[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 24 Blogger Robert Mann posts this entry about the Baton Rouge Chamber's recent report on Louisiana's higher education system. It's critical to economic development, and yet our system is facing a "funding crisis" with no way to resolve it, the report says. The Chamber says control of tuition and fees must be returned to the higher ed governing boards.
MAY 24 Here's a NBC33 story about Tyrann Mathieu. He has signed with the Arizona Cardinals, inking a $3 million, four-year deal. He gets a signing bonus of $265K, but gets another, larger bonus if he doesn't get cut from the team for doing drugs. The deal reportedly includes mandatory tests and meetings for the player.
MAY 24 Jarvis DeBerry posts here about the redonkulus rhetoric that would have us believe NOLA is a safe city with a murder problem. Maybe the city's crime stats don't compare with its murder stats because you can't manipulate a murder, he says: a dead body's a dead body. It just doesn't make sense, he says, and his readers agree: a poll asks if they believe the city is safe, and more than 90 percent say no.
MAY 24 Jindal administration officials announced Thursday that the privatization of public health care is going to cost a lot more than they budgeted for, the Advocate reports here. "I'm so surprised," said no one. Anywhere. The cost they're projecting now is more than $1 billion - a lot more than the $626 million budgeted for it. And, it's more than it cost the state to operate those hospitals. So why are we doing this again?
MAY 24 Blogger CB Forgotston ridicules the recent PR campaign by the state GOP in the wake of a legislative auditor's request to both major parties. The GOP (apparently unaware that the Dems got the same request) started yammering about being targeted because it had "killed" a tax increase. CB finds that laughable, but it's also pretty funny that the GOP was comparing this episode to the IRS scandal (Because the President has so much to do with our state auditor. Right?).
MAY 24 Politico details some recent fund-raising efforts by Sen. David Vitter, which have raised the question of his future political plans. This time, it is a $5,000 per head "bayou weekend" that includes "Cajun cooking" and an all-caps "alligator hunt," the story reports. Funds raised go to a super PAC that can spend money to support Vitter in federal or state races, the story points out.
MAY 24 The pink building on Royal in the quarter was sold at a sheriff's sale Thursday, this Picayune story reports. An injunction that would have halted the sale wasn't enforced because the family failed to post a $150,000 bond, the story reports. So the owner of the mortgages on the building bought it, for nearly $7 million. Now the feuding family will have to negotiate with that company to get a lease on the building that has housed their business for close to 60 years.
MAY 23 This post in Louisiana Voice tells us about a bill by a Winnsboro lege that would require all public high school students to take at least one Course Choice online class in order to graduate. (What?) Blogger Tom Aswell says it's a monument to "waste and corruption," especially in light of the problems he's exposed with the program in recent weeks. Idaho had a similar program, but voters removed it by a 2-1 margin, Aswell says.
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Blah, blah, blah, sounds like a professional politician.