Qualifying for slew of Lafayette elex begins Wednesday
Candidates in races in every district in Lafayette Parish will qualify for the Oct. 2 election Wednesday through Friday this week. Seats up for grabs include mayor and council members/aldermen in the five smaller parish municipalities — Broussard, Carencro, Duson, Scott and Youngsville — as well as chief of police in all the towns except Duson.
All nine seats on the Lafayette Parish School Board are up for grabs. Six first-term members — Greg Awbry, Mark Babineaux, Hunter Beasley, Shelton Cobb, Mark Cockerham and Rae Trahan — tell The Daily Advertiser they plan to seek re-election. Current board president Carl Lacombe has not signalled his intentions. Meanwhile, the board’s longest serving members, Mike Hefner and Ed Sam, have announced their retirements. Each began service on the school board in 1990; Hefner also filled the unexpired term of his father-in-law in 1986.
Lafayette voters will also elect a U.S. senator; incumbent Republican David Vitter is polling comfortably ahead of Democratic U.S.Rep. Charlie Melancon, the most viable candidate in a race that still may not require a November runoff. Seventh Congressional District U.S. Rep. Charles Boustany faces re-election, sharing the Oct. 2 ballot in Lafayette with the race for lieutenant governor and an open seat on the Third Circuit Court of Appeal. Four candidates in Lafayette Parish, all of them Republicans, have already begun campaigning for the appeals court.
The recent squabbles including lawsuits in south Lafayette Parish could color the races for mayor in Broussard and Youngsville. Charles Langlinais and Wilson Viator have been at each other’s throats over annexations along the recently opened stretch of Ambassador Caffery South. Langlinais told The Independent in May that he’s enthusiastic about seeking a sixth term in Broussard. “I plan on running and being reelected,” he said. “I love what I’m doing and my first family is the city of Broussard; my second family is my kids and my wife.”
An intriguing race is also taking place in St. Landry Parish, where incumbent Opelousas Mayor Don Cravins, a Democrat and don of a political dynasty in the parish, will face a challenge from Lena Anderson, a black Republican businesswoman and former newspaper reporter who is an Opelousas native but lived most of her life in California. Anderson says she will qualify Wednesday for the race.
JUNE 19 Former Saint Steve Gleason, who is paralyzed by ALS, released a statement Tuesday in response to the Atlanta radio station's skit making fun of him and the disease, this Picayune post reports. What did he say? He said he'd accepted the apology of the DJs who did it, notes that at least the incident has got people talking about ALS, and asks anyone who is burning to take action about it to do so -- by helping him fight ALS.
JUNE 19 Blogger Ian McGibboney takes a look at the Gleason incident in this post. He makes a good argument about the difference between having free speech and being free from consequences for your speech (which none of us is). He also admits that many of us got upset before we listened to the skit -- but lets us know that the reality is far worse than we can imagine. It was the incredibly bad judgment, even more than the actual speech, that probably got those DJs fired, he opines.
JUNE 19 Washington Post blogger Aaron Blake writes about Sen. Guillory's switch to the GOP in this post. He writes what most political watchers in Louisiana know: Guillory was a Republican before he decided to run for the senate seat in a mostly-D St. Landry district, and has switched back now that he plans to run for Lt. Gov. in a mostly-R state. But how come Blake missed Guillory's appearance on a TLC pageant show? Now that is a video we'd like to see. (Again).
JUNE 19 Here's another Washington Post blog post about a Louisiana politician, and it's just plain scathing. Ezra Klein says Jindal's Politico post was "insulting" to the intelligence of voters, and adds that Jindal is personifying the "stupid" he's railed against, by being an "elite" who convinces GOP activists of "things that aren't true." Me-ow.
JUNE 19 Here's Gov. Jindal's post in Politico, in which he asks the GOP to get over losing to Obama (again) and stop "the bedwetting." (Uh, what?) He gives his Republican buddies what is probably a nerd's idea of a coach's motivational talk, which starts with a list of accomplishments that they can't seem to exploit and ending with an absurd description of liberals that sounds like a character treatment for a Fox "News" movie scripted by Gordon Liddy. Sure, he's preaching to the choir, but even the choir's not this gullible.
JUNE 19 Lamar Parmentel read Gov. Jindal's post on Politico, but thinks it was so dumb it probably was published in the wrong paper. This post by Lamar on the Daily Kingfish opines that possibly Jindal's post was destined for the Onion -- because the governor couldn't possibly be serious here. If you listen closely, you can hear the staff of the Kingfish giggling.
JUNE 19 Blogger Robert Mann posts from Turkey, a country he has visited several times in the past few years. Mann gives an interesting overview of the current political and societal climate of the country, which -- if you're living under a rock and don't know -- is experiencing protests and turmoil these days. Mann promises to post as much as he can during his trip, which should be fascinating reading.
JUNE 19 Blogger CB Forgotston says the legislature is keeping the vicious cycle going with its funding of new buildings for the community college/technical college system. Universities across the state need maintenance and improvement on existing buildings, and the solution is to build new buildings at other schools? By the time the bonds are paid off, those buildings will be falling down, too, CB says.
In rendering his ruling, District Judge John Trahan all but called the real estate developer a liar for inconsistencies in his accounts of what prompted him to punch a school teacher unconscious.
Frank’s Casing Crew, now doing business as Frank’s International, will make its final appearance on ABiz’s list of the Top 50 Privately Held Companies in Acadiana this year, and once again it will likely be at the top with more than $1 billion in annual revenues. The 75-year-old company specializing in tubular fabrication and installation services to the oil and gas industry plans to offer shares of its stock to the public for the first time.
The defeat, or rather highjacking of House Bill 420 in the final days of this year's Legislative Session, say Reps. Vincent Pierre and Terry Landry, is the result of the propaganda spread by one unidentified local media outlet and an unnamed former state Representative, but nothing to do with the original legislation's lack of checks, balances or details.
City-Parish Council Chairman Brandon Shelvin heaped steady doses of condescending ire on a Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Louisiana executive while failing to reveal his financial ties to a BC/BS rival.
Abbeville native David Primeaux was a popular professor until his death late last year, and while he was successful at camouflaging a dark past, he couldn’t outlive it.
Tehmi Chassion’s failure to recuse himself in the school board’s selection of a group health benefits provider raises ‘serious questions’ on whether he violated state ethics law.
He’s a singer. A songwriter. A piano man. A family man. He’s even got his own Wikipedia entry. He’s David Egan. And he knows ancient secrets about the monolithic stones of Stonehenge that he’s not willing to share.
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