A poll commissioned by conservative Baton Rouge businessman Lane Grigsby and conducted by Southern Media & Opinion Research finds Gov. Bobby Jindal falling in the public’s esteem, a majority of Louisiana voters opposed to Jindal’s much-ballyhooed school voucher program, Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu more popular than her Republican counterpart David Vitter and a continuing crisis for Democrats in state electoral politics, among other things.
The poll was conducted by telephone among 600 state voters and has a margin of error of +/- 4 percentage points.
Jindal’s popularity is sagging, according to the poll, with just 51 percent of respondents saying they believe he’s doing an excellent or good job as the state’s chief executive. Many polls had Jindal around 65 percent a year ago. Part of Jindal’s drag in popularity likely can be attributed to two things: the Louisiana Scholarship Program, AKA vouchers, of which 54 percent of respondents were opposed versus only 39 percent in favor; and the Jindal administration’s massive cuts to higher education (58.4 percent oppose further cuts) and health care (52.8 percent oppose further cuts).
Among statewide elected officials, Landrieu enjoys a higher favorability rating than Vitter: 61.7 percent believe she’s doing an excellent or good job versus 52.3 percent who believe the same of Vitter.
Most telling in the poll in light of the GOP’s robust electoral success in Louisiana over the last decade: while nearly half of the poll’s respondents identified themselves as Dems — 49.2 percent compared to 27.1 percent Republican and 23.8 “other” — when asked, “Regardless of how you are registered to vote, do you more often agree with the actions of Democrats or Republicans?” 41 percent sided with Republicans versus 36.7 for Democrats. A sizeable 13.6 percent said they agreed with neither party.
The poll also asked respondents a host of question concerning state budget priorities. See the whole poll here.
MAY 21 Gambit columnist Clancy DuBos writes about the Mother's Day shooting, and how the stages of shock and blame and healing mirror those traveled by the same city following Hurricane Katrina. The city will recover, just as it did following the storm, by reaching out to help the people injured most seriously by the event, DuBos writes. It's how we heal, he says.
MAY 21 Here's a post on the Advocate (but buried on a subpage, not on the front) that reports something Louisiana Voice reported some time ago: a top DOE official lives in Los Angeles and "commutes" to Baton Rouge. The positioning of the story caused a stir on Facebook Monday, with several posters asking if the Advocate was covering someone's hiney. Sentell's stories on DOE are notoriously soft, and this one is no different: don't expect any hard questions in here.
MAY 21 Here's another post from blogger Tom Aswell about the "course choice" program. He's already reported on kids being signed up without their consent or knowledge, and has more here: For example, he tells of a six-year-old who was signed up for high school Latin. He also digs a little deeper into the sister companies of the main one operating in Louisiana; all of them seem to have complaints against them. Stinky.
MAY 21 Given the 80 percent cut in higher ed funding since he's been in office, it's clear Gov. Jindal would rather give tax cuts to out of state companies than have a functioning system, blogger Dayne Sherman argues in this post. The cuts have been such a disaster, Sherman says, that it will take 30 years to fix what's been broken. He says he believes the aim is to shut down most of the schools before Jindal leaves in 2016.
MAY 21 Blogger CB Forgotston says there are too many elections in Louisiana, and they're costing us too much money. The proof is in the pudding: turnout for most of these nonsensical pollings gets worse and worse, CB opines, even as millions of dollars that could be spent on health care or higher ed go down the tubes. The legislature must take action to stem the tide of pointless elections, he says.
MAY 21 Here's an interesting investigative piece by WVUE on the retirement benefits of some Jefferson Parish public employees. According to the story, the taxpayers are paying 100 percent of the retirement contributions of employees who started work prior to a certain date in April 1986 -- and have done for more than 30 years. It costs the parish millions annually, and might not be legal, the story reports.
MAY 21 This post on Bayou Buzz provides insight from Louisiana's intrepid pollster, Bernie Pinsonat, on the winners and losers from this year's legislative session. But to hear Bernie tell it, there's almost nuttin but losers: Jindal, the Republican party, the Fiscal Hawks all get big goose eggs in his win column.
MAY 20 This post on The Lens takes a look at a huge (either $500K or $250K) bill that one NOLA charter now has for school lunches. The RSD says the charter group didn't fill out the proper paperwork for federal reimbursement, but the story details how the RSD didn't ensure the people running the charter had the proper training, despite requests from hapless charter employees trying to fill out forms. Either way, somebody's asleep at the wheel.
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