[Editor's Note: This story was updated on July 27 to include information on Vincent Alexander, the sixth person who's announced his intentions to run for the House District 96 seat.]
Though not formally announced, the signs are already popping up around north Lafayette asking voters to elect Iberia Parish School Board member Raymond “Shoe-Do” Lewis to the newly created state House of Representatives seat that spawned from the most recent legislative redistricting session.
The majority black district includes St. Martinville, Parks, Breaux Bridge and Cypress Island in St. Martin Parish. It also includes parts of northwest Iberia Parish and a few precincts in the city of New Iberia. In Lafayette Parish, the new district includes a small portion of north Lafayette as well as two voting precincts in Broussard.
Lewis, a former member of the New Iberia City Council who was elected twice before leaving his council seat this year to join the Iberia Parish School Board, says no one knew before the redistricting session that a new House district would include portions of Iberia Parish.
“They all thought it was going to go up north,” says Lewis, who works at the Walmart Distribution Center in Opelousas. He tells The Ind that he plans to formally announce his candidacy at an Aug. 3 Iberia Parish School Board meeting.
“I’m running because I’m progressive, and I would ask anybody that’s announced or will announce to match my record of public service,” Lewis says.
Lewis is joining former Louisiana State Police Superintendent Terry Landry, former St. Martinville Mayor Eric Martin, former St. Martinville Assistant Police Chief Nary Smith Sr., Breaux Bridge businessman Vincent Alexander and St. Martin Parish School Board member Richard Potier in the race for the new district seat. The election is Oct. 22.
“I have been a civil servant for 34 years and I would like to keep serving the public in a different capacity, honestly and fairly, with equal justice for all,” Smith told The Teche News when he announced his intentions to run.
Landry says in his campaign information that “the people of this district need a voice in Baton Rouge to champion their interests, not the special interests whose voices are already well-represented in Baton Rouge. I am running to ensure that, as a state, we invest in our children and honor the work of our seniors who provided us the opportunities we have today.”
Alexander, a Breaux Bridge insurance agent, bailbondsman and radio station owner, says on his website that he's running on a platform of improving health care access to District 96 residents and, among other things, improving the unemployment rate to pre-recession levels.
Martin tells The Advertiser that he will “fight for job growth in the region, work with small businesses and will unite the district to be a southern leader in small business, agriculture, oil and gas, healthcare and tourism.”
Potier could not be reached for comment Monday morning.
Read more here, here and 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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Blah, blah, blah, sounds like a professional politician.