As predicted, poll numbers backing incumbent District 3 City-Parish Councilman Brandon Shelvin’s election victory Saturday point to north Lafayette’s poorest precincts.
Shelvin, who ran for office in 2007 despite not having met the residency requirements to run for the seat, took 59.8 percent of the 3,388 votes cast in his district, a 15-precinct area that includes downtown, the Saint streets, several north Lafayette precincts and one polling place in Carencro.
Shelvin prevailed in 10 out of 15 precincts, with his most significant wins coming from voters who poll at Alice Boucher Elementary (80 percent in favor of Shelvin), the Sheriff’s Office Training Center on St. Antoine Street (77 percent for Shelvin) and N.P. Moss Annex on Mudd Avenue (68 percent).
Support for challenger Lloyd Rochon, who captured 40.2 percent of the vote, was confined to five precincts with predictably more white voters. His biggest victories came from Johnston Street Fire Station No. 5 (74 percent), Central Fire Station on Vermilion Street (66 percent) and the Lafayette Consolidated Government building on University Avenue (62 percent).
Shelvin refuses to comment to The Independent because of the paper’s repeated unfavorable coverage of the councilman, much of which details Shelvin’s myriad legal, ethical and financial troubles that came to light after he took office. Read the list here.
But as he’s told those who wonder whether his issues will affect his perception among voters in the district: “My people don’t read the paper.”
“Quite simply, the people have spoken and the people have decided that they would like me to lead them again for another four years,” Shelvin told The Daily Advertiser Saturday.
Check out Wednesday’s Independent for more analysis on Shelvin’s victory and how it’s linked to the most heated north Lafayette runoffs to come.
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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