisiana would be losing a congressional seat due to population declines, divides Orleans Parish into two districts, joining the western half with a north shore district and tying New Orleans East to a vast district that runs through the river parishes, covering much of the present day 3rd Congressional District.
“What it comes down to,” Morrel says, “is this is a purely political move by the Family Forum. The Family Forum is a super right wing conservative group, and if you look at what they do with African-American [state Senate] districts in Orleans Parish and what they do with Bill Jefferson/Joseph Cao’s congressional seat, their goal is to dilute anyone who has a non-neoconservative agenda. That’s their goal.”
With the state still living in the shadow of Katrina, Mills says he expects this to be a hot-button issue.
“I think that it’s certainly understandable that this is a sensitive subject matter,” he says, “and we’ve been cautioned about weighing in on this, and would not have, had Sen. Guillory not asked us to consider working on this together. Having said that, I believe this is a historic once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to consider where a plan of demographic equity could bring about an equitable representation throughout the state of all of our families and all of Louisiana. And New Orleans has enjoyed, in our opinion, a disproportionate share of that power in the past. We don’t think that the population in New Orleans warrants maintaining as many majority black districts in New Orleans proper and that other regions of the state certainly should enjoy their opportunity to experience what New Orleans has for these many years.”
Guillory adds, “I’m not emotional about this. This is not an emotional issue. This is a statistical issue. It has nothing to do with disasters and tragedies and all of that stuff; it simply has to do with the numbers of people who have shifted from the New Orleans area into southwest Louisiana.”
The numbers themselves are also a bone of contention. Morrel argues that the Guillory-LFFA plan ignores New Orleans’ upward trend in population over the past few years, a trend he expects to continue with the 2010 census. The city of New Orleans has met with some success in challenging the Census Bureau to increase its population estimates for Orleans Parish over the past few years. The 2010 census, which will be a full count, won’t be subject to as much guesswork (2009 census numbers are expected to come out in July). By most estimates, Orleans Parish, which had a pre-Katrina population of 485,000, will be counted with around 350,000 people in the 2010 census. (The Guillory-LFFA plan is based on a New Orleans population of 330,000.)
Both Guillory and Mills have been making the rounds with their redistricting proposal, meeting with legislators to get feedback. “Some of it was very critical,” admits Mills, “and some of that critical comment caused us to move and rearrange our concepts and assumptions in each of those particular districts. So, we thought it was constructive, and we think that’s got to continue if you’re going to develop a plan that’s going to work for the entire state.” Guillory and LFFA have also publicly released their plan for review and say they hope to foster more open dialogue about redistricting decisions.
Guillory says he first approached the Family Forum about the issue last year after being impressed with the work they had done on a congressional redistricting proposal. “If you check my [voting] record I’ve not been a 100 percenter with the family Forum,” Guillory says, referring to the legislative score cards the Family Forum puts out on each legislator. “But they had the experience and the assets, and in this situation we agreed on the basic principles, the basic principles of redistribution of power commensurate with redistribution of population.”
According to Morrel, there’s a reason no other senators are standing up in support of the redistricting plan.
“One should always be wary of phantom support,” he says. “They’ve been shopping this plan around for almost five or six months. The fact that they couldn’t get one other elected official to come out and say, ‘I’m in favor of this,’ that should tell you that it’s smoke and mirrors. The only person that’s out there pushing this is Elbert, and he’s been on board since it started.”
MAY 23 Here's a story in the Picayune about some statistics that must come as a blow to folks who believe that any private school can do a better job of educating kids than any public school: Danielle Dreilinger reports that only 30 percent of the voucher kids are passing. That's less than half of the state wide average, she says. It's an interesting statistic because most of the schools (if not all) taking voucher kids have never had their students' standardized test scores released to the public before.
MAY 23 Stephen Sabludowsky blogs on Bayou Buzz about auditor requests here. Recently the state GOP started crowing about a request from the Legislative Auditor, claiming they were being targeted because of their anti-tax stance. (Uh, your what?) Denial and hyperbole aside, the state Democratic party blew holes in that theory with an email announcing they'd received the same request, Sabludowsky writes here.
MAY 23 Jim Brown blogs about the senate race in this post. He says that, given Bobby Jindal's "lack of traction" on the national stage, it might make more sense for the governor to consider running against Mary Landrieu for the senate seat. Since Tim Teeple left the Cassidy team, it makes sense he might land on a Jindal for Senate team, Brown opines.
MAY 23 In this Louisiana Voice post, blogger Tom Aswell writes of rumors that his nemesis, state Superintendent of Education John White, may be soon departing Louisiana for a federal post. It's hard to believe, given his performance, Aswell says, but stranger things have happened. An anti-White BESE member says that, if true, White is quitting before he can be fired.
MAY 23 In this post on American Zombie, blogger Jason Berry writes about the Mother's Day shooting. Mayor Landrieu said that "this is not who we are," but the fact is, this is New Orleans, Berry writes. The violence infused in the city is the result of a culture created by "sins of omission or sins of commission," Berry writes. It's not a problem that can be solved by legislating, policing, praying or publicizing, he says: Someone's got to understand what's happening first.
MAY 23 This post in the Westside Journal tells us what Port Allen Mayor Deedy has been up to lately: vetoing ordinances, apparently. This story is most interesting, however, when it delves into a petition that has been circulating around the city lately. It accuses the former mayor of a lot of nasty things; the former mayor says it is full of lies and "broken syntax" which may be a larger offense in his eyes.
MAY 23 This editorial posted in The Advocate is a bit confusing. The writing is poor - definitely not up to the usual editorial writing standard there - and the point is hard to grasp. Apparently, the writer is saying that privatization of state efforts is OK, as long as there is oversight and transparency, but Jindal's not good at that, and the legislature shouldn't over-react. Okey Dokey. Can't they get one of them Pulitzer-winning people to write an editorial?
MAY 23 This post on The Lens gives you links to a new Google Earth tool that allows you to see any spot on earth transform over the past 30 years. Bob Marshall, who covers the coast for the paper, says that in the case of Louisiana's coastline, it's possibly something you don't want to see, because it's not a pretty picture. There are several clips here, showing critical areas erode away. For Marshall, it was vindication for all those times he was met with eye-rolling when he talked about erosion.
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