Acadiana artist Tony Bernard at his studio in Lafayette. Credit: Cayman Clevenger, Bayou Brief.
Tony Bernard’s voice booms. When he talks about his two greatest passions- Louisiana culture and creating art, he can fill up the room with his words, like a church soloist who doesn’t need a microphone to be heard from the back pews. Despite his larger-than-life presence, during an interview with the Bayou Brief at his studio on Johnston Street in Lafayette, Bernard projected much more humility and joy than your average artist.
He is not a tortured soul. His art is bright, cheerful, and happy, much like Bernard himself. But his journey did not begin in an art school, nor did he come from a traditional arts background.
Bernard got his start painting custom signs for two of the most prominent brands in Louisiana: Tabasco and Landry’s Seafood.
While working on a promotional hand painted billboard for Landry’s Seafood Restaurant that featured the Blue Dog, Bernard caught the eye of Louisiana’s most famous artist.
“You need to come work for me,” George Rodrigue said. The rest, as they say, is history.
Original sketch by George Rodrigue of the two artists together shoulder-to-shoulder. Courtesy of Tony Bernard.
Bernard became Rodrigue’s assistant and right-hand man for more than 25 years. His story and his emergence as a fine artist are inextricably tied to George Rodrigue, a man who was dubbed Louisiana’s Rousseau.
This year, when Louisiana Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin reached out to Tony Bernard to ask him to create an “I Voted” sticker, neither Secretary nor his staff realized they were talking to the man who worked with the Rodrigue Family in creating the wildly successful Blue Dog “I Voted” sticker. The idea for the Rodrigue sticker was hatched by the Secetary of State and the Rodrigue family in 2015, two years after the artist’s death.
Bernard, then working for the Rodrigue Estate, personally traveled to the New Orleans Museum of Art to photograph a Blue Dog painting, featuring an American flag, that was a part of the museum’s collection. The painting, however, was square, and the sticker, which was to be unveiled in time for the 2016 presidential election, had to be, by tradition, round. Bernard, working for the Rodrigue Estate, adapted the square into a circle.
Wendy Rodrigue, widow of the artist George Rodrigue, appears at a press conference at the New Orleans Museum of Art unveiling the 2016 “I Voted” sticker. Courtesy: WGNO, News With a Twist.
According to Ardoin, Louisiana ordered four million stickers, nearly one for every man, woman, and child in the state, at a cost of only $21,000. They were a huge hit. Voters often requested multiple stickers; they proved to be so popular the state quickly ran out of them. Many people framed them to display in their homes; some even found commercial success by selling them on eBay for as much as $25 each.
The Blue Dog sticker quickly became a badge of honor in Louisiana, providing voters with a small work of art and a little piece of Louisiana culture in exchange for exercising their civic duty.
Bernard wants no credit for the enormously successful Blue Dog stickers, he says the Blue Dog speaks for itself. This year’s sticker is the first to feature his own artwork, and his beautiful interpretation of the Louisiana State Seal speaks for itself as well. Bernard remains gracious and deferential to Rodrigue.
“You could say George has been involved twice in the stickers because our relationship was so long that I believe he influenced me as a person and my direction in my life because of the kind of man he was outside of art,” he told the Bayou Brief. “He helped form the person that I am.”
George Rodrigue (left) and Tony Bernard (right). Courtesy: Tony Bernard.
“It is a tremendous honor to be selected, as an artist, to paint this work, and Bernard was chosen to succeed Rodrigue’s wildly popular Blue Dog sticker, and in many ways Bernard is a successor to Rodrigue” The Louisiana Secretary of State’s Press Secetary Tyler Brey said.
Secretary of State Ardoin had seen Bernard’s work at the Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival, where he painted the event’s popular signature prints for the last nine years. Bernard saw this as an opportunity to give back to the State that has given him so much, “This was my gift to the people of Louisiana, I donated this artwork because I felt like it was my duty as a citizen of Louisiana,” Bernard said.
Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin, Tony Bernard and his wife and gallery director Roxie, pose with members of the Secretary of State’s office at a press event in August of 2019. Credit: Tony Bernard.
Bernard paints a more colorful and whimsical Louisiana bayou and oaks scene than Rodrigue, and his pieces feature inconspicuous Louisiana iconography. Bernard’s work is uniquely his own, and uniquely Louisiana. Bernard’s art speaks the language of Louisiana, and he is fluent in Louisiana symbolism. It is the background and subject for almost all of his work. Sprawling landscapes focus on the natural beauty and iconic symbols of Louisiana- from oaks, bayous, and cypress trees to pelicans, crawfish, music, and musicians. His portraits feature many of Louisiana’s native sons and daughters, and one even hangs in the Louisiana Governor’s Mansion.
This year’s sticker is an excellent example of Bernard’s work: layers of Louisiana imagery, including a pelican, cypress trees, the fleur de lis, and the phrases “Pelican State,” “Feed your soul,” “Sportsman’s Paradise,” and “1812.” Hidden in the piece are also other messages of positivity like “Love” and “Love One Another.”
The piece is Bernard’s take on the Louisiana State Seal, incorporating bright, pop art colors mixed with the familiar Louisiana blue and gold of the official seal. The pelican in the piece, known as “King George,” has become Bernard’s most recognizable and important subject.
The story of the Pelican with the crown and how it came to be known as “King George,” like many great Louisiana political stories, begins at D.C. Mardi Gras. And like many great Louisiana political stories, it has been widely misreported.
The official print of the 2015 Washington D.C. Mardi Gras by artist Tony Bernard, the first work to feature the king pelican.
Bernard had been selected to create the official print for D.C. Mardi Gras in 2015, and he wanted to create something unique for the doubloons that adorned the majority of the work. He decided to paint a pelican with a crown.
“This image of the King Pelican is pretty striking,” he told his wife. “We need to come up with a name for it.” As he searched for a name, nothing stuck until he came across a photo he had of George Rodrigue at the Washington Hilton.
George Rodrigue getting ready for DC Mardi Gras. Courtesy: Tony Bernard.
Rodrigue had been getting dressed for D.C. Mardi Gras, sporting a Blue Dog t-shirt and a crown, preparing to put on his full Mardi Gras regalia. But Bernard insists he didn’t name the pelican after Rodrigue; he’d simply felt naming the name “King George” fit the character of the pelican.
Tony Bernard is now a prominent force in the arts community of Acadiana, but his reach far exceeds his Southwest Louisiana roots. He has been called the “Louisiana Festival Poster King,” having been commissioned to create more than thirty prints for events across Louisiana and across the country, from San Diego to St. Mary Parish.
Exclusive to the Bayou Brief. The first printed sheet of “I Voted” stickers.
And on Saturday, October 12th, more than a million Louisianians will receive, in exchanged for their vote, a small piece of Bernard’s artwork they can wear or frame or cherish as a keepsake. This year, though, there is no need to bid on Bernard’s sticker on eBay; he’s selling two different editions: A 12” x 12” signed print for $20 and a signed 21” x 21” Giclee on paper, an edition of 300, for $150. Both also come with a commemorative “I Voted” print, and both works have the same name, “In Love With Louisiana.”
In 1943, the legendary, four-term Louisiana state Senator Dudley LeBlanc- Couzin Dud, as he was known- patented an elixir, a mixture of Vitamin B and a healthy 12% alcoholic concoction, that he claimed to be somewhat of a miracle drug, though he was careful not to use the words “drug” or “medicine.” He called his potion a “dietary supplement.”
It may have seemed like an unlikely venture for a Cajun legislator born in Erath and a man who never had any formal medical education. But Couzin Dud, as it turned out, was one of the most gifted salesmen in the country. He followed in the same tradition as P.T. Barnum, a talented performer who also understood how to produce a good show, even if the whole act was a gimmick. LeBlanc figured out an ingenious way to sell his elixir; he enlisted some of the biggest names in Hollywood and music and took his show on the road. It worked.
Couzin Dud became a multi-millionaire from selling his elixir, which he named Hadacol. Why? “Well, I hadda call it somethin’,” LeBlanc famously quipped.
The whole thing was a scam, though. Hadacol wasn’t a cure-all potion; the American Medical Association had made that clear. But LeBlanc was wily and savvy; he sold his company to a group of investors and pocketed a cool $5 million profit before the new owners realized Couzin Dud had already spent every last dime the company had on marketing.
The Federal Trade Commission eventually issued a report denouncing the advertising for Hadacol as “false, misleading, and deceptive.” Regardless, LeBlanc died a wealthy man, and to some, particularly to Cajuns, Couzin Dud remains a folk hero.
Sen. LeBlanc may have been an utterly unique force of life; his granddaughter produced a documentary about him she titled “The Cajun Renaissance Man.” But his business- selling people a phony elixir he promised would be able to cure all that ails you- is a part of a grand American tradition.
In her 2018 book about OxyContin, “Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America,” bestselling author Beth Macy reminds readers of this grand tradition (though she skipped past the story of Hadacol). Our collective willingness to buy- hook, line, and sinker- the boasts made by the developer of the latest and greatest cure-all, she notes, is one of the reasons the author and public intellectual Gore Vidal often referred to the country as “the United States of Amnesia.”
23 years after it was first introduced into the American market, the manufacturers, distributors, and doctors who pushed powerfully addictive and deadly opioids like OxyContin onto the medicine cabinets of millions of Americans are finally being held accountable in the courts.
Last week, an Oklahoma judge ruled the company Johnson & Johnson pay the state $572 million for deceptively marketing the opioids Duragesic and Nucynta; earlier, Purdue Pharma, the manufacturers of OxyContin, had agreed to settle with Oklahoma for $270 million, and Teva Pharmaceuticals of Jerusalem, which manufacturers generic versions of opioids, agreed to pay $85 million.
Two days ago, the Washington Post reported that the Sackler family, which controls ownership of Purdue Pharma, is negotiating a settlement with state governments estimated to be worth between $10 to $12 billion. Such a settlement would almost certainly force the company to declare bankruptcy, but the Sackler’s family wealth would remain virtually in tact. Just like Couzin Dud, except his elixir never killed anyone.
At minimum, the deceptively-marketed and over-prescribed drugs have resulted in the deaths of at least 200,000 Americans. Some studies suggest that number is closer to 500,000.
And while the epidemic has affected every corner of the country, it began in rural, impoverished pockets of Appalachia; Kentucky and West Virginia have both been disproportionately devastated.
However, the crisis has slowly but surely spread to the Deep South. Today, Louisiana has the fifth highest opioid prescribing rate in the country, directly under Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Alabama.
Pharmer Abraham Had Many Scripts:
Ralph Lee Abraham is a farmer, a veterinarian, a medical doctor, a pilot, a United States Congressman, and a current candidate for Louisiana governor. Until recently, though, most Louisianians, even those who considered themselves to be well-informed political observers, had never heard of Abraham, who was recruited by allies of then-Gov. Bobby Jindal to run against Republican incumbent Vance McAllister for Louisiana’s Fifth Congressional District. McAllister had been secretly recorded in his office having a romantic affair with a long-time family friend who went to work for his field office after he won election.
McAllister had been dubbed by the media as “the kissing congressman,” and despite the fact that the most senior elected leader of the Louisiana Republican Party at the time was Sen. David Vitter, McAllister had to be defeated. (As a brief digression, at the time, I managed to pull off one of my all-time best pranks. After Republican Party Chairman Roger Villere issued a press statement calling on McAllister’s resignation, I worked up a satirical “follow-up” statement that I claimed to have received later in the night from Villere, and I posted it on my old blog. Villere’s “follow-up” asserted that after prayerful consideration, he believed he had a moral and ethical imperative to be consistent in how he treated leaders who had committed the sin of adultery and that, therefore, he was now also calling for Sen. Vitter’s resignation as well. At the very end of the letter, I let readers know it was satirical, but apparently, conservative talk radio host Moon Griffon didn’t read the whole letter and reported it as news, working himself into a rage against Villere on his radio program that morning, until a caller informed him the letter was a work of satire).
Regardless, the Kissing Congressman was replaced by the Missing Congressman.
Ralph Abraham hadn’t only been unknown throughout the state (almost everyone knows Steve Scalise, Clay Higgins, Mike Johnson, Cedric Richmond and Garret Graves); he was unknown even to the people of his own district.
Moreover, even those who were familiar with Abraham had no idea until last week of another detail in his resume: Pharmacy owner. There isn’t a single print news article about Abraham’s ownership, though I did manage to find one incredibly ironic classified ad he ran in the Richland Beacon.
Abraham was seeking a nurse for his clinic, but above his ad, on the same page, appears this notification:
Abraham has been an outspoken advocate of the drug OxyContin. During a televised congressional debate in 2014, in an answer to a question about whether he would support the legalization of marijuana, he somehow spun his answer into a promo for brand name opioids.
“Again, as a physician, let me tell you. What I see in my practice, from any level of marijuana use, is bad. I’m against recreational, I’m against medical,” he said. “In the medical profession, for these chronic pain, poor cancer patients that need help, we have other alternatives that work better, Dilaudid, OxyContin, you name it, Oxycodone, we have several options that do a much better job for chronic pain, I’ve had hundreds of patients unfortunately with cancer that I’ve treated, they do well with these drugs.” (Emphasis added).
There is a growing body of medical research that suggests Abraham’s answer is demonstrably, provably wrong, and as we recently learned from an extraordinary story by the Advocate’s Tyler Bridges, former Gov. Kathleen Blanco used medicinal marijuana at the very end of her life, which her family believes was a “game-changer” that allowed her to remain lucid and comfortable until only two hours before her death.
Yet, as Beth Macy explains in “Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America,” during the mid 1990s, physicians became convinced of the need to continually treat and manage pain. “The 1996 introduction of OxyContin coincided with the moment in medical history when doctors, hospitals, and accreditation boards were adopting the notion of pain as ‘the fifth vital sign,’ developing new standards for pain assessment and treatment that gave pain equal status with blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate, and temperature,” Macy writes.
This “moment in medical history” was largely informed and financed by pharmaceutical companies and drug manufacturers, creating a pretense to ensure an immediate market for their new lines of high-powered opioids, and while I have no way of knowing whether or not Ralph Abraham personally met with pharmaceutical reps of opioid manufacturers, physicians like Ralph Abraham were specifically courted by these drug manufacturers, according to Macy.
“From a sales perspective, OxyContin had its greatest early success in rural, small-town America—already full of shuttered factories and Dollar General stores, along with burgeoning disability claims. Purdue handpicked the physicians who were most susceptible to their marketing, using information it bought from a data-mining network, IMS Health, to determine which doctors in which towns prescribed the most competing painkillers,” she writes.
According to data released last month by the Louisiana Department of Health’s Opioid Surveillance Initiative, there are 96 opioid prescriptions for every 100 people living in the state. And that’s good news. Four years ago, there were 116 prescriptions per 100 people. Make no mistake, though, this is still a public health crisis; Louisiana is still ranked as having the fifth highest opioid prescription rate.
Number of opioid prescriptions per 100 people. Source: Louisiana Department of Health.
While the average number of prescriptions statewide has marginally declined, the epidemic seems to have only worsened. “The number of opioid-involved deaths in Louisiana was 184% times higher in 2018 than in 2012,” the LDH reported in June, and in Abraham’s home of Richland Parish, there are still approximately 106 opioid prescriptions per every 100 residents.
“If a doctor was already prescribing lots of Percocet and Vicodin, a rep was sent out to deliver a pitch about OxyContin’s potency and longer-lasting action,” Macy explains. “The higher the decile—a term reps use as a predictor of a doctor’s potential for prescribing whatever drug they’re hawking—the more visits that doctor received from a rep, who often brought along ‘reminders; such as OxyContin-branded clocks for the exam-room walls.
In Louisiana, the Doctor Appears to Have Been Excused
Be sure you know the conditions of your flocks, give careful attention to your herds; for riches do not endure forever, and a crown is not secure for all generations. Proverbs 27:34-35
Last Wednesday, I published “Pharmland,” a report that revealed two rural pharmacies owned by Ralph Abraham had dispensed nearly 1.5 million doses of opioids from the years 2006 to 2012, according to a comprehensive database assembled by the Drug Enforcement Administration and first published by the Washington Post.
The Post’s decision to make the database publicly available and searchable by county (or parish) allowed me to locate the records of two obscure pharmacies in a remote and sparsely populated area of northeast Louisiana, pharmacies I knew- thanks to the intrepid reporting of my colleague Sue Lincoln- were then owned by a country veterinarian who later became a country doctor and then a member of the United States House of Representatives.
The numbers are staggering, especially considering the two communities in which the pharmacies are located, Mangham in Richland Parish and Winnsboro in Franklin Parish, have a combined population of fewer than 6,000 people and that neither of Abraham’s two pharmacies were the most prolific dispensaries in town.
During the past few days, hundreds of people in Louisiana have reached out online to share their shock and outrage. National reporters from the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, CNBC, the Miami Herald, and MSNBC shared the article on Twitter. The journalist Jerry Lambe picked up the story for the national publication Law & Crime, a terrific new outlet founded by Dan Abrams. A couple of celebrity actors took notice, as did dozens of medical researchers and prominent physicians.
Late last night, the journalist Sarah Burris amplified it even more significantly, publishing a front-page account on the popular online news site Raw Story (Burris’ summary is actually backdated on August 28th, which suggests it had been written shortly after I broke the news here on the Bayou Brief).
The report also caught the attention of at least two of Abraham’s colleagues in Congress, Joaquin Castro of Texas and Ruben Gallego of Arizona. Rep. Gallego pulled no punches. “If his name was of Latino origin he would have been in jail by now. The difference between being a drug dealer and a criminal is whether or not you are incorporated in Delaware,” he tweeted.
As of this writing, however, only one news organization in Louisiana has even acknowledged its existence, the Westside Reader in Port Allen, which should be commended both for its willingness to cover the story and for writing one of the best headlines of the year, notwithstanding the fact they misspelled the word pharmacies.
My concerns and frustrations with the lack of coverage in the state media have nothing to do with some sort of vainglorious desire for personal attention. Rather, they are about our institutional failures to ensure voters are fully informed about those elected to lead or seek to be elected; in Abraham’s case, it’s both.
The original report has generated hundreds and hundreds of shares and comments, almost exclusively from voters in Louisiana. As a consequence, I’ve gained a better appreciation of how widespread and common opioid use and addiction are, particularly in the Fifth District. I was born and raised in the district, and my home parish, Rapides, has- by a wide margin- been more affected than any other place in Louisiana.
Yesterday, a woman from the area attempted to argue that 41 opioid pills for every man, woman, and child for every year over the course of seven consecutive years is a “non-story.” Others have twisted themselves into rhetorical knots in an effort to argue the volume of doses is not nearly as bad as it sounds if one were to make the assumption that Abraham’s pharmacies served the entire regional population; it was unfair, they argued, to look only at the populations of the municipalities.
I can appreciate the argument, but the truth is that there are multiple pharmacies in the region, some of which dispense more opioids than the two owned- or once owned- by the congressman. If anything, the assumption that they serve a population of 6,000 residents is inflated, not diminished.
Regardless, this is the methodology employed by the DEA. It’s not something I cooked up out of thin air. And it is a reasonable, logical approach.
No matter how one attempts to excuse the raw numbers, they are still incredibly problematic, because Richland Parish, in particular, has a disproportionate number of opioid prescriptions per person.
Indeed, the primary cause of the opioid epidemic was overprescribing medication.
During the years in which Abraham practiced medicine in Mangham (now he’s operating out of Rayville), the proliferation of prescription opioids created the first wave in overdose deaths. They were still the leading cause when he was elected to Congress.
It’s also worth noting that opioid prescriptions decreased in both Richland and Franklin Parishes since Abraham limited his medical practice, though Richland still exceeds the state average.
Fortunately, the Louisiana Department of Health keeps track of this information.
The Total Number of Opioid Prescriptions in Franklin Parish from 2014-18
(Population 20,280)
The Total Number of Opioid Prescriptions in Richland Parish from 2014-18
(Population 20,411)
Louisiana is exactly forty days out from its primary election, and typically, campaign seasons begin in earnest after Labor Day. There is no question that the closer we get to an election, the more we learn about candidates.
Ralph Abraham has consistently placed his experience as a medical doctor at the center of his message to voters, so there is nothing unreasonable or malicious about providing information on his strong and outspoken support of opioids; it’s relevant.
His record in Congress on the epidemic is also relevant.
He has repeatedly gone out of his way to publicly repudiate lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies who have acknowledged their culpability and deception. He invited a man whose business was under active investigation by the DEA to be his guest at last year’s State of the Union address; the company was forced to pay $22 million in fines. The man who owns it is now a chairman of Abraham’s campaign. “As a doctor, I can tell you there are only two genders,” he said at the end of a recent campaign commercial, the exact opposite of what the medical profession knows to be true about gender.
According to his personal financial reports, he is still earning a sizable income from a pharmacy he ostensibly sold. When he was asked in January about how America could end the opioid crisis, he simply said, “Build a border wall,” which may be red meat to his political base but should call into question whether he understands what created the demand for fentanyl in the first place.
And considering his comments about opposing medical marijuana, it’s worth asking if he would have charged former Gov. Blanco with a crime as she spent her final days or whether he still believes that all of the drugs he praised when he ran for Congress, drugs made by companies now being forced to pay billions in fines for lying about the potency and risks, are less “dangerous” than medical marijuana.
These aren’t malicious questions; they are imminently fair and reasonable. The Advocate and the Gannett papers may not be interested, but the Missing Congressman routine won’t work forever.
Over the course of seven years, from 2006 to 2012, two pharmacies in rural northeast Louisiana, owned by Republican gubernatorial candidate and U.S. Rep. Ralph Abraham, Clinic Pharmacy of Mangham and Adams Clinic Pharmacy of Winnsboro, doled out 1,478,236 doses of powerful opioids, according to a Drug Enforcement Administration database recently published by the Washington Post.
The pharmacies are 12.5 miles away from one another, and the two communities have a combined population of approximately 6,000 people. Despite the surge in opioid prescriptions, the region’s population has actually decreased during the previous twenty years.
Abraham has been openly enthusiastic about his support for opioid treatments, once suggesting that the drugs are far less dangerous and much more effective than medical marijuana. Five years ago, during an October 2014 debate for Congress, Abraham claimed he did not support “the legalization of marijuana on any level.”
“Again, as a physician, let me tell you. What I see in my practice, from any level of marijuana use, is bad,” Abraham stated. “I’m against recreational, I’m against medical. In the medical profession, for these chronic pain, poor cancer patients that need help, we have other alternatives that work better, Dilaudid, OxyContin, you name it, Oxycodone, we have several options that do a much better job for chronic pain.
“I’ve had hundreds of patients unfortunately with cancer that I’ve treated, they do well with these drugs,” he continued.
According to the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control, opioid overdoses surged an astonishing 14% in 2014, which was largely a consequence of physicians overprescribing the drugs. Abraham’s home parish of Richland is one of the least populated in the state, ranking 46th of 64, yet according to the most recent estimate, it ranks as the 8th worst in opioid prescriptions. As of 2017, for every 100 people in Richland, there were an astonishing 113 opioid prescriptions.
“Opioids—mainly synthetic opioids (other than methadone)—are currently the main driver of drug overdose deaths,” states the CDC. “Opioids were involved in 47,600 overdose deaths in 2017. A staggering 67.8% of all drug overdose deaths are due to opioids, and while nationwide these numbers have declined, Louisiana is one of a handful of states in which deaths from opioid overdoses have increased.
During the past year, overdose deaths went up by 4.7% in Louisiana.
“Louisiana also ranks among the top 10 states with the most opioid prescriptions written per capita, according to its state’s lawsuit against 17 companies, including Purdue Pharma,” according to a report published yesterday by APG Wisconsin. “Since 2007, the state has spent at least $677 million ‘for treatment of opioid use and dependence.’”
During the seven-year timeframe, Abraham’s pharmacy in Winnsboro doubled the number of opioids it dispensed to patients; opioid prescriptions filled at his pharmacy in Mangham, which is located near his former medical clinic, surged a staggering 67%.
In Mangham (2017 population: 638), Abraham’s pharmacy supplied enough opioid medication to provide every man, woman, and child 6.1 doses every year (or 43 pills in total) for seven consecutive years; his pharmacy in Winnsboro (2017 population: 4,652) could have provided every resident 4.4 doses per year (or 31 in total). (Note: Annual doses per person were based on Census estimates, not the most recent American Community Survey).
Thus far, the only publicly-available data concerns manufacturers, distributors, and pharmacies filling the medications, but there is significant pressure for the government to also identify the physicians responsible for writing a substantial number of opioid prescriptions, particularly those who, like Abraham, also maintain ownership interests in nearby pharmacies.
It Pays to Prescribe
Source: Louisiana Secretary of State.
According to documents filed with the Louisiana Secretary of State, Abraham founded the Clinic Pharmacy of Mangham in 2003 and co-founded the Adams Clinic Pharmacy of Winnsboro three years later. In 2008, when he and his wife sought court approval for their “matrimonial regime of separate property,” Abraham submitted as “Exhibit A” an inventory of his property and ownership interests.
At the time, he owned 24.5% separate share in the Adams Clinic and a 25.5% separate share in the Clinic Pharmacy of Mangham; the remaining shares were presumably community property with his wife and family or, in the case of the pharmacy in Winnsboro, the separate property of his business partner, Kayla Bridges, a former employee of Abraham’s medical practice who received her pharmacist’s license in 2006.
Source: Fifth Judicial District Court, Louisiana, Docket No. 40214-B, Exhibit “A” Ralph L. Abraham Jr. Separate Property Assets and Liabilities, 1/23/08
Notably, A&B of Richland Parish and B&A of North Louisiana are apparently both partnerships between Abraham and Bridges, though Abraham’s name was removed from A&B in 2013 and B&A in 2015, after his election to Congress. Despite the fact that Abraham claims to have sold his ownership interest in the pharmacy in Winnsboro to Bridges in 2015 and his ownership of his Mangham pharmacy to her just last year, according to his most recent personal financial disclosure report, Bridges still owed him between $15,001-$50,000 for his shares of A&B and between $250,001 to $500,000 for the Clinic Pharmacy of Mangham.
Last year, even though he “sold” his pharmacy in Mangham, he still earned between $50,000 – $100,000 in income from the business, as he has every year since his election except, for reasons unexplained, in 2014.
If this seems convoluted, that was the point.
But regardless of the accounting gimmicks or the attempt to cleverly deflect attention from the sources of his income, the simple truth is that Ralph Abraham has made a fortune through his ownership of two rural pharmacies that sold a disproportionate and astonishing amount of dangerous opioids. Indeed, it appears Abraham continues to make a fortune from his pharmacy in Mangham.
The Clinic Pharmacy of Mangham, Louisiana. Photo Credit: Sue Lincoln
Oh but the pusher is a monster Good God, he’s not a natural man
Aside from the staggering volume of opioids that Abraham’s two rural pharmacies dispensed from 2006 to 2012, there is one other detail that is impossible to ignore: With only one insignificant exception, he ordered all of his supply, nearly 1.5 million doses, from a single distributor, the Shreveport-based, family-owned company Morris & Dickson.
Morris & Dickson is the second-largest opioid distributor in the state of Louisiana, or at least it once was.
On May 2nd, 2018, the DEA suspended the company from distributing controlled substances, after a months-long investigation revealed it had been supplying pharmacies with massive shipments of opioids, in direct violation of the law.
A small portion of orders sent to Abraham’s two pharmacies. Source: DEA.
“In October 2017, DEA became aware of the high-volume sales of Oxycodone and Hydrocodone from Morris and Dickson Company to five of the top ten purchasing pharmacies within the state of Louisiana,” the federal agency announced in a press release. “DEA records indicated that Morris and Dickson Company had not filed any suspicious order reports on any of the pharmacies in question in Louisiana.”
It was the first time the DEA had issued a such a suspension since 2012. “Not only were numerous ‘independent’ retail pharmacies purchasing more Oxycodone and Hydrocodone than the largest chain pharmacies operating within the state, they were purchasing more narcotics than several of the largest chain pharmacies combined within the same zip code,” the DEA explained. “In some instances, DEA noted these ‘independent’ pharmacies were purchasing more than ten times the amount of narcotics the average Louisiana pharmacy purchased per month.”
Yet only sixteen days after it issued the suspension, the DEA withdrew it, according to an announcement made on the company’s Facebook page.
Dickson, a prolific donor to Republican politicians and PACs, has already contributed the maximum to Abraham’s gubernatorial campaign; so has Dickson’s wife. Dickson was recently named as a member of Abraham’s campaign finance committee.
In May of this year, his company agreed to pay $22 million in civil penalties to settle charges it had violated the Controlled Substances Act. “In addition to paying $22 million in settlement funds, Morris & Dickson also agreed during the course of the negotiations to make significant upgrades to its compliance program by investing millions of dollars to hire additional staff and implement new protocols and standards to ensure compliance with federal regulations requiring them to report suspicious orders of controlled substances,” the Shreveport Times reported.
You know, I’ve seen a lot of people walkin’ ’round With tombstones in their eyes But the pusher don’t care Ah, if you live or if you die
Seven months ago, a person from northeast Louisiana posted a troubling and potentially explosive allegation as a comment on Facebook in response to one of the Bayou Brief’s previous reports on U.S. Rep. Ralph Abraham. According to the individual, whose identity we have confirmed but are withholding out of concerns for personal and professional retaliation, the physician-turned-congressman had been known as a leading prescriber of powerful opioids, some of the most addictive and deadliest medications on the market.
The comment remained online for over 48 hours before the person, perhaps wisely, decided to delete it. I had reached out privately, both to express my appreciation for their courage and to caution them about the potential backlash they could receive.
The person, who lived in the vicinity of both pharmacies, claimed direct knowledge of the doctor’s preferred way to treat and manage patients suffering from pain, which Abraham has already essentially confirmed. They also offered to contact two others who were forced to seek treatment after becoming addicted to opioids they had allegedly received either from Dr. Abraham or through one of the two rural pharmacies he owned in the area.
However, speaking publicly about an addiction, particularly in the context of a political campaign, is incredibly challenging, and understandably, after thoroughly considering the potential public scrutiny, they decided to refrain from conducting an on-the-record interview. Still, for anyone who has read the Washington Post’s reporting or reviewed the DEA’s database, the details of this person’s experience should not be surprising; millions of Americans have had similar experiences and struggles.
One would think, at the very least, that Abraham would support the bipartisan effort to hold these pharmaceutical companies for misrepresenting a potentially and highly addictive lethal drug, creating what can fairly be characterized as an epidemic and a crisis, and pocketing billions of dollars in profit as a direct result.
Yet Ralph Abraham has repeatedly expressed his opposition to lawsuits filed against opioid distributors and manufacturers, arguing that these pharmaceutical companies are merely meeting the market’s demand.
In 2017, during an interview on Talk 1073, the congressman was directly asked his opinion on the lawsuits, and he twice claimed not to know of any “objective data” linking the misleading practices of opioid manufacturers with the proliferation of prescriptions and fatal overdoses.
“I wanna get some objective data first, and I don’t want it to be you know, like some of these large class-action suits that we have had in the past, where they just throw the baby out with the bathwater,” he said, presumably referring to either the class action suits against tobacco companies or against BP in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. “So you know, let’s see where the problem lies. You’re correct, the manufacturers are simply meeting a demand that is being, maybe, abused by some physicians. Certainly abused, illicitly, by some street dealers.”
Earlier in the same interview, Abraham acknowledged being fearful of having the Drug Enforcement Agency monitoring physicians who write “long-term” prescriptions for opioids.
He was not referring to himself when he spoke about the drugs “being, maybe, abused by some physicians,” and he has never disclosed how many of the opioid prescriptions he wrote for patients were filled at one of his pharmacies.
In fact, he has continually claimed that he gave up the practice of medicine in order to serve in Congress, though his own financial disclosure reports seem to directly contradict that assertion.
There is at least one prominent Republican in Louisiana who adamantly agrees with the lawsuits against opioid manufacturers, distributors, and prescribers: state Attorney General Jeff Landry. He calls it “one of the (state’s) most challenging and complex problems,” estimating that the opioid epidemic is already costing Louisiana more than $160 million every year.
More importantly though, it’s costing Louisiana more than 1,000 lives annually and thousands more to seek treatment for drug dependency. Incidentally, drug and alcohol addiction facilities have also poured big money into Abraham’s campaign. They apparently believe he’s good for their business, and it’s difficult to argue otherwise.
We aim to double our monthly support. Today, we embark on a fundraising drive to expand our work and to continue the advertising-free articles that you have come to expect. I am sharing a report that explains why this work is so important and necessary to advancing a more vibrant, more informed, and more inclusive future for the land and the people of Louisiana.
The Bayou Brief has been a labor of love for all of us, and you have shown your love in return by sharing our stories widely.
Every dollar we receive ensures that we can keep publishing. Currently, we have the resources to support writing by two full-time authors and three freelancers.
I. The Brief’s Interruption: How We Have Changed the Conversation
Considering we have published more than 500 original reports since our launch two years ago, it is somewhat of a challenge to select only a handful of stories as a way of illustrating how we have changed the conversation, contributed to the social welfare, and advanced a more informed and engaged public discourse.
The Plaquemines Gazette, Oct. 16, 2018.
For example, our reporting on the environment, which has been largely led by Sue Lincoln, concerns what is arguably the most important issue of our time. We have published reports that revealed a previously unknown but officially declared environmental emergency in DeSoto Parish, the consequence of the woefully- if not negligently- under-regulated fracking industry.
When the Plaquemines Parish Council considered passing a resolution that sought to drop a lawsuit seeking environmental damages by a series of oil and gas companies, many of which have already acknowledged liability, we reported on how several parish council members had significant conflicts of interests, which should have required them to recuse themselves from voting on the resolution. Ultimately, one member did just that, citing the Bayou Brief’s reporting for calling the issue to her attention, and as a result, the resolution failed to pass.
Paul S. Ryan interviews with Lamar White, Jr. of the Bayou Brief.
In February 2018, we conducted the very first extensive interview with Paul S. Ryan, the D.C.-based lawyer and campaign finance watchdog who filed the very first complaint with the Federal Elections Commission about an adult film star named Stormy. Ryan alleged, among other things, that President Donald Trump and his then-personal attorney Michael Cohen violated campaign finance laws when, during the final month of the 2016 election, they paid Baton Rouge native Stormy Daniels $160,000 to remain silent about the sexual encounter she had with Trump. Today, Cohen is serving time in federal prison on after he pleaded guilty to a number of crimes, including campaign finance violations; the court named Trump as an “unindicted co-conspirator.”
More recently, our reporting about U.S. Rep. Ralph Abraham’s Arab-American heritage was featured by WGNO shortly after Abraham, during his gubernatorial campaign, made what many have characterized a bigoted and xenophobic comments about four of his colleagues in Congress.
The Bayou Brief’s Lamar White, Jr appears on MSNBC to discuss our reporting on Cindy Hyde-Smith.
Perhaps ironically, one of the biggest stories the Bayou Brief reported in the past ten months had nothing to do with Louisiana; instead, it concerned comments made by Mississippi’s Cindy Hyde-Smith, the Republican candidate for a seat in the U.S. Senate. The Bayou Brief exclusively obtained video footage of Hyde-Smith making a bizarre statement, ostensibly intended as a compliment to a supporter, about being on the first row of the man’s public hanging. Within minutes after sharing the video on Twitter, the story went viral, and after we followed up that video with another one, in which Hyde-Smith “jokes” about the need for voter suppression on college campuses, the Bayou Brief became a prominent part of hundreds of reports from across the country.
A billboard on Interstate 10 paid for by Lee Mallett, a self-described “concerned citizen for good government.” Although the Bayou Brief is mentioned in the advertisement, we had no knowledge of it until, like everyone else, investigative editor Sue Lincoln spotted it while driving from Lake Charles to Baton Rouge.
Today, as Louisiana prepares to vote on who should lead the state as governor for the next four years, the Bayou Brief’s investigative reporting on Republican candidates Eddie Rispone and Ralph Abraham has been read and shared thousands of times and referenced in at least one statewide commercial. Our reporting has also helped inform the campaign for state Insurance Commissioner, and if you are driving down Interstate 10 near Jennings, Louisiana, you may notice a billboard that cites reporting from our most comprehensive investigative series of the year.
III. The Bayou Brief’s 10 Most Consequential Reports and Columns in 2019:
1. Wrecked: How Auto Insurance Takes Louisiana for a Ride
Our 12-part investigative series on the car insurance industry in Louisiana uncovered the most significant reasons drivers in our state pay some of the most expensive premiums in the nation. We worked with Douglas Heller, a nationally-acclaimed insurance expert, in order to better understand how the industry operates in Louisiana. What we uncovered was astonishing: Companies routinely discriminate against widows, combat veterans, and people with poor credit scores, charging them significantly more money.
In Louisiana, these companies are provided with a license to discriminate, and as a consequence, many of our most vulnerable and marginalized communities are disproportionately burdened.
Earlier this year, the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI), with the assistance of the insurance industry, brazenly attempted to push through a bill, which was dishonestly titled “the Omnibus Auto Premium Reduction Act of 2019,” that would have made it significantly more difficult for injured drivers to hold insurers accountable in the courts and limited a person’s right to access the justice system, spuriously arguing that these so-called “reforms” would have resulted in a reduction in the price of car insurance.
LABI called the legislation “the most important bill” of the 2019 legislative session. Unfortunately for LABI, however, there was zero evidence that any of its proposed reforms would decrease premiums. It was, instead, a somewhat transparent attempt to pass a series of so-called “tort reforms,” with the ultimate goal of tilting the scales of justice in favor of big business.
Although the bill sailed through the state House, by the time it reached the Senate Judiciary-A Committee, its supporters and sponsors struggled to answer many of the basic questions informed by our reporting.
However, before rejecting the bill outright, the committee first requested that the state Legislative Auditor provide a fiscal note, because while the bill’s proponents argued it would not cost taxpayers any additional money, it soon became clear that there was a price tag attached. Once the auditor’s office confirmed the legislation would likely cost millions of dollars to implement and create additional burdens for a court system already overwhelmed, LABI’s most important bill of the year, which was effectively a gift to one of the wealthiest industries in the nation, was defeated.
2. The Bumper Crop: How U.S. Rep. Ralph Abraham Has Made a Fortune Farming for Government Subsidies
Throughout his tenure in Congress and during his campaign for Louisiana governor, Dr. Ralph Abraham, a farmer, physician, and veterinarian from the small town of Alto in rural northeast Louisiana, has continually disparaged families who rely on government subsidies to help them afford basic necessities like health care and food.
His antipathy toward those on “welfare” is prominent part of the message he hopes to sell to voters and a common refrain among conservative Republicans.
3. Clementine’s Hunters: The Extraordinary Life and Afterlife of Louisiana’s Most Consequential Artist
In this five-part series, the Bayou Brief tells the remarkable life’s story of Clementine Hunter, a nationally-celebrated painter and the daughter of slaves who spent nearly all of her 101 years living and working in Melrose Plantation in Natchitoches, Louisiana.
Hunter, who never learned how to read or write, picked up a paintbrush relatively late in her life, and she immediately proved herself to be a brilliant artist whose seemingly simplistic depictions of plantation life often belied much more sophisticated and complex messages about racism, religion, oppression, redemption, and the patriarchy.
After she was “discovered” by François Mignon, a man with his own incredible backstory, famed writers, artists, and reporters from all across the nation would make pilgrimages to Melrose Plantation to meet Hunter, who had been known to sell her paintings for as little as 25 cents. Today, many of Hunter’s paintings are worth tens of thousands of dollars.
Hunter’s story does not end with her death, however. It actually ends with the largest FBI investigation into art forgery in the nation’s history.
4. Eddie Rispone Relies on Controversial Program That Outsources Jobs to Foreign Workers
Eddie Rispone, the mega-millionaire co-founder of an electrical installation company and a Republican candidate for Louisiana governor, outraged many in Louisiana, especially those in New Orleans, after taking out a full-page ad in the pages of the Times-Picayune that smeared immigrants as nothing more than dangerous criminals.
However, according to documents uncovered by the Bayou Brief, at the same time during which Rispone was settling three different lawsuits for wage theft from nearly 100 of his former employees (the majority of whom were Latinx), he and his company were also applying for three H1-B visas. The controversial visa system, which some have compared to indentured servitude, allowed Rispone to hire foreign workers to perform skilled jobs at his company.
8. National News Coverage of Tropical Storm Barry Is Its Own Disaster
Easily the most read story in the Bayou Brief’s two years, publisher Lamar White, Jr. excoriates the national media and parachute reporters for brazenly misreporting the on-the-ground reality as the city of New Orleans and the residents of coastal Louisiana prepared for Barry’s landfall. The
9. Why Alexandria’s New Festival Drowned in the Red
In Central Louisiana, taxpayers sank a small fortune to rebrand an award-winning festival. Spending doubled, attendance cratered nearly 80%, and an event intended to unify the community resulted in division and disappointment.
Our very first featured report on the Bayou Brief was Nick Pittman’s 6,000 word story about a massacre in 1873 in Colfax, Louisiana. I imagine, for some people, it may have seemed like a mad way to introduce ourselves to a brand new audience, but it was a calculated risk.
I had spent the previous eleven years writing a personal blog, CenLamar, which eventually became a part of my public persona. I can’t count the number of times people have addressed me as “CenLamar” or how many times I have been referenced as a “Louisiana political blogger.” So, it was important, immediately out of the gate, that we introduce the Bayou Brief as something entirely different. This wasn’t a revamped iteration of my blog. From the very beginning, the Bayou Brief has been a digital platform for a wide variety of voices on a wide range of subjects; the only “rule,” which we’ve broken only a small handful of times, is that the stories we publish be directly connected to Louisiana.
It was also important, from the very beginning, to signal our belief in publishing the stories of places in Louisiana frequently overlooked or completely unknown to those outside of Baton Rouge or New Orleans. Colfax certainly qualifies as one of those places.
Nick Pittman wrote a damn good story about a massacre that pretended to be a riot, and though I am well-aware that very few people managed to read all 6,000 words, I am grateful to him for helping set the Bayou Brief into motion.
After two years, we are now hitting our stride. We publish stories and news reports that you won’t find anywhere else. We’re not a news aggregator, and we’re not in the business of recycling someone else’s work as a ploy to generate clicks. Although we have been able to build a robust and loyal readership, we’re not in the business of monetizing anyone’s personal data either; clicks are not nearly as important to us as content.
We aim to double our monthly support. Today, we embark on a fundraising drive to expand our work and to continue the advertising-free articles that you have come to expect. I am sharing a report that explains why this work is so important and necessary to advancing a more vibrant, more informed, and more inclusive future for the land and the people of Louisiana.
The Bayou Brief has been a labor of love for all of us, and you have shown your love in return by sharing our stories widely.
Every dollar we receive ensures that we can keep publishing. Currently, we have the resources to support writing by two full-time authors and three freelancers.
Two years ago, before we launched the Bayou Brief, I asked people to believe in an ambitious idea: A digitally-native, Louisiana statewide, member-supported, and nonprofit news and culture publication that would remain both free to read and free from intrusive advertising. The response was overwhelming, and as a consequence, the Bayou Brief has published more than 500 original reports, hired a full-time state Capitol reporter, featured the work of nearly two dozen incredibly talented writers and photojournalists, and attracted more than four million unique readers.
Our reporting has been picked up by both state and national media outlets. Last year, I appeared on MSNBC and CNN on behalf of the Bayou Brief, and this year, I was selected by Gambit as one of its Top 40 Under 40 honorees and named as the 2019 Outstanding Millennial in Journalism at the annual Millennial Awards in New Orleans.
Although I am proud to be the publication’s founder, I did not build the Bayou Brief on my own. Each and every person who has contributed their time or their treasure or both, whether you sent us an idea for a report or chipped in $10 online, is responsible for helping to create something that has never been done before in Louisiana.
While we all share in the publication’s successes, I also fully recognize that, as its publisher, I am ultimately responsible for its shortcomings. In this report, I outline the mistakes I have made, not only because I believe that accountability and transparency are critical in maintaining the Bayou Brief’s credibility but also because I am never going to be finished learning.
The Bayou Brief is built on model that had never been attempted before in Louisiana; we didn’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars in one-time grant money to float us through the first years, and no one took out a bank loan. We didn’t build a paywall around our reporting, and we don’t monetize our reader’s personal information, which are the two primary ways that legacy media generates revenue online.
That means we don’t need to measure success the same way that other publications traditionally do. Our contributors are not seeking a direct financial return on their investment; you hope for a different kind of dividend: How have we made a positive impact? What have we done to advance our shared values and promote a better and more informed future?
There are not concepts that one can easily quantify in a spreadsheet, and they often have no relationship whatsoever with the number of clicks a certain story receives.
We’ve done a helluva lot with very little.
In this report, I outline how, precisely, we intend on putting that money to good use.
This report is comprehensive.
It primarily focuses on the state of the news media in Louisiana, with the aim of providing you with a better understanding of how the Bayou Brief fits into the larger context and why we believe we are filling an important but unoccupied space.
Since the very first day I proposed creating the Bayou Brief, months before we ever went online, I have remained astonished, humbled, and deeply appreciative of every single person who has helped to breathe life into this publication. I am also eternally grateful to our loyal readers for your patience, your enthusiasm, and your kindness, and I’m immensely proud of each and every person whose work we have featured during the past two years.
Onward!
Lamar White, Jr. | PublisherClick to donate now.
NEXT: The Brief’s Interruption: How We Have Changed the Conversation
“These jobs don’t come with training
wheels,” says Mike Strain.
A
Republican from Covington, Strain is
running for his fourth term as Louisiana Commissioner of Agriculture
and Forestry. On this occasion he
was speaking about the “imperative to educate” that’s part of
his job, especially considering the upcoming turnover in the state
Legislature.
Incumbent Mike Strain (right), and his wife, Dr. Susan Strain, DVM (left).
With
nearly three full terms under his belt, Strain,
a veterinarian by profession,
has developed
comprehensive knowledge
of the state’s agriculture industry.
“Last
year, Louisiana’s agricultural and forestry products generated
$8.3-billion in exports,” Strain stated. “That’s despite the
China trade tariffs restricting the call for some of our biggest
commodities, like rice and soybeans.”
For
three of the four people challenging the incumbent this fall, their
objections to Strain are essentially all factors of his embracing the
philosophy of economic efficiency through the industrialization of
agriculture.
Before
delving into those points of contention, let’s look at the fourth
challenger, Peter Williams (D-Lettsworth). He is a perennial
candidate for one office or another. In 2011, as Peter “Coach”
Williams, he ran for a seat on the Pointe Coupee Parish Police Jury.
(He lost.) In 2014, he was one of 12 candidates for Congress in the
6th
District, a race which Garret Graves ultimately won. In 2016, as “the
Rev.” Peter Williams, he was one of 24 contenders for the open U.S.
Senate seat. (John Neely Kennedy won that contest.) On
his webpage for his
current election effort, Williams describes himself as a “hardwood
seedling/tree farmer and wetlands conservation specialists
[sic]
who has been advocating for rural farmers and communities for over 35
years.”
Peter Williams (D-Lettsworth), at candidate qualifying 8-6-2019.
Williams
never filed campaign finance reports for his federal races, nor has
he yet filed any state campaign financials for this race. He
personally paid for his police juror race in 2011, spending $1500 on
the 309 votes he generated.
That’s
a far cry from the “return on investment” Strain, the Ag Commish
incumbent, proudly tallies.
“Since
I took over the Department, we have paid off all debt. We
have eliminated vehicles, including 12 planes, reducing
annual fuel costs by nearly 70%,”
Strain declared, when speaking to the media during election
qualifying on August 6. ‘We’ve
reduced our Department payroll from a thousand down to 500 employees,
reduced the amount of State General
Fund needed for our operations by 35%,
thus saving the taxpayers
of Louisiana more than a quarter of a billion dollars.”
Yet
that’s exactly why Charlie Greer is
running to unseat Strain.
“From
day one, this administration has decimated the agency,” Greer
says. “Seafood testing and feral hog programs have been cut into a
corner. And because of the cuts, so
many present
and former state employees have
suffered at the hands of a career politician.”
Charlie Greer (D-Natchitoches) at qualifying, 8-8-2019.
Greer
is a retired former employee of the Agriculture and Forestry
Department, having overseen forestry enforcement for more than 20
years, primarily under the previous Commissioner, Bob Odom. Greer ran
for the office four years ago, with the same general platform –
anger about budget cuts that pushed him into retirement, spending
just under $17,000 in 2015. As of the most recent reporting period
this year, Greer has just under $3200 in his war chest. And this
time, Greer has updated his litany
of complaints to include new agricultural crops, as well as his
continued concerns
about the timber division.
“This
Commissioner has botched the rollout of medical marijuana and
industrial hemp. And when it comes
to forest fires, we’re one match away from catastrophe!” Greer
insists.
Strain,
who has himself sounded the alarm
while speaking to legislative budgeting committees about cuts
exacerbating wildfire dangers, was more about painting a picture of
efficiency when speaking to the press about his re-election hopes.
“We
have seen a 59% overall reduction in wildfires, and we’ve reduced
the number of wildfire arson cases we investigate annually from 900
down to about 160.” Strain said.
He
also acknowledged there have been hiccups in getting the state’s
medical marijuana program up and running, though the first day of
election qualifying was also the initial day of dispensing the
long-awaited products.
“My
opponents misplace their criticism,” Strain said that day. “The
delays have been due to restrictions the Legislature has set in
place, as safety mechanisms. They determined who would be eligible to
participate in the growing and manufacturing, in the dispensing, and
for which conditions the medications would be available. Our task at
the Department of Agriculture is purely as the regulatory agency for
the quality of the plants and the medicines derived from them.”
The
incumbent Agriculture
Commissioner says permitting hemp as a commodity crop is delayed due
to promulgation of federal rules. They
know there will be a rule as to how many “hot” plants (exceeding
0.3% THC) per acre will be allowed before requiring the entire acre
to be destroyed. And, Strain says, they’re waiting for the spring
2020 availability of genetically certified seeds that comply with the
restrictions on THC content for industrial hemp.
And
while Greer laments the losses of state workers, Bradley Zaunbrecher,
a rice and crawfish farmer from Egan, is running to focus attention
on another type of loss.
Bradley Zaunbrecher (R-Egan), at qualifying, 8-8-2019.
“Mike
Strain has been doing a wonderful job,” the Acadia Parish
Republican said after signing up to challenge the incumbent. “But I
need to speak for my area, and address the loss of our young
farmers.”
Zaubrecher
says young farmers, especially those just starting out with small
tracts of land, are being priced out of the business because
equipment for planting and harvesting has become so specialized and
so expensive.
“Most
family farmers don’t have enough land to support paying $400,000
for a combine to harvest corn, for example,” Zaunbrecher says. “You
have to have a vast tract to afford that. And
that means factory farms growing commodity crops, rather than family
farms and smaller, affordable start-ups for our young people to
produce.”
Many
see factory-farming – including feed-lot operations for chickens,
pigs and cattle, or commodity row crops (which require massive
amounts of fertilizer to produce) – as a major contributor to
climate change. And
while he only touched on it lightly
during his post-qualifying comments,
Strain is the first statewide elected official we
have heard openly acknowledge the
fact of climate change, and
talk rationally about some of the impact it is having on our state.
“We’re
having to take a look at new crops, and consider planting different
orchards than we were ever able to do before.,” Strain remarked.
“Even as we’re working to save our peach trees from the oak root
fungus that’s killing them, seeing the agricultural zones shift to
the north. We think we’re going to be able to grow things like
olives and avocados that have previously required a warmer, more
temperate climate.”
Marguerite
Green doesn’t view the impacts of climate change as being nearly
that innocuous. “Climate change is
a threat, and right now no one in state government is prepared to
aggressively fight it,” Green says.
“The Department of Agriculture and Forestry is uniquely suited to
be at the forefront of preparing for climate
change, while pushing to avert as
much of its effects as possible.”
Marguerite Green (D-New Orleans), candidate for Agriculture Commissioner.
As
a vegetable and flower farmer in New
Orleans, Green, a Democrat, has
practical experience with the changes being wrought by human-created
alterations in the Earth’s atmospheric envelope.
“If
we wait much longer, we won’t be able to prepare,
only react,” she says. “We
should be developing and promoting green jobs, along with maximizing
our carbon farming and other sustainable agriculture practices.
Instead, the policies our Ag Department now promote actually magnify
climate change.”
(“Carbon
farming” is a term referring to
soil management and animal husbandry
practices designed
to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, capturing and holding carbons in
the vegetation and cropland, instead. One example would be growing
clover between corn rows to reduce moisture and carbon loss from the
soil into the atmosphere.)
Green
wants farmers encouraged to grow more vegetable crops, and the
Department to assist with in-state marketing of the food we produce.
She says that
will help address known
poverty-related quality of life issues like food insecurity and food
deserts, especially when coupled
with a “Victory Garden”-type campaign to get people in cities and
suburbs back to growing some of their own food.
“If
elected, I would work with local governmental officials to change
zoning ordinances, and encourage growing vegetable gardens instead of
lawns, along with permitting residential raising of chickens and
goats,” Green explains.
Unlike
Strain, who had more than $640,000 in his campaign war chest at the
close of the last reporting period, Green had just shy of $11,000
available.
“Look, I know I can’t go toe-to-toe with Commissioner Strain, but I am hoping to raise enough to start the conversation,” Green says. “This office is often overlooked, and I want to give people something to think and talk about in this race. I hope to excite people about the possibilities.”
LC President Rick Brewer. Artwork by the Bayou Brief.
It’s been a rough couple of years for Louisiana College, the small, Southern Baptist, and primarily undergraduate institution located in Pineville, Louisiana. When Rick Brewer took over as LC President in 2015, replacing Joe Aguillard- a man who ate live worms on stage, compared a small local newspaper to the devil, and had attempted to open a new law school in Shreveport with vast fortunes he promised but never produced- the school’s most prominent boosters had believed he would quickly repair the significant damage Aguillard inflicted on the school’s reputation and credibility.
Two days ago, Louisiana College published its 2019-2020 Student Handbook, which includes a lengthy and troubling new policy on “social media use” by students. Multiple students, faculty members, and graduates of LC have contacted the Bayou Brief to express their deep concerns with what two people characterized as a “horrifying policy.”
I have decided to protect their identities because, among other things, the new policy authorizes LC to suspend or expel students for speaking critically about the school with a reporter. At my request, one person provided me with a digital copy of the new policy, which I was able to independently authenticate.
The draconian new policy represents a humiliating low point in LC President Rick Brewer’s career, and whether deliberate or not, several students believe it will have the net effect of silencing and further traumatizing classmates victimized by sexual abuse, which has become endemic on college campuses across the country, regardless of the school’s religious affiliation.
At LC, a student is subject to suspension or even expulsion for failing to report a classmate who posted online about “partying.”
Former LC President Joe Aguillard eats a live worm during the school’s mandatory chapel service.
Joe Aguillard had been almost-cartoonishly bad at his job, leading Louisiana College like North Korean dictator Kim Jon Un’s long-lost Baptist brother, purging faculty members who did not share his eccentric and fundamentalist opinions on religion, decimating several academic programs so severely that the school had been warned multiple times it was on the brink of losing its accreditation, and embarking on a grand and delusional expansion plan- involving not only a new law school but also new film and medical schools as well.
Brother Joe, as he was known to his colleagues, had set the bar so low that almost anyone else would look better by comparison. Rick Brewer’s job should have been easy; he had an entire community rooting for him to succeed and willing to do whatever he needed to restore LC’s reputation and credibility.
Over the course of the past two years, however, Brewer has bafflingly squandered that opportunity through a series of erratic decisions and actions, beginning with allegations that he had refused to hire Joshua Bonadona- an LC alum who converted to Christianity while an undergraduate- for an open assistant football coaching job because of the man’s “Jewish blood.” Brewer has denied ever making the remarks, but multiple sources have corroborated the account to the Bayou Brief.
A federal magistrate judge ruled in July of 2018 against Brewer and LC, and the case, which was first reported by the Bayou Brief, has made national and international headlines; if successful, it would be the first time ever that a person of Jewish heritage successfully won a claim for racial or ethnic discrimination and not religious discrimination.
The case is complicated though, and while some Jewish organizations have signaled support for Bonadona, the Anti-Defamation League repudiated him and his attorney, James Bullman, who is himself Jewish, for even filing the claim.
“The idea that Jews are not only a religious group, but also a racial group, was a centerpiece of Nazi policy, and was the justification for killing any Jewish person who came under Nazi occupation –– regardless of whether he or she practiced Judaism,” explains attorney Aaron Alhquist of the ADL. “In fact, even the children and the grandchildren of Jews who had converted to Christianity were murdered as members of the Jewish ‘race’ during the Holocaust.”
Of course, what makes this particular case so interesting and potentially historic is that, despite the fact that Jews are not a “racial group,” Brewer is alleged to have believed otherwise. “The allegations against Louisiana College, if true, would indicate a very troubling and deeply offensive view by the institution that it perceives and discriminates against Jews as a race,” Ahlquist concludes. (Notably, the lawsuit is against LC, not against Brewer individually).
Both Brewer and key members of his administration have struggled to convincingly respond to Bonadona’s allegations. After I first published a report about the lawsuit, I received an unsolicited letter from a member of the school’s board; the letter was largely concerned about protecting the school’s “reputation.”
Louisiana College President Rick Brewer and law enforcement officers in Alexandria and Pineville look on as Joshua Joy Dara talks about the benefits of LC’s criminal justice degree. Dara is professor of criminal justice at Louisiana College and pastor of Zion Hill Church Family in Pineville. Brian Blackwell photo. Credit: Baptist Message.
I suspect, however, that the impetus for the school’s new policy on “social media use” by students has almost nothing to do with Joshua Bonadona’s case and almost everything to do with the fall-out over comments made by Joshua Joy Dara at a mandatory chapel service earlier this year. Dara is a minister, a lawyer, and a Dean of Human Behavior at Louisiana College, and during his sermon, he made a series of comments that several people found offensive and misogynistic, comparing a woman’s body to a home and advising women who had difficulty sexually arousing their husbands to ”mow their lawns,” which was widely understood to be a euphemism for shaving pubic hair.
Several students and faculty members, including Dr. Russell Meek, complained that Dara’s comments amounted to the objectification of women’s bodies and were antithetical to the school’s own values and beliefs. Dara issued a hastily-worded non-apology, and the school’s communications director attributed the entire controversy to “cultural differences.” Dr. Meek was unconvinced and began drafting a response; he was also understandably concerned by a follow-up email Rick Brewer sent to all students and faculty members, using a passage in the Gospels as a way of commanding that allegations of improper actions only go to outside law enforcement after first being turned over for review by the school.
The tone-deaf directive was reinforced by Brewer and orders in a closed door meeting, Dr. Meek ultimately resigned in protest, and his experience quickly went viral in the LC community.
Sample excerpts from the student handbook,
Louisiana College’s new policy on “social media use” by students appears to have borrowed large passages from “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
Amazingly, they put the whole thing online, but made it available only to faculty and students, which is definitely a way of acknowledging that the policy itself “could negatively impact Louisiana College’s reputation.”
But I received a copy and am posting it anyway. #sorrynotsorry
Highlights:
“Students are not to post, Tweet, retweet, or Like images or statements that do not comport with the standards of the College.”
“Employees and students should not post or participate in unprofessional communication that could negatively impact Louisiana College’s reputation or interfere with its core values and mission.”
“… prohibited social media use includes… commentary, content, images, or videos that are critical, offensive, denigrating, derogatory, discriminatory, defamatory, pornographic, harassing, libelous, or that attack individual faculty members, staff, students, or the College.”
“Employees and students should be aware of the public and widespread nature of such media and refrain from any comment and/or hashtags that could be deemed unprofessional or harmful.”
“Online activity at any time, whether it is during the academic year, between terms, semesters, and/or academic years, that violates LC’s policies may subject employees and students to disciplinary action.”
“… students may be subject to corrective action up to and including suspension and expulsion.”
“Do not comment on matters that could reasonably be expected to be confidential regarding… Louisiana College.”
“Social networking sites may be regularly monitored by a number of sources within LC (e.g., Athletics, Student Development, Information Technology, and Campus Security) or authorized vendors engaged by LC to monitor social media.”
“If you participate in certain high-profile student activities, you may be required to provide full access to your personal social media to selected employees of LC or authorized vendors.”
“If you discover inappropriate information on the social media site of any LC student, you are required to contact the Dean of Students or other LC administrative staff member….”
“…Louisiana College may restrict ‘free expression’ if it deems that the speech is detrimental or harmful to LC’s core values and mission.”
“Comments related to LC, its administration, faculty, staff, and events related to LC should always meet the highest standards of professional discretion, must be neither inappropriate nor harmful to LC…and must not be contrary to LC’s core values and mission.”
It should not take long to recognize the ways in which these ambiguously-worded and absurdly punitive policies can not only stifle the open and free exchange of ideas- the bedrock of.every college and university- but why it may also easily discourage victims of crimes and survivors of on-campus abuse from reporting.
Notably, the policy does not exactly reveal what LC’s “reputation” is. Ignorance, they may be hoping, is bliss.
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, September 2005.
Former Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, the first woman to ascend to the summit of political power in Louisiana and whose tenure as the state’s chief executive was dominated by the devastation wrought by hurricanes Katrina and Rita, died today, August 18th, 2019, after battling an aggressive and rare form of cancer. She was 76.
“At a time when few women ventured into the man’s world of government and politics, she just sashayed right on in to the middle of it all,” former U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu told the Bayou Brief in late 2017, shortly after Blanco publicly revealed her prognosis. “Louisiana is a better, more just place because of Gov. Blanco’s life of service.”
Her professional career, which she had placed on hold for nearly fifteen years in order to raise her six children as a stay-at-home mother, was a series of firsts: The first woman elected to represent Lafayette in the legislature, the first elected to the Louisiana Public Service Commission, and the first elected as governor.
And although her predecessor, former four-term Gov. Edwin W. Edwards, was often called the “Cajun Prince,” the truth is that Louisiana’s only Cajun governor since Alexandre Mouton left office in 1846 is Kathleen Babineaux Blanco. (Both of Blanco’s parents were descendants of settlers who had been forcibly exiled from L’Acadie, a region in what is now the Maritime Provinces of Eastern Canada).
Blanco, who opted not to seek a second term as governor, never lost an election.
Today, although the state’s two largest cities, Baton Rouge and New Orleans, are both led by women, every statewide and federal elected office is currently held by a man. All five Public Service Commissioners are men, and women comprise only 15% of the state legislature, none of whom are in leadership positions.
The seat Blanco once occupied in the state House of Representatives has subsequently and exclusively been held by male politicians. During the past four years, repeated attempts to pass equal pay legislation have failed, and a recent effort to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment was resoundingly rejected in the state Senate.
In 1984, Blanco, a lifelong Democrat, arrived at the state Capitol as a 41-year-old freshman, then one of only five women in the legislature. Her 29-year-old colleague, state Rep. Mary Loretta Landrieu, had just been elected to a second term. It may have seemed impossible to imagine then that, only twenty years later, the two women would become the top elected officials in the entire state, with Blanco serving as its governor and Landrieu as its senior United States senator.
Blanco testifies in front of the House Select Bipartisan Committee on Hurricane Katrina. 12/14/2005.
In 2011, Blanco was diagnosed with ocular melanoma, but after six years in remission, the cancer had returned and spread to her liver. It was a monster, Blanco said.
The former governor had initially revealed her prognosis in a letter to the public in December of 2017, describing herself as being “in a fight for my own life, one that will be difficult to win.”
She was met with an enormous outpouring of support, and, for the first time since she left office in 2007, many of those who had assailed her actions in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina reconsidered her leadership. Only a decade prior, Blanco’s legacy had seemed irreparably tarnished by political operatives in the George W. Bush White House, who sought to deflect blame for the federal government’s negligence in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and by former New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin, whose flummoxed and unsteady leadership frustrated state and federal officials. Today, Nagin, who was subsequently convicted on 21 counts of wire fraud, money laundering, and bribery, is serving a ten-year federal sentence, while Blanco’s legacy has largely been vindicated.
“Gov. Blanco is now rightly acknowledged as the most underrated governor in Louisiana history,” James Carville asserted. “But that’s only part of the story. The truth of the matter is that she’s also one of the most underrated governors in modern American history.”
To those who knew her well, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco was generous but no-nonsense, confident but not braggadocios. She could be effusive with praise for her friends and allies and unsparing with criticism for her opponents. Her maternal, soft-spoken public persona belied her most important attribute: She was a shrewd and brilliant tactician. Along with her husband Raymond, she operated one of the most successful political operations in Acadiana history.
Kathleen Babineaux, age 8.
Kathleen Babineaux was born on Dec. 15th, 1942, the first of Leopold “Louis” and Lucille (Fremin) Babineaux’s six children.
She grew up in a sprawling Cajun, devoutly Catholic family in the hamlet of Coteau, Louisiana, located in Iberia Parish, approximately 15 miles south of Lafayette. Her father Louis, Sr. was a professional carpet cleaner. He passed away in February of 2001 at the age of 83. Her mother Lucille will celebrate her 100th birthday in October; two years ago, she renewed her driver’s license.
As a girl, Kathleen was first educated at Coteau Elementary, and at Mount Carmel Academy, a historic, all-girls school with a campus spread out over seven acres along the banks of Bayou Teche in New Iberia, where her family had relocated when she was fourteen.
Mount Carmel changed its name in 1987, but by the next year, the school had been forced to permanently shut its doors, only two years shy of the 100th anniversary of its inaugural graduating class.
After high school, she earned a bachelors in Business Education from the University of Southwestern Louisiana, now known as the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
On August 8th, 1964, Kathleen Babineaux married Raymond Sindo “Coach” Blanco, a school teacher and football coach originally from Birmingham, Alabama, at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church in New Iberia.
The couple met in May of 1962 at a high school graduation party Kathleen’s parents hosted in her honor. Coach was 26 at the time, fresh off of guiding the Catholic High School football team and Kathleen’s brother Kenneth to victory in the state championship. At first, Kathleen, then 19, didn’t think she had met the man she would marry, but Coach was smitten and persistent.
Raymond and Kathleen Blanco on their wedding day.
By the time he had worked up the courage to propose, Coach, now a defensive coordinator at USL (ULL), was strapped for cash, unable to afford an engagement ring. So, in order to pay for the ring, the couple told journalist Tyler Bridges in 2004, one night, Coach headed to the Tropicana Casino, in between Lafayette and New Iberia, and went on an extraordinarily lucky blackjack streak.
After six years coaching football, Coach would spend the remainder of his professional career working, in various capacities, as an administrator at the USL (ULL), retiring in 2009 as its Vice President of Student Affairs.
Kathleen Blanco also began her career in education, briefly teaching business at Breaux Bridge High School before the school forced her to quit once she became pregnant with her first child. She and her husband had six children, four daughters and two sons, and she put her professional career on hold for nearly fifteen years to raise their children as a stay-at-home mother.
George Rodrigue’s portrait of Kathleen Babineaux Blanco
Throughout her life, Kathleen Blanco never ventured far away from the land or the people who lived along Bayou Teche. She was particularly fond of a young artist her husband had taught in high school. As she often recalled, Coach had kicked the boy out of class one day for “doodling” in his notebook.
After debuting a series of works featuring his dog Tiffany painted in bright blue, George Rodrigue and his Blue Dog both became Louisiana icons. Once she was elected governor, Blanco commissioned him to paint her inaugural portrait, which she had displayed in the Governor’s Mansion, and, later, in the entrance to her home in Lafayette. Incidentally, one of Rodrigue’s important early works- which doesn’t feature his Blue Dog- is a painting of his mother’s 1927 graduating class at Mount Carmel Academy, which recently sold at auction for a record-shattering $152,500, the most-ever paid for one of the artist’s Cajun works.
In February, Blanco made what would be one of her final public appearances, alongside Gov. John Bel Edwards at the groundbreaking of the George Rodrigue Park in New Iberia and the dedication of the nearby Kathleen Babineaux Blanco Exhibit Hall, housed inside of the Bayou Teche Museum.
Shortly after qualifying to run for a second term, Gov. Edwards shared a video of Blanco’s endorsement, making her the first person to “officially” endorse the governor’s re-election.
After leaving office, Blanco donated her archives, said to include a draft of a memoir she wrote following her departure from public office, to ULL, which launched a public policy school named after Blanco last year.
Although Kathleen Blanco had previously volunteered to support J. Bennett Johnston’s 1971 unsuccessful bid for governor against Edwin Edwards and for Jimmy Carter’s 1976 presidential campaign, her first paid job in public service was with the United States Department of Commerce. After acing the Department’s exam, she was hired as Acadiana’s District Manager for the 1980 Decennial Census. It may have only a been year-long gig, but it provided her with invaluable, extensive insight into her community and the unique part of the country she called home.
Conducting the census is, in many respects, similar to running a grassroots political campaign. It requires administrators to manage an extensive canvassing operation, to reach out to marginalized populations, and to maintain a detailed inventory of demographic data.
Afterward, Blanco and her husband recognized an opportunity to use the insight she had gained during the census and his political instincts to assist candidates for public office, and together, they launched Coteau Consulting, a marketing and political consulting firm, which proved to be a launching pad for Blanco’s own ambitions.
While Coach, who had always been known as a savvy political operator, never sought the limelight, he proved to be a skilled, behind-the-scenes strategist and campaign manager who championed his wife’s career and nurtured a string of relationships with members of the media and the male-dominated business community. Last year, he was inducted into the Louisiana Political Hall of Fame in recognition for, among other things, his contributions to his wife’s undefeated record.
In 1983, the year former Gov. Edwin Edwards made his first of two extraordinary comebacks, the state featured what would easily become the most extravagant election its history, as chronicled in John Maginnis’ now classic book The Last Hayride. Louisiana was flush with revenue from a resurgent oil and gas industry, and the marque race between Edwards, a Democrat, and the Republican incumbent John Treen ended up raising more money, at the time, than any other non-presidential election in American history. Edwards obliterated Treen in the October primary, later celebrating his victory with a trip to Paris, along with 400 of his campaign supporters.
That July, four-term state representative J. Luke LeBlanc decided to surrender his seat in order to care for his ailing wife. It would be the first election in 27 years LeBlanc’s name wasn’t on the ballot, and Kathleen Babineaux Blanco would be the first to declare her desire to replace him.
She faced two other Democrats, Lafayette City Councilman Bob Domingue and attorney Stephen Spring, and one Republican, Jan Heymann, the wife of Herbert Heymann, then the wealthiest man in Lafayette. The Heymann family are generally credited with attracting the oil and gas industry to Lafayette, after Herbert’s father Maurice, a department store owner, developed the Oil Center complex.
Jan Heymann spent six times more as the other three candidates combined, and many had believed she would win the election in the primary. But Blanco upended the conventional wisdom, forcing Heymann into a runoff after trailing her by fewer than 1,000 votes. Blanco swiftly picked up the support of fourth-place finisher Spring, and local political pundits speculated that the candidate who received the endorsement of Domingue would likely win. However, after Domingue announced he was endorsing Heymann, the Republican, and not Blanco, the Democrat, there was speculation that he had been unduly pressured, which resulted in the unusual decision by Domingue’s wife and three daughters to place a full-page open letter in the local newspaper. Instead of putting the issue to rest, the letter only reinforced the perception that something was amiss.
In her first campaign, Blanco emphasized her support for increased funding for public education and for USL (ULL), much as she would do again in her campaign for governor.
It worked. In a low-turnout runoff, she won by a ten-point margin, much to the surprise of Heymann, who had believed the election was much closer than it proved to be.
When she sought re-election in 1987, J. Luke LeBlanc attempted to come back from retirement, but by then, Blanco had earned a reputation as an effective and impressive legislator. She won again by ten points.
Buoyed by her strong showing, Blanco almost immediately set her sights on a different office, a six year-term on the Public Service Commission, the five-member elected body that regulates utilities. She squared off against three opponents, including “Skip” Hand, a Republican colleague who represented Jefferson Parish in the legislature. Blanco finished ahead of Hand in the primary but not enough to secure an outright victory.
In November of 1988, she beat him by nearly 41,000 votes, becoming the first woman elected to the position. Hand would subsequently become an elected judge, and Jerry LeBlanc, the son of former state Rep. Luke LeBlanc, took back his dad’s old seat in the legislature, which he would hold for a record five consecutive terms.
When Blanco sought re-election to the Public Service Commission in 1994, no one bothered to run against her, and once again, she decided to set her sights higher.
Blanco alongside her mother Lucille, celebrating Kathleen’s victory in 1999.
In 1995, Mary Landrieu, now state Treasurer, was widely considered to be the favorite in the race for governor. Landrieu had sufficiently distanced herself from outgoing Gov. Edwin Edwards, and, although she was only 39, the only other candidate who could match her experience was former Gov. Buddy Roemer, who had managed to squander his political base and upset members of both political parties when he defected from the Democratic Party and became a Republican in 1991, the final year of his first and only term.
But Landrieu’s bid for governor became complicated by back-room political shenanigans. Democratic state Sen. Murphy “Mike” Foster, the grandson of former Louisiana Gov. Murphy Foster, had also declared his candidacy, but after failing to gain traction, he made a last-minute decision to qualify as a Republican. U.S. Rep. Cleo Fields, an African American Democrat who had only been elected to Congress a year before, was encouraged to run by allies of Gov. Edwards, many of whom resented Landrieu’s criticism of the outgoing administration. And finally, Melinda Schwegmann, the sitting lieutenant governor and a Republican from a well-known New Orleans family, decided to throw her hat in the ring, despite both her and her husband privately vowing to Landrieu that she would not become a candidate.
Blanco, who had always enjoyed a warm relationship with Landrieu, dating back to her first term in the legislature, decided to take advantage of the down-ticket opportunity and campaign for lieutenant governor.
Ultimately, Landrieu would fall short of the runoff by less than 1%; Schwegmann, who captured slightly more than 71,000 votes, proved to be an effective spoiler, setting up a runoff between Fields and Foster. The newly-minted Republican would win by a margin of more than 400,000 votes.
Meanwhile, Blanco, who faced a crowded field that included Republican state Rep. Suzanne Mayfield Krieger and Democratic state Rep. Chris John, easily coasted into the runoff, finishing first in the primary with 44% of the vote and subsequently winning a runoff against Krieger with nearly the same margin as Foster had captured at the top of the ticket.
When she ran for reelection in 1999, Blanco faced only symbolic opposition. She won again, this time with 80% of the vote, and again, she set her sights higher.
Shortly before he took the Oath of Office, Gov. Mike Foster became aware of a 24-year-old McKinsey consultant and Rhodes Scholar originally from Baton Rouge who had submitted, on his own accord, a policy white paper on reforming health care in Louisiana. The young man had also sent his paper to the other leading Republican candidate, former Gov. Buddy Roemer, but after Roemer was vanquished in the primary, Bobby Jindal knew he only had one man he needed to convince.
Foster appointed Jindal as the state’s Secretary of Health and Hospitals, and, at 24, he easily became the youngest cabinet member in Louisiana history. Jindal wouldn’t last long in the job, but Gov. Foster had taken a keen interest in nurturing the young man’s ambitions.
Jindal would not rise through the ranks the same way as Blanco had, yet in 2003, as Foster’s second term headed toward an end, they faced one another in a gubernatorial contest that seemed like a political science experiment: A white Democratic grandmother squaring off against a 33-year-old Indian-American Republican man.
First, though, Blanco had to contend with two other well-known Democrats, state Attorney General Richard Ieyoub and former Congressman and political party broker Buddy Leach. And among those three, it was anyone’s guess who would prevail.
That August, Steve and Cherry May, the former owners and publishers of The Times of Acadiana, were putting the finishing touches on the the debut edition of their new publication, The Independent, a colorful, forward-thinking news magazine covering Acadiana. They decided to make a bold statement and take a risk: Selecting Blanco as the subject of their very first cover story. It may seem like the obvious decision in hindsight, but at the time, Blanco, despite all of her previous successes, was not expected to win.
Given the dynamic, Jindal, the only competitive Republican, could coast into the runoff, and in the October jungle primary, he did just that, easily securing first place and garnering 33% of the vote. Blanco, on the other than, narrowly snuck into second place, besting Ieyoub by fewer than 17,000 votes and Leach by 73,000. All told, she captured second place by receiving only 18%. To her supporters, it seemed like a miracle. The Independent,however, seemed prescient. Their cover article was titled “Can She Win?”, and the answer to that question, increasingly, looked more like a yes. Or at least a definite maybe.
There had been a fear, maybe even an assumption, that the runoff election between Jindal and Blanco would be poisoned with racism by some and misogyny by others, and while there is no question that race and gender were both a part of the story of the election, various studies on media coverage and voter perceptions reveal they weren’t much of a factor.
Republicans were genuinely enthusiastic about Bobby Jindal, who presented himself as a fast-talker and a nimble thinker and who spoke frequently about cleaning up public corruption and changing the state’s image. However, despite his meteoric rise in government, Jindal’s experience was still limited, and Blanco had a command of a much wider range of issues. Like Jindal, she had also worked on health care policy, when she was a member of the legislature, and although Jindal was once briefly the President of the University of Louisiana system, no other elected official in the state was as closely associated with ULL as Blanco, who was a teacher and was married to a teacher. And unlike Jindal, Blanco had worked on utilities regulation as a Public Service Commissioner. She’d spent the previous eight years leading the state’s Department of Culture, Recreation, and Tourism, which meant she had constantly been traveling across the state. By her estimate, she had been to Shreveport, for example, more than 130 times.
Still, the Republican Party was resurgent in Louisiana; with only a week before Election Day, polling had suggested Jindal was on track to narrowly eek out a victory. That changed in a matter of seconds, though, during the waning moments of the final televised debate, held in New Orleans only three full days before the polls opened.
Blanco and Jindal had already debated twice before, and given the unique dynamic at play, the contest had generated a significant amount of national attention. Their previous debate, hosted by Centenary College in Shreveport, was broadcast live on C-SPAN.
Bobby Jindal reaches out to shake Blanco’s hand at a gubernatorial debate.
When the moderator asked each candidate to name a personal experience that helped define their life, Jindal was up first, beginning with a reflection on the birth of his first son before pivoting to a clumsy answer about Christ finding him, which may have unintentionally reinforced the perception that his surplus of ambition was offset by a dearth of humility and awkwardness.
Blanco’s answer, however, made for the most powerful moment of the entire election. Even before she began speaking, it was obvious the question- and her answer to it- had called on her to reflect on a source of profound sadness.
“The most defining moment in my life came when I lost a child,” she said haltingly. It was the first time she had spoken publicly about the loss of her son Ben since she delivered his eulogy six years prior, and anyone who tuned into the debate that night witnessed the election turn in Blanco’s favor in matter of seconds.
On Nov. 15th 2003, Blanco was elected Louisiana’s 54th Governor, defeating Bobby Jindal, the 33-year-old Republican wunderkind, and becoming the first woman ever to hold that position. Raymond Blanco’s friends and family members would now call him “First Coach.”
Gov. Kathleen Blanco and family outside of the Louisiana Governor’s Mansion.
Blanco proved to be an ambitious, tough-nosed governor who, as was custom, yielded tremendous power over the legislature. Her priorities were straightforward: expand affordable health care, invest in higher education, and attract jobs by improving the state’s infrastructure.
However, Kathleen Blanco’s term as governor will never escape the shadows left in the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, back-to-back catastrophes that were exacerbated by what seemed like willful incompetence by local officials and a presidential administration intent on exacting political retribution as a way of deflecting from their own negligence.
U.S. President George W. Bush (2nd L) watches a briefing on Hurricane Rita alongside other officials aboard the USS Iwo Jima Naval ship docked in New Orleans September 20, 2005. Rita grew from a tropical storm to a hurricane with 85 mph (136 mph) winds. Other officials are (L-R) Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, Lt General Russell Honore and Rear Admiral Larry Hereth. Bush travelled to Gulfport and New Orleans to tour the cities devastated recently by Hurricane Katrina. REUTERS/Jason Reed JIR/AT
Earlier this year, after it was announced she had begun hospice care, Blanco received a phone call from former President George W. Bush.
In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the president pressured Gov. Blanco to turn over her command of the National Guard to him, a proposal attributed to Karl Rove, his longtime political “architect,” and White House Chief of Staff Andy Card.
Blanco, whose approach to governance was sometimes belied by her low-key, even-tempered tone, knew how to battle against bullies, and had believed the White House’s proposal to be nothing more than a political stunt. “You guys are now trying to come in and save face,” she told Card. “I’ve got thousands of people here in the trenches while you play your politics.”
The White House escalated the stakes, threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act under the pretense of restoring order. Blanco called their bluff. “You go ahead and declare the Insurrection Act and take it over that way,” she told Card, according to Peter Baker’s Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House. “I’m going to go out and say that you all care more about politics than saving lives.”
Ultimately, Bush ruled against what would have been an unprecedented usurpation of state authority. Today, at his presidential library at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, an interactive exhibit called the Decision Points Theater prompts visitors to determine whether they would have reacted similarly.
Two days after Katrina hit, James Carville phoned Blanco’s press secretary Bob Mann. “Get ready,” he told Mann. “The White House is starting to put the blame on you guys. It’s going to get ugly.”
Carville was right. A day after his warning, Mann read a report in The Washington Post asserting Gov. Blanco had not yet declared a full emergency warning. The governor had actually made the declaration three days before the storm.
Gov. Blanco instructed her staff not to fall into a political trap.
“From the beginning, Gov. Blanco emphatically forbade anything that could be interpreted as an attack on President Bush,” Mann writes.
“We are going to need this president to help us rebuild this state,” she told her staff, according to Mann.
“Let them politicize this storm,” Gov. Blanco said, “We’re not going to do that.”
Her Republican critics ridiculed her for being too emotional, labeling her “momma governor,” a characterization that was brazenly, if not purposely, misogynistic. Among Democrats, however, Blanco remained widely admired. According to at least one survey conducted after Katrina, 70% of residents blamed President George W. Bush for the government’s failed response.
When Blanco left office, forgoing a campaign for a second term, she had the lowest approval numbers of any governor in state history, an ignoble record from which her successor would mercifully unburden her.
In the decade between Blanco’s departure and her diagnosis, her decisions as governor have been largely vindicated or, at the least, forgiven by a public that now has the benefit of hindsight. Since the Civil War, no other governor in America had ever been forced to confront such a chaotic and disastrous set of circumstances.
“Ten years ago I wrote an especially mean column about Kathleen Babineaux Blanco,” the Times-Picyaune‘s former columnist Jarvis DeBerry acknowledged in a remarkable and moving confession. “I attacked her for sport. I mocked and belittled her unnecessarily, and when I look back at what I wrote, I feel ashamed.” DeBerry echoed the sentiments of many in Louisiana.
“I always thought history was a little boring,” she joked last July in an interview announcing the founding of the Kathleen Babineaux Blanco Public Policy Center at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, “because it was hard for me to identify… with all of the men we studied about.”
In addition to the public policy school hall in Lafayette and the exhibit hall in New Iberia, this January, the lobby of the Superdome in New Orleans was also renamed after Blanco, who was instrumental in securing the funding to repair and renovate the iconic building after it was significantly damaged following Hurricane Katrina.
Kathleen Babineaux Blanco made her final appearance in public on July, 2nd, attending a signing ceremony of Senate Bill 134 hosted by Gov. John Bel Edwards in Lafayette.
“I do love all of the people of Louisiana,” she told the audience. “I ran to serve everyone. My life has been so charmed. God puts you where he wants you to be.”
The bill renamed a portion of Highway 90 from Lafayette to Raceland.
The Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco Highway runs parallel to the tiny hamlet of Coteau, stretching alongside the banks of Bayou Teche.
On a recent trip to visit my kids and grandkids in Lake Charles, this billboard caught my eye. There’s more than one of them, sited in view of travelers along I-10, between Jennings and Lake Charles, near the town of Iowa. Because of speeds on the interstate, thundershowers, and road construction, it was unwise and unsafe to try and get a picture as I drove through. The next day, though, a friend living nearby provided pictures of the massive sign, including this close-up.
Credit: Rob Anderson
Inquiries
made to our staff and backers soon determined that no
one at the Bayou Brief had known
about – or been a party to – erecting these signs. But I was
certainly going to ask Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon what he
knew about them, when I saw him at the Secretary of State’s office
the next day,
during qualifying
for the October 12 election.
Before
the Commissioner arrived and I could query him about the creepy clown
signs, Donelon acquired a serious challenger. Tim Temple, a Baton
Rouge Republican, made it clear straight
off that he considers the
deficiencies in the state Insurance
Department and its leader no
laughing matter.
“Louisiana
residents spend 18% of their total income on mandatory insurance,
primarily auto and homeowners. That’s the highest in the nation,”
Temple stated. “The current Insurance Commissioner has had 13 years
to do something, but based on the rising rates of auto insurance
particularly, he is asleep at the wheel.”
Tim Temple, candidate for Insurance Commissioner. Credit: Sue Lincoln
Temple is the president of Temptan, LLC, a family-owned financial and real estate holding company. Originally from DeRidder, his family founded Gulf Universal Holdings, which included Amerisafe Insurance (a worker’s comp company) and the insurance firm Morris, Temple & Co. He is also a member of the Committee of 100, a group of business leaders dedicated to improving Louisiana’s long-term economic growth potential.
“Insurance
is a business, and we need to ask the companies what we can change to
help them lower the rates,” Temple said. “The current Insurance
Commissioner has been giving us nothing but excuses for the
ever-rising rates. ‘It’s the cost of repairs,’ he says. ‘It’s
cheap gas. It’s distracted drivers.’ All excuses. The industry
needs to be at the table, and they want to be part of the solution.”
When
reporters asked Temple about the controversial “omnibus bill”
which failed to pass in the 2019 legislative session, he said he is
supportive of tort reform.
“Louisiana
has never had an Insurance Commissioner from the insurance industry.
That’s my background,” Temple said. “But unlike the current
Commissioner, who gets all of his campaign money from the industry,
I’m self-funded.”
According to the campaign finance reports he has filed with the Louisiana Ethics Commission, Temple has provided more than $1.1 million of his own money in order to fund his campaign. Donelon has just over $1 million in his campaign war chest.
And
once the 74-year-old incumbent had paid his fees and signed up to run
for his fifth term, he addressed reporters who were on the three-day
stakeout of qualifiers at the Secretary of State’s office.
Incumbent Jim Donelon. Credit: Sue Lincoln
“I
look forward to four more years,” Donelon said. “I am mindful
that what I do with the stroke of a pen on a daily basis impacts
people and businesses all across the state.”
Considering
that three of the four Louisiana Insurance Commissioners preceeding
Donelon went to prison after being convicted of federal crimes (Doug
Green, Sherman A. Bernard, and Jim Brown), the Metairie Republican
has had a comparatively scandal-free tenure. He’s also generated
minimal challenges, until now. What does Donelon think about his
competition this time?
“My
wife has often said that I win because this is the worst job in the
state, and no one else wants it. Apparently someone wants it badly
enough to put a million dollars of their own money into the race.”
Temple’s
criticisms were repeated to Donelon, who became defensive.
“I’m
not asleep at the wheel,” he responded. “Auto insurance rates
have gone down for half of Louisiana’s policy holders, because
State Farm, Farm Bureau, and Progressive have reduced their rates.”
He
continued, “There are more companies writing policies in Louisiana
than ever before in our history, and we all know more competition is
the best way to protect consumers.”
Donelon
was asked then why, if more competition is the answer, do we still
have such high rates?
A
glance at his campaign manager, who was starting to glower, and you
could actually see Donelon check himself, before responding with,
“Litigation is the single biggest driver of rates.”
That
was my opening to ask about the signs.
Credit: Rob Anderson
“Have
you seen or heard about the billboards along I-10, in southwest
Louisiana?”
“I’ve
heard,” Donelon said, pursing his lips disapprovingly.
“What’s
the story there? Any idea?” I asked.
“Those were put up by a political activist with deep pockets, and anger issues,” the Commissioner said. “I ruled against him on an appeal of a workmen’s compensation insurance case, involving $1.3 million that was owed and unpaid to LWCC. An audit showed employees were paid minimum wage, but reimbursed for excessive amounts of vehicle mileage – $95-100-thousand a year. It did not pass the smell test.”
The
“political activist with deep pockets” is a member of the LSU
Board of Supervisors and the current chairman of the Louisiana State
Licensing Board for Contractors. The CEO of a construction firm and
other companies in southwest Louisiana, Lee Mallett was also a member
of the Louisiana Citizens Property Insurance Corporation Board of
Directors from 2006 to 2009, the difficult years following 2005’s
Katrina and Rita, and then 2008’s Gustav and Ike.
More
interestingly, in 2015, Mallett gave $25,000 to Eddie Rispone’s old
cause celebre’:
the Louisiana Federation for Children PAC, and $30,000 to David
Vitter’s Fund for Louisiana’s Future. He’s a dependable
campaign contributor for John Kennedy and Jeff Landry.
To
put it another way, Lee Mallett is part of the Erector Set, a
courtier to the kingmakers and would-be-king. And
now Mallett – and presumably the organizations and PACs where
members of the Erector set wield so much power and control –
appears anxious for Donelon’s defeat. And
Mallett is pointing to the Bayou Brief article that told of Donelon’s
less than whole-hearted support of the tort-reform bill that was
masquerading as the
answer to Louisiana’s exorbitant auto insurance rates.
Remember, tort reform has been one of LABI’s (the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry) policy goals for several years. And the tightest reins on LABI’s PACs are held by Lane Grigsby, Eddie Rispone’s bosom buddy.
As
of the last reporting period, Tim Temple had not yet received any
campaign donations from major players in the Erector Set, or from
LABI’s PACs. He did, however, get the maximum donation from
“Boysie” Bollinger, CEO of Bollinger Shipyards.
Donelon
hasn’t gotten any money from the Erector Set or LABI, either. He
has,
however,
been filling his campaign coffers with money from insurance companies
and
insurance agencies (no
surprise), but also
from attorneys
and many,
many chiropractors.
No
wonder he was reluctant to put his reputation on the line by
supporting the spurious premise of the Talbot tort reform bill.
For
despite doing so, it seems
Donelon’s
hopes of re-election to a fifth term as Insurance Commissioner could
as easily end in tears, as in triumphant laughter.
For old salts, there is no voyage more notorious or one that could hasten an already quick death than by raising sails and ‘doubling’ Cape Horn. Sailing below the 50th parallel in the Atlantic Ocean and rising above the 50th in the Pacific is known as ‘doubling’ the Cape, but battling what comes between those lines on a chart where the storm trod southern oceans meet is the real achievement.
In that hard place where winds and currents plow and roil through a geographic siphon between the southernmost point of South America and the frozen crags of Antarctica are the seas that define sailing legends and script nightmares.
There are scores of seafaring stories lost to time, and many deserve to ‘double’ their way through history and see the light of day again, and in 1849, California was beating the drums of a gold rush and calling all comers to her shores – by land and by sea.
170 years have elapsed since pioneers first answered the call and “pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness,” fundamentally reshaping the country and sparking an economic powerhouse that has transformed culture and technology across the globe.
The California Gold Rush captivated America’s collective imagination; it became the stuff of legend and folklore, tall tales and bootstraps. And there may be no better story of the magnetic force that changed the direction of history and a young country’s self-identity than the dark and forgotten fate of a schooner that departed from New Orleans on July 6th, 1849.
****
Above: 1849 map of the shipping route taken from New York to San Francisco. The Florinda departed from New Orleans, ultimately bound for California.
Below: 1828 map of Cape Horn.
At only 22, a forthright and earnest Harmon DeGraff Jones was looking to make a name for himself and support his pregnant wife Marion and their two-year-old son Livingston (presumably named in honor of Edward Livingston, the primary author of Louisiana’s Civil Code).
The young family lived in Carrollton, Louisiana, near the banks of the Mississippi River in an area that is today known as Uptown. Marion’s widowed mother, Cornelia Pierce, had “owned eleven lots in Carrollton (Louisiana) in the square bounded by Leonidas, Jefferson (Joliet), Third (Freret), and Zimple,” which would not be annexed into the city of New Orleans until 1874.
The New Orleans of 1849 was a capital of the slave trade and a maritime town of sail and steam with homes built of bargeboard and streets paved with ballast stone.
Locked in a constant battle with New York City and Baltimore to hold the prize as the largest port in the country, the discovery of gold in the far west was a freshening breeze in that race for New Orleans.
Harmon Jones watched as men, both young and old, left the city and headed west with gold fever and as new arrivals from the South and the Midwest flooded in to await passage at the port. Steamers and coastal schooners rapidly altered their destinations and routes westward to accommodate them, steering for the coast of Texas and then further south to the mouth of the Chagres River in Panama. Gold hunters would then trek over the isthmus by pack train to the Pacific Coast and await ships sailing north for San Francisco.
As a major waypoint in the journey west, New Orleans was manic with the energy of these rowdy fortune hunters, and the city was cashing in as it fed and slaked their thirst before outfitting and sending them on their way.
And their energy was contagious.
It’s said that fortune favors the bold and also those who stake claims early in a gold rush, and by late June of 1849, the 22-year-old Jones had organized a syndicate of like-minded friends and family members, and together, they scrounged up enough cash to purchase the 42-ton coastal schooner Florinda.
However, for young New Orleanians like Jones, gold wasn’t the only reason to make the voyage. Only two months prior, beginning on May 3rd, a breach of the Mississippi River levees near Pierre Sauvé‘s plantation in Jefferson Parish, a full seventeen miles north of New Orleans, slowly but steadily began inundating parts of the city. The event became known as Sauvé’s Crevasse, and by the end of the month of May, the floodwaters had finally made their way into Carrollton.
The Jones family- Harmon, Marion, and Livingston- had lost everything.
An 1849 facsimile of an oil drawing of the flooding caused by Sauvé’s Crevasse.
Harmon Jones believed they could sail faster and with more gear directly from New Orleans into the South Atlantic, around Cape Horn via the Straits of Magellan and then up the western coast of the Americas to San Francisco and beat the building crush of fortune hunters.
A regular sight on the waters of the Gulf Coast, these wooden, shallow draft, gaff rigged schooners were the 18-wheelers of the day and the Florinda was as typical of these boats as they were common. Constructed to navigate the coastal waters and the shallow marshes and bays with their oyster shoals and sandbars throughout the Northern Gulf Coast, the square-sterned Florinda with a figurehead on her bow was relatively new construction having been built in 1845 on the Tangipahoa River to the north of New Orleans.
With a length of 57-feet and drafting only 5-feet, she was built to withstand major squalls in coastal waters that can churn in a hurry, but the Florinda was not an ocean going ship. At best and at some risk, a careful captain would have sailed a coastal schooner out of sight of land perhaps 500nm (nautical miles) across the Gulf of Mexico, but the voyage Jones was proposing was over 14,000nm.
The New Orleans Weekly Delta, June 25th, 1849. The Florinda departed New Orleans on July 6th, 1849.
Many years later, a family member
would describe Jones in a letter as “the prime mover and master
spirit of the expedition and a young man of extraordinary ability
enjoying to the fullest extent the confidence of all who knew him.
Some experienced men told him not to think of going on such a frail
craft, but with his gallant comrades he could see no danger.”
With fourteen other men signed on to the expedition, Jones and his syndicate hired on the experienced 39-year-old Welsh born Captain James Kenmure and a mate, known only as Thompson, and the schooner made way first to the Balize, the last remote outpost at the mouth of the Mississippi River, known today as Pilottown.
Kenmure and the Florinda tossed lines to the last piers before the slow moving brown Mississippi pours into the “Mexican Gulf” and waited on the last few stragglers of their crew.
Jones had ordered the Florinda’s departure to the Balize, but stayed in New Orleans with crew member Lorin G. Jeffers while he waited on word from his wife who had traveled by steamboat to St. Louis and was rumored to have caught cholera. Jeffers, a veteran of the Texas War of Independence who would eventually reach the rank of Lieutenant fighting for the Union in the Civil War, felt he would be tormented if he sailed without assurance of his wife’s safety
Not wanting to hold up the expedition any further, Jeffers was quoted in 1887 as saying, “I told Jones that I could not possibly go to sea in the state of mind that I was in, and I could not ask them to delay for me any longer, so I would sell my interest in the schooner, which Capt. Jones immediately [did] and paid me what I had expended upon it, and bade me good-by.”
The Florinda cleared customs from the Port of New Orleans on July 6th, and it wasn’t long after that sails were raised and the expedition made way from the Balize into the light summer winds and blue water of the Gulf of Mexico.
On August 1st, the crew mailed letters home from a stop at Cape Florida on Key Biscayne near what would become Miami in another 47 years and their letters described excitement and optimism and an uneventful journey across the Gulf. Back in New Orleans, family and friends assumed that the Florinda was hugging the coastlines on her long voyage, but the reality was about to be much different.
Perhaps aggravated by their slow pace and the extra mileage of a coasting voyage, Jones and Capt. Kenmure opted to test the schooner on the open ocean and sailed east towards Africa. When they entered the Atlantic Gulf Stream with Florida passing from their sight, it was the last time they would lay eyes on American shores.
The Cape Verde Islands were a well-known but remote port of call, giving mariners sailing south a near direct rhumb line to Cape Horn. Utilizing the North Equatorial Counter-current which they caught to the east of Haiti, for 55 days, the Florinda sailed across the Atlantic, unnecessarily adding over 1,000 miles to their voyage.
It was noted that they had communication with a ship sailing from Boston and also bound for San Francisco named the Citizen and they were known to be boarded by the U.S. brig-of-war Porpoise for a routine inspection only a day out from Cape Verde. The Florinda arrived in Port Praia in the Cape Verde Islands on September 27th.
In Port Praia, Captain Kenmure wrote
home to his wife Sarah, “As I have now got 100 days water and wood
onboard I don’t intend to stop this side of Cape Horn. If I find I
have a long passage around the Cape I may put into Valparaiso, but if
the Almighty favors me I shall go on straight for San Francisco. The
Florinda is a most excellent sea-boat, perfectly dry and safe.
I believe she makes better weather than any vessel I was ever in, but
she sails very badly, so I suspect I will have a very long passage
round. But make yourselves perfectly easy about her being safe.
Although the ships are astonished to see so small a craft going so
long a voyage.”
While sailing technologies have certainly changed over time, the celebratory mood of sailors stepping onto the hard after weeks at sea is legendary and a constant throughout history. As a busy port and waypoint, sailors from all walks of life and nationalities would have been enjoying their freedom from the confines of their various ships at the local watering holes.
In Port Praia, Chandler B. Fowler, a fellow gold hunter and passenger on the Mary Mitchell sailing from Fall River, Massachusetts to San Francisco, met the crewmen of the Florinda and would afterwards write to his brother while at sea, “There was only one vessel in port and that was the Florinda of New Orleans 70 days outbound to California. They are a set of jolly fellows, we had a good time with them.”
With Captain Kenmure’s last letter home from Port Praia and likely similar ones mailed by the rest of the crew, it would be easy to assume that there would be a period of several if not many months before any further missives would make their way to the families. So it came as a surprise when one final letter was posted from Rio de Janeiro, a mere 2,700nm from the Cape Verde Islands and further confirmed by a shipping report in the Boston Daily Courier documenting their stop in Brazil.
Reportedly stopping for 12 days to recuperate from fatigue and conduct repairs to the schooner, Jones wrote to his wife on November 28th, “Vessel leaky, shaky. As [we] advance to the southward, the weather gets gradually more boisterous, the elements more fickle. The little lake schooner is out of her latitude.”
Besides an uncorroborated report of the Florinda spotted by another ship on the Pacific side of Cape Horn a few months later, Jones’ letter is the last known communication with or from the schooner during their voyage.
William Waud sketch of a Gulf Coast schooner, ca 1880. Source: Historic New Orleans Collection.
After a year without any further word, the Florinda and her crew were feared lost at sea. Their loss mentioned as barely an afterthought in the New Orleans papers on September 10th, 1850. Time passed. Years became decades.
The crewmen of the Florinda were ruled legally deceased by the courts and their children grew to be adults; their wives became grandmothers. The United States fought the Civil War, healed and rebuilt, and six Presidents were inaugurated.
But then in 1875, a full 26 years after the Florinda was presumed lost at sea and had faded from memory, a family friend visited Harmon Jones’ wife in New Orleans.
Marion Jones, now nearly 50 years old and who had “steadily declined remarrying lest by any possibility he should return,” was told that something unusual had appeared in an English newspaper several months prior.
The report stated that a British vessel mapping uncharted islands in the southern Pacific and the Straits of Magellan had been blown off course in a gale and had discovered a small island where a group of white men were living and that they spoke English.
The Daily-Picayune first reported
the tale in June of 1875 through a series of reports, “The rest of
the story is that the castaway told the ship’s company that they
were the Florinda party, who had sailed from New Orleans in
1849, bound for California; that they had been wrecked on the island,
and had dwelt there ever since; it being then more than twenty-five
years that they had not seen a human face or a sign of the world from
which they were so utterly eliminated.”
The castaway stated that his name
was Harmon Jones and that most of the crew of the Florinda
were still alive and living on this remote, uncharted island.
This mysterious tale exploded with keen interest from the general public, and newspapers throughout the United States, Europe and Australia published every report and detail coming from New Orleans throughout the summer of 1875. Henry Sydney, the son of Florinda crew member, John A. Sydney, wrote to the paper, “The presumption has been here among the relatives and the families of the ship’s company that she was either wrecked in rounding Cape Horn or else that the vessel was attacked by the natives of Patagonia and the whole crew captured and made prisoners.”
The exact details from the initial
English newspaper report were murky given that they were all
secondhand, but the most interesting aspect was that to a man, the
castaways declined the offer from the British ship’s Captain to
return with them to civilization.
The report from the Daily-Picayune
continued, “The [English] paper gave the names of several, all of
whom are known to have been of Florinda’s crew and in many
other ways, according to the version of Mrs. Jones’ friend, the
identity of the party was established as none but themselves could
have established it. It was further stated that the British vessel
offered to take the men onboard, but they declined, saying they had
been lost for a quarter of a century, that they knew not in what
situation they would find the families they had left and that they
preferred staying and ending their days there rather than venturing
back to such a doubtful and uncertain future.”
Undeterred by this, the families, the Daily-Picayune and the New Orleans community rallied to find some sort of solution to this mystery and bring the castaways home. The British Counsel in New Orleans became involved as they attempted to identify the British ship and obtain her logbooks; ship’s Captains offered their services to mount a rescue, and the Daily-Picayune used the power of the media in an all out effort to identify the newspaper that published the initial report and that held the keys to unlock the mystery of their location.
As the suspected English newspaper
was likely narrowed down to the London Weekly Times or the
Newcastle-on-Tyne Chronicle, the Daily-Picayune wrote to their
editors and received a reply that unfortunately there was no way of
either confirming or denying the story as there were no copies of the
paper available for review. This huge setback was immediately
followed by a bombshell report from the Louisville Courier-Journal
disputing the entire tale.
The Louisville Courier-Journal
reported that they had identified a survivor of the “Florida”
in California who claimed that the majority of the ship’s company
“was massacred at Port Famine, in the Straits of Magellan.”
This reporting was rapidly countered
by the Daily-Picayune as half-baked and scurrilous once it was
uncovered that there was indeed a large ocean-going schooner named
the Florida that had sailed the nearly identical course as the
Florinda in roughly the same time period and that was in fact
attacked in Patagonia – but it was a completely separate vessel and
incident. The Daily-Picayune’s news competitors even joined in
drubbing down the Courier-Journal’s reporting with one calling
their editor a “philistine” for their particularly non-robust
reporting.
In an interview in 1887, Lorin G. Jeffers, who missed the voyage due to his wife’s cholera, specifically stated that he and Harmon Jones had a conversation regarding the Florida which was docked not far from the Florinda in New Orleans. He stated that Jones had remarked to him that, “she is fitted out, as our schooner is, for a trip around Cape Horn to California. Her name is the Florida, while ours is the Florinda; but I would not go in her for the whole of California because her crew is made up of gamblers and barkeepers, and that class of sporting men. They have no idea of discipline. And they are pretty certain to come to trouble.”
However, the damage was done and the waters were muddied enough that most of the public wrote the entire tale off as a hoax and news reports and interest quickly faded, including from the British Admiralty.
On August 12th, 1875, Lord Tenterden wrote to Acting Consul Stringer in New Orleans, “With reference to the truth of the report, respecting the crew and passengers of the Florinda, who are stated to have been found on an island in the Pacific, I am directed by the Earl of Derby to inform you that the Board of Trade have caused inquiries to be made in the matter, but that nothing appears to be known either at the office of the Registrar General of Seamen or at Lloyd’s of the vessel referred to, nor have the board themselves received any information of the subject.”
An earlier iteration of a newspaper ad taken out in the Daily-Picayune ca. 1849. As with many other coastal schooners, the Florinda would have sailed gold hunters to Panama, where they would then travel overland.
With the Royal Navy no longer enthusiastically engaged and still lacking a copy of the original report pointing to the British vessel and her all important logbooks holding the only known detailed location of the castaway’s island, the search slowly lost its wind. The families of the crew continued to fight for information and an ally travelled to London to acquire at any cost copies of the news report, but was met with indifference from the newspaper’s editor who declined to even meet with him. Obviously deflated, the families would remain haunted by the possibility of their husbands and fathers stranded alive on foreign shores for the rest of their days, and within a year of the news, Captain Kenmure’s wife Sarah died of “despair.”
A New York Times editorial published
expressing skepticism of the tale of the castaways and their
survival, but remained hopeful that it was indeed true. The paper
wrote on July 28th, 1875, “There is something in the romance of the
sea which takes hold of every man’s fancy; and if the story of the
Florinda be a myth, the inventors have rightly calculated that
it would arrest attention. Like true heroes of romance, the castaways
declined the offer of their discoverers to take them away. They said
they had been lost to a world for a quarter of a century; they did
not know whether their friends were alive or dead, their wives
mourning or remarried, and their children with or without natural
affection for parents so long lost. Rather than venture back into
the world which had so long been dead to them, and risk the rude
shock of such an awaking, they would stay where they were. This is a
good story. Whether true or false, here is good groundwork for a sea
novel.”
Indeed, but whether these young men
striving to make a better life for themselves and their families met
their fate bravely and came to rest in a cold southern ocean grave or
if the tale runs as the Daily-Picayune stated in 1875, “like a
message from another world and is as though it were the announcement
of a resurrection,” only for them to then perish as castaways after
decades on some forlorn, storm crossed island, their tale deserves to
make way up from the quiet depths of history.
Coda: In early August of 2019, I made contact with Clare McDonnel, the great-great granddaughter of Captain Kenmure. A resident of New Orleans, McDonnel is the amateur genealogist of her family, and after stumbling on the tale of the Florinda and her direct relative in 1994, she has researched it ever since. Her family had no knowledge or lore of the incident previous to her discovery, but on reaching out to descendants of the other crewmen, many of them indeed had stories passed down over time. There is supposition that the men had taken up lives with native women and that- coupled with the extraordinary amount of time away from their New Orleans families- led to their rejection of returning.
A small colony of New Orleanians in Patagonia is indeed an intriguing line of thought, but one that may never be confirmed or denied.
Cover photo: “The American Girl,” a Biloxi schooner ca. 1900, built similarly to the Florinda, a ship that vanished in 1849.
