Speaker of the House Jim Tucker has announced his bid for Louisiana secretary of state. The Terrytown (suburban New Orleans) Republican is winding down his final year as a state representative due to term limits. The Republican lawmaker announced his candidacy at noon at the Baton Rouge Press Club.
Tucker earned a bachelor’s degree in finance in 1986 from the University of New Orleans and lists his private occupations as investment banker and real estate developer.
Current Secretary of State Tom Schedler, a former state senator who has been serving on an interim basis since Jay Dardenne resigned after winning a special election for lieutenant governor, has announced his candidacy for the post. Also in the running is Democrat Carolyn Fayard, who lost in a runoff to Dardenne for the lieutenant governor post.
[UPDATE: Within a couple of hours of Tucker's campaign emailing the announcement of his candidacy to media, Schedler released the following statement:
Elections are about choices. The voters will be faced with what I believe is an easy choice. Since taking office, I have saved taxpayers money, made it easier for small businesses to get up and running and proposed legislation that reduces the number of special elections to save time and money.
On the other hand, it seems that this latest move by Representative Tucker will be his plan for getting the pay raise he always wanted. As the architect of the legislative pay raise fiasco, Speaker Tucker tried to double his salary.
Thankfully, the people of Louisiana and Gov. Jindal saw it differently. I’m running for the right reason: to do the job of Secretary of State. I’m not looking for a title or a pay raise.]
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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