“On behalf of our entire team at the Bayou Brief, I am proud to announce that Edward J. Branley, a digital pioneer in Louisiana, a multitalented and genre-bending writer, and the legendary force behind YatPundit and its collection of digitally-native subsidiaries, such as YatHistory and YatCuisine, is now the Bayou Brief’s first-ever Director of Social Media and Creative Content,” stated Lamar White, Jr.
“For more than a decade and largely due to the power of the internet, I have been fortunate to get to know Ed personally. And after spending only two weeks with us, I’m already astonished by his attention to detail and truly humbled by his encyclopedic and institutional knowledge of both New Orleans and statewide politics and history,” White continued.
Edward Branley.
Ed’s work has earned acclaim throughout the state of Louisiana and across the nation. He is witty, fierce, and unapologetic about his beliefs and values and has been known to occasionally rattle the sensibilities of those on both the far-right as well as those on the far-left; in so doing, he creates provocative and productive platforms on a range of important issues.
Two weeks ago, the Bayou Brief assigned him with the responsibilities of expanding its social media footprint and audience, assisting with editorial oversight and quality control, and dramatically improving our outreach to current donors and providing new donors with a seamless and accessible way to better ensure that readers of the Bayou Brief have multiple opportunities to remain connected, engaged, and informed.
Today, for the first time ever, there is an invitation-only Facebook group for the Bayou Brief, an Instagram account, and a LinkedIn page.
“Ed understands this project and has done some extraordinary work to help us perfect our digital presence at a critical moment,” Bayou Brief CAO Cayman Clevenger said.
“Some of the things Ed was able to accomplish in two weeks, like a better integrated online store and an integrated membership subscription serve, are things we have been hoping to include since the very beginning,” said White. “We are all extraordinarily grateful for Ed’s tenacity and his genuine belief in this project and in our mission.”
On Deck:
Fundraising
During the next four months, the Bayou Brief aims to raise an additional $25,000 through sustaining monthly memberships, with the ultimate goal of raising more than $250,000 in 2020.
“The market for the work we publish on the Bayou Brief is there,” Lamar White, Jr. said. “Because of Ed and his expertise, we now have the capacity to dream bigger, all while guaranteeing our content remains free to read and free from advertisements.”
A full report will be published by the end of September.
The Ragin Cajun and the Bronx to the Bayou
In ten days, Lamar White, Jr. and Ben Collinsworth the Bayou Brief will head up from New Orleans to Baton Rouge to record James Carville’s first class of the school year at LSU. If you’ve never seen the Ragin Cajun in the classroom, we’re thrilled to be able to provide our readers and subscribers with a unique opportunity. Regardless of whether you agree with his politics or disagree, like his wife Mary Matalin is sometimes known to do, the lecture he plans on delivering on the first day of his class should’ provide all of us with a stack of homework and, hopefully, a sense of urgency.
During the past four months, Lamar White, Jr. has recorded more than 14 hours worth of content with Mike Fawer, one of Louisiana’s most legendary and consequential criminal defense attorneys. We are actively seeking out sponsorships to fund professional post-production work. Fawer, recently retired at the age of 83, doesn’t hold anything back in an epic series of conversations about his roles in defending or advising accused murderers, former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards, Congressman William Jefferson, Mississippi gubernatorial candidate Charles Evers, and former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer’s father Charles Roemer, in a wild case that included a defendant named Carlos Marcello that Fawer had first encountered decades prior, as a young prosecutor in Bobby Kennedy’s Justice Department.
Statewide Tour, a New Orleans Event, and the Ray Nichols Award for Community Building
Within the month, White, along with Sue Lincoln, will announce a statewide listening and policy discussion tour, likely to kick off in October and including stops in Shreveport, Ruston, Grambling, Alexandria, Lake Charles, Lafayette, and Baton Rouge. The tour will begin with a stop in Lake Providence, Louisiana, a small town in the state’s fifth congressional district known as the most “unequal town in America.”
In mid-December, the Bayou Brief will host a post-election seminar and workshop on the 2019 statewide elections and an inaugural awards ceremony, honoring leaders across Louisiana and in both the Deep and Gulf Coasts who have made a difference in the local media by shining a light on corruption and those who have made a difference in their communities by advancing positive, progressive initiatives and reforms.
We are also pleased to announce that the Bayou Brief’s top award for 2019 will be the Ray Nichols Award for Community Building. Details on how to submit nominations will be published in mid-September.
If you or your organization is interested in sponsoring the tour, the podcast, the event and awards ceremony in New Orleans, or all three of them, please send an email to publisher@bayoubrief.com.
With qualifying completed last week, the names that will be on the October 12 primary ballots are now official. This is the first of several articles on the Louisiana legislative races, delving into each of the 144 seats – 39 in the Senate, 105 in the House – and the people who would fill them.
Louisiana’s
legislative bodies are now feeling the full effects of term limits,
most notably in the state Senate, where 16 of 39 Senators (41%) are
ineligible to return to the upper chamber this year. Yet in the
Senate (and in some measure, in the House, as well) the laws of
physics seem to be having a substantial effect on the politics of
lawmaking.
Memorial Hall, facing open door of Louisiana Senate chamber. Credit: Sue Lincoln
Newton’s 1st Law: Inertia
“Every object in a state of uniform motion will remain in that state of motion unless an external force acts on it.”
Although
the stated purpose of term limits was to move more fresh faces and
fresh thinking into the lawmaking process, it seems to have also
promoted inertia, manifested as a type of apathy, for a fair amount
of legislative positions that have incumbents who are not yet
term-limited out.
(We
even use language that promotes the concept that these seats are the
property of the incumbent. Those that have no eligible incumbent are
called “open”, implying that they are “closed” – even
though every
legislative seat is open
for candidates every
four years.)
Nine
incumbents to Senate seats – nearly one quarter of the entire body
— are being re-elected to those positions without opposition. No one
even tried to run against them.
Republican
Sharon Hewitt of Slidell will serve a second term representing the
people of the 1st
senatorial district, while Democrat Troy Carter of New Orleans will
have a second term serving the 7th
district. And Eddie Lambert (R-Gonzales) gets a second term
representing residents in Ascension, Livingston and St. James
parishes, as well.
The
inertia effect is more obvious in that six senators seeking their
third and final terms did not encounter any resistance. All are
Republicans.
Port
Allen’s Rick Ward didn’t get anyone to challenge him, so he’ll
be doing his third term as senator for the folks in the 17th
district. Gary Smith of Norco returns to the Capitol for a third term
as 19th
district senator. Bret Allain of Jeanerette, Fred Mills from St.
Martinville, and Page Cortez of Lafayette will be back in Huey’s
halls for their third terms on behalf of the people of the 21st,
22nd,
and 23rd
districts, respectively. Additionally, Ronnie Johns of Sulphur
returns for his third term serving the 27th
district – the citizens of Calcasieu Parish.
Newton’s 2nd Law
“Force equals mass times acceleration.”
(Okay,
I know this is a bit of a stretch, but bear with me.)
Chamber-hopping
has become a by-product of term limits, and is often referred to as
“musical chairs”. As musical chairs is played in a circle, and
things that travel in a circle are being acted upon by centrifugal
force, we have F=ma,
or
Musical
Chairs: Attempted and Otherwise
Three
members of Louisiana’s House who were seeking to plant their rear
ends in senate seats vacated by term limits managed to avoid that
awkward musical chairs moment of finding someone else in their lap.
Senate President John Alario, center. Credit: Sue Lincoln
Patrick
Connick (R-Harvey), term-limited out of the House this election
cycle, slides into John Alario’s 8th
district senate seat without opposition. Katrina Jackson (D-Monroe)
was eligible for one more term in the lower chamber, but she will be
moving into the 34th
district seat in the upper chamber, which Francis Thompson is
required to vacate.
Additionally,
state Rep. Jimmy Harris (D-New Orleans) rolled smoothly into the 4th
district senate seat, presently held by Wesley Bishop (D-New
Orleans). Harris is just completing his first term in the House.
Bishop, who previously served three House terms, was first elected to
the Senate four years ago. But a New Orleans’ TV station’s
investigative report revealed Bishop, whose non-legislative job is as
a vice-chancellor with Southern University-New Orleans, claimed and
was paid for 122 “sick days” over a three-year period. Those days
were actually spent in legislative sessions in Baton Rouge. He repaid
the money, more than $20,500, this past spring, and sent out a
statement on Aug. 2, announcing he would not be seeking re-election
this fall.
But
those were the easy games of musical chairs. There are other rounds
that promise complications, as multiple current and former
legislators – primarily House members – seek the same seat.
One
race that has the potential for verbal pushing and shoving is
District 2, which includes portions of eight parishes along the
Mississippi River. Basically this is the industrial corridor
frequently referred to as “Cancer Alley.” Ed Price (D-Gonzales),
formerly a House member, claimed the seat in a May 2017 special
election. That was necessitated by Troy Brown’s essentially forced
resignation, as members of the upper chamber prepared to expel him in
February 2017.
Last
week, Brown qualified to run for the seat he had so reluctantly and
bitterly relinquished two-and-a-half years ago.
The
3rd
district senate seat presently occupied by the unparalleled (and
sadly, term-limited) J.P. Morrell (D-New Orleans)has drawn a field of
four: three African-American male Democrats, and a while female
Republican. Neither Rep. John Bagneris nor Rep. Joseph Bouie is
term-limited in the House – in fact, each is wrapping up his
initial terms in the lower chamber. But both are willing to give up a
potentially easier race as an incumbent, and instead taking the
chance of winning over sufficient voters in a district of more than
116,000 residents, as opposed to House districts which each represent
an average of over 43,000 people.
And
while the district should be “safely Democratic” (because of the
way it was drawn in 2011), having three (male) Democrats vying for
the same philosophically aligned pool of voters in the jungle
primary, that possibly opens the door for the female Republican to
garner enough votes to slip into a runoff.
Sen.
Yvonne Dorsey-Colomb (D-Baton Rouge) is term-limited out of the 14th
senatorial district seat, and Rep. Patricia Smith is term-limited out
of her House seat. Smith wants to move to the senate, but she’ll
have to go head-to-head with a former state senator.
Cleo
Fields, who had served in the state Senate, then in Congress, run
(unsuccessfully) for governor, and ultimately returned to the state
Senate in 1997, ran afoul of a state Supreme Court ruling on term
limits in 2007. Though he’s been politically active behind the
scenes in Louisiana’s capital city during the intervening years, he
has not run for public office for more than a decade. Smith, on the
other hand, has been front and center with teachers and others who
opposed the most egregious of former Gov. Bobby Jindal’s education
reforms, earning her both statewide name recognition and respect.
Steve Carter (center). Credit: Sue Lincoln
Also
in Baton Rouge, state Sen. Dan Claitor is done, and two term-limited
Republican House members want to snag the 16th
district seat. Rep. Steve Carter reliably supported education
reforms, as chair of the House Education Committee during former Gov.
Bobby Jindal’s second term. But during the past three years, Carter
has pushed for a hike in the state gasoline tax, aimed at whittling
away on the $14-billion backlog of unfunded and much-needed road and
bridge repairs and construction.
The “no tax never” crowd at the extreme right of the state GOP prefer Rep. Franklin Foil for that seat. As vice-chairman of Cameron Henry’s House Appropriations Committee, Foil has proven to be (as the phrase goes) a “committed conservative.” In fact, Foil is running on a platform of “reducing the size of our government and state budget.”
Yet
Foil and/or Carter have to come out on top of a field that includes
another Republican, perennial unfunded candidate-for-something Bob
Bell. Libertarian Everett Baudean is also on the ballot. And the
crowded field of runners on the political right could open a passing
lane for the lone female (and Democrat) in the race: Beverly Brooks
Thompson.
Two
Democrats and three Republicans want the 20th
district Senate seat that Norby Chabert (R-Houma) has been filling
for the past 12 years. Rep. Jerry “Truck” Gisclair (D-Larose),
term-limited out of the House this cycle, will vie with former House
member Damon Baldone (r-Houma) who was term-limited out of the lower
chamber in 2012. A Democrat then and through the first half of 2017,
Baldone changed parties two years ago to run for the
Public
Service Commission post he’d been given an interim appointment to
by Gov. John Bel Edwards. (Baldone lost that race, receiving just
over 24% of the total vote.)
Also
in the fais-do-do around the Senate seat are Republicans “Big Mike”
Fesi, an oil-and-gas businessman, and Shane Swan, a 23-year-old
African-American who lists his occupation on Facebook as “music
producer.” Brenda Leroux Babin, a Democrat from Houma, and a former
Terrebonne Parish School Board member, is on the ballot, as well.
Mark Abraham. Credit: Sue Lincolb
The
contest for the district 25 seat being vacated by term-limited Blade
Morrish (R-Jennings) will have current House members Mark
Abraham (R- Lake Charles) and John E. Guinn (R- Jennings) going
toe-to-toe. Guinn has reached the end of his eligibility to serve in
the House, while Abraham is just now completing his first term.
Meanwhile, a third Republican, rice farmer Kevin Berken of Lake
Arthur, will be dancing around the two lawmakers, looking for his own
opening to distract and defeat them.
A
pair of term-limited House Democrats are looking to keep spending
their springtimes in Baton Rouge, as Robert Johnson of Marksville and
Harvey LeBas of Ville Platte are candidates for the district 28 seat
Eric LaFleur is vacating. There’s a potential spoiler in the race,
too – Republican Heather Cloud, mayor of the village of Turkey
Creek. She came in eighth of the nine people in the Secretary of
State special election primary last November.
The
final contest falling into the category of senate attempted musical
chairs is the district 30 seat. Leesville Republican John Smith is
out, and Rep. James K. Armes, (D-Leesville) is done in the House.
Armes wants the senate seat, as does former state Rep. Brett Geymann.
The Lake Charles Republican finished his three full terms in the
lower chamber at the last state election cycle, four years ago.
Geymann will be splitting the base in the primary with two other GOP
candidates: Renee Hoffpauir-Klann and Mike Reese, both from
Leesville.
Newton’s 3rd Law
“For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”
There
has been a lot of posturing lately over what are sometimes termed
“purity tests”, whether someone running for an office is
“conservative” or “liberal” enough
to satisfy the observer. If a candidate has voted the “wrong way”
on a single bill – even though in all other policies that person
aligns with the critic’s own views – that candidate isn’t
whatever enough,
and by God, we need somebody who is.
These
Senate races appear to be manifesting some of those “opposite
reactions.”
In
New Orleans’ district 5, incumbent Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, the
present chair of the Louisiana Democratic Party, is being challenged
by two Democrats: a black female named “Fox Rich” Richardson, and
a white male, Allen Borne, Jr.
It’s
hard to believe that someone might think Sen. Bodi White (R-Baton
Rouge) isn’t far enough to the right wing, but he has attracted a
Libertarian challenger, Rufus Craig. The Baton Rouge attorney has
competed with White before, in the 2016 Baton Rouge mayor jungle
primary. White made the runoff with 29% of the vote (but ultimately
lost to Democrat and former state Sen. Sharon Weston Broome), while
Craig only garnered 1% (2002 votes of the nearly 191,000 cast).
Cameron Henry. Credit: Sue Lincoln
State
Sen. Conrad Appel should be pleased with the conservative credentials
of at least one of the two candidates seeking to succeed him in
district 9.
Current House Appropriations chairman Cameron Henry (R-Metairie)
seems
to have the inside track, after serving three terms in the lower
chamber. Henry will
face another Metairie Republican, Jon “Frankie” Hyers. Hyers is
a novice,
with no campaign website and no funding.
District
10 could be moving from tasty beverage to street food, as the best
known candidate for the senate seat long held by Danny Martiny
(R-Kenner) is Rep. Kirk Talbot (R-River Ridge). Talbot owns Lucky
Dogs, the
wiener-in-a-bun shaped rolling food carts purveying hot dogs on
street corners in New Orleans’ French Quarter and Central Business
District. Due to alphabetical order, Talbot is the last name on the
ballot, following Arita Bohannon (a Native American female,
Republican, from Kenner) and Skip Galan of Kenner, who declares
himself as Hispanic, with no party affiliation.
Rep.
Reid Falconer, just finishing up his initial term in the House, is
one of those previously mentioned political
philosophy purists, and he’s hoping to use his ultra-conservative
credentials from the senate seat Jack Donahue (R-Mandeville) has
filled for the past dozen years. Falconer (R-Madisonville) will vie
with Daniel
Ducote (R-Madisonville),
who
wants to abolish all income
and sales
taxes, and with Patrick
McGrath (R-Covington).
In
District 12, Sen. Beth Mizell (R-Franklinton), seeking her second
term in the upper chamber, has drawn a Democratic male opponent,
Daniel Fairburn of Kentwood.
Dale
Erdey (R-Livingston) is done with his three terms in the upper
chamber, and J. Rogers Pope (R-Denham Springs), who has completed his
dozen years in the House, is looking to move into the district 13
Senate seat. Pope, who retired from a full career as a district
schools’ superintendent before entering
the Legislature, faces two Republican women who also want the Senate
seat. Like Pope, Edith Carlin and Deven Cavalier also reside in
Denham Springs.
Incumbent Sen. Regina Barrow (D-Baton Rouge) is running for her second Senate term, but she faces some “opposite reaction.” A certain segment of the community views some of her bills and votes as “too conservative” and “not Democratic enough.” Gary Chambers (D-Baton Rouge), an outspoken activist for civil rights and racial equity, is challenging Barrow, promising to focus on providing for the needs of district 15 residents.
Gerald Boudreaux (D-Lafayette) is running for his second Senate term in district 24. He’s being challenged by Corey Levier, a non-party candidate who is a post 9/11 combat veteran and runs a firearms business.
In district 26, incumbent Bob Hensgens (R- Gueydan) who moved from the House to the Senate in Nov. 2018, filling the seat vacated when former state Sen. Jonathan Perry elected to the bench, faces Jerry Gaspard (D-Abbeville). Gaspard was also on the Nov. 2018 ballot for this seat, garnering 18% of the total vote. (Hensgens got 60%.)
Jay Luneau (seated) testifies on auto insurance legislation. Credit: Sue Lincoln
This past spring, in the fourth year of his first term, district 29 Sen. Jay Luneau (D-Alexandria) helped expose the long-running scheme to blame high auto insurance rates on anything and everything but unfair rate-setting policies by the insurance industry. Luneau’s reward for unveiling the scam? He’s got an insurance agent, Randy Wiggins (R-Pineville), attempting to unseat him.
Outside
the ordained clergy, it’s hard to find someone more overtly devout
than Sen. Gerald Long (R-Winnfield). But
with Long’s legislative retirement, voters in district 31 will need
to sort through three men’s competing claims of deepest devotion to
the most conservative of Republican causes.
Louie Bernard of Natchitoches is
running on his 24 years of public service as the former
parish clerk of court. Also
pointing to his service record is wounded-in-action former
Marine sniper Douglas
Brown of
Cheneyville,
who presently farms
rice, soybeans
and
crawfish. There’s
also Alexandria attorney Trey
Flynn, who
is running on a pro-life, pro-gun, pro-business, conservative family
man platform..
Term
limits on Neil Riser have opened the senate district 32 race to quite
a mix of contenders, including
Danny Cole (D-Jena)
and Catahoula
Parish Police Juror Judy
Duhon (D-Olla).
Retired
Caldwell Parish Sheriff Steve May (R-Columbia) is also on the October
12 ballot, as is
corporate
construction contractor Glen
Womack (R-Harrisonburg).
(Can you say “erector Set”?)
Two
Republicans are battling to take over the district
33 seat
that has belonged to Mike Walsworth (R-West Monroe) Wade
Bishop, the
former chairman of the
West Monroe Chamber
of Commerce will square off with
Stewart Cathey, Jr. of Sterlington. Four
years ago, Cathey lived
in a different senate district, ran for that seat and lost to Jim
Fannin..
That’s
district
35, and
incumbent
Jim Fannin (R- Jonesboro) is facing
two challengers
this
time.
Rep. Jay Morris (R- Monroe) is
undoubtedly going to be pushing the narrative that Fannin – who is
conservative, but not averse to compromise – isn’t far enough
to
the right.
Matt Parker (R- Calhoun), is
an auto body shop owner and ran for state Insurance Commissioner in
2015. He got 14% of the vote.
Serving
district
36, Sen.
Ryan Gatti (R-Bossier) is
seeking reelection to the seat he first won four years ago. He’s
got competition from oil and gas man
Robert Mills (R- Benton), who
has said he’s running because “there’s a leadership void and a
lack of urgency on the part of career politicians.”
Mattie Preston (D- Minden), also
known as “Apostle”, is a preacher and school bus driver that’s
running, as well.
Barrow
Peacock (R-Shreveport) is
seeking his third and final term as district 37’s state senator.
But he’s facing a loud and proud challenge from Shreveport
independent Debbie Hollis. The
progressive activist, nonprofit consultant and multimedia artist is
running on an elegantly and simply stated platform: “Equal Rights
for All.”
What
can we say about district
38 incumbent
Sen.
John Milkovich (D-Keithville)? He’s
been problematic for both Democrats and Republicans in
the Legislature, much as – as a lawyer – he has been problematic
for judges. so it’s not surprising that he has drawn challengers
from both sides of the aisle. Banker
Barry Milligan (R-Shreveport)
and insurance
agent Katrina
Early (D-Shreveport)
are each hoping to replace him.
Last, but far from least, district 39 incumbent Greg Tarver (D- Shreveport) has clearly rubbed a few people the wrong way. He’s being challenged by term-limited state Rep. Barbara Norton (D-Shreveport). Tarver is fighting back, challenging Norton’s candidacy in court, because – he alleges – she does not live in the district, with the address she gave at qualifying being the home of one of her relatives. Tarver is also questioning the residency of another challenger, attorney Shante’ Wells (D-Shreveport). No word yet on how Tarver is planning to neutralize the fourth candidate, Jim Slagle (R-Vivian), a certified public accountant.
So that’s an initial overview of Louisiana’s state Senate contests. And as we move closer to the October 12 jungle primary, with candidates’ messages becoming virtually inescapable, perhaps it’s will be time for all of us to think how to creatively apply the First Law of Thermodynamics to politics and government. It states:
“Energy can neither be created or destroyed, but it can be transferred from one form to another.”
David Duke on Nov. 17, 1991. Credit: Times-Picayune
Originally published in the Bayou Brief’s newsletter:
Last week, at Love Field in Dallas, fifteen minutes before the arrival of Flight 1220 from Oakland, a gate agent for Southwest Airlines began handing out American flags. The local news had already shown up with their cameras, but the hundreds of travelers awaiting their flights had no idea what they were about to witness.
In 1967, five-year-old Bryan Knight’s father Roy left to fight a war in Vietnam. Roy’s family gathered at Love Field to say their goodbyes and watch as his plane sped into the sky and he began his voyage to an unimaginably distant land. Bryan never saw his father again.
“Col. Knight ejected from his aircraft, but no parachute was seen deploying,” the gate agent explained over the PA yesterday after handing out all of the flags. “A search was undertaken but could not find him.”
In June, 52 years after he left, Roy’s remains were finally identified in Vietnam. “Today,” the agent said, “Col. Knight is coming home to Dallas.” The entire terminal had now gathered in silent respect to watch as Col. Roy Knight, Jr.’s coffin, draped in an American flag, was unloaded by a military detail.
His son Bryan is now a pilot for Southwest Airlines, and last week, he flew his father’s remains back to Love Field.
I shared this story, which was first reported by Jackson Proskow on Twitter, with my family. My mother wrote back. “The empathy of the human spirit is alive,” she said. It was an affirmation that what seems to be missing too often in our nation still endures, and it was an extraordinary moment that many characterized as poignant, unifying, and distinctly American.
Credit: Jackson Proskow
A few hours later in Mississippi, agents at Immigration and Customs Enforcement released 270 people of the 600 they had rounded up and detained for being in the United States without the proper authorization. ICE had taken away the parents of hundreds of children. For a short time, it appeared as if the Deep South was on the brink of the worst humanitarian crisis since Hurricane Katrina.
Today, in America, dozens of children are being detained in cramped quarters, after the government forcibly removed them from their parents.
Two weeks ago, a man from the Dallas area drove 600 miles to El Paso and massacred 22 human beings, injuring 26 others. His online rants revealed he was animated by the hate-fueled rhetoric of a man with a long-established record of advancing white supremacy as a political agenda, the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump. For millions of decent Americans of principle, Trump’s hate-fueled, nakedly racist, self-aggrandizing and fact-free triumphalism doesn’t even remotely resemble the country on display at an airport named Love in Dallas.
Shortly after the assassination of President Kennedy, Dallas became known as “the City of Hate,” and if this full-page ad that Eddie Rispone paid John Georges to print is any indication, a City of Hate is what he hopes to transform New Orleans into (more later on Rispone):
The Ghost of David Duke:
During a recent Democratic presidential primary debate, South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, in lamenting the near-universal decision by prominent leaders of the Republican Party to refuse any public repudiation of a president who has trafficked in bigotry, xenophobia, and white supremacist since he descended the escalators at Trump Tower to announce his campaign, referenced how leaders of the party had denounced former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan when he competed in a runoff election against Edwin Edwards for Louisiana governor in 1991.
Mayor Pete had mistakenly claimed the election was only 20 years ago, and while he was correct that mainstream Republican leaders were opposed to Duke, they weren’t nearly as outspoken in 1991 as they had been only two years prior, when Duke ran for a seat in the Louisiana state House of Representatives against John Treen, the brother of former Gov. Dave Treen.
Back then, in 1989, both Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush recorded phone messages for every voter in the district, urging them to oppose Duke.
It was Lee Atwater’s idea, believe it or not, and it didn’t make a difference. Duke won anyway.
Republicans were caught off-guard by Duke’s success. Early on, David Vitter couldn’t be on the ticket after his residency was challenged. Ironically, Duke never lived in the district, but no one bothered to challenge his residency. No one thought to take him seriously until it was too late.
The following year, when Duke ran for the U.S. Senate against J. Bennett Johnston, the former klansman received 60% of white voters. And despite losing in a landslide to Edwin Edwards in 1991, he still managed to pick up 55% of white voters. I’ve written before about the ways in which the ghost of the very-much-still-alive David Duke continues to haunt Louisiana politics, but in the past four years, it is now impossible to discount the ways in which Duke presaged the electoral success of the current president.
Donald Trump still enjoys high approval numbers in Louisiana, even though, nationally, his approval has always been upside down. Polling analyst David Wasserman recently found that Trump could lose the popular vote by a staggering 10 million votes and still win reelection by cobbling together the right combination of states in the Electoral College.
As Louisiana heads to the polls in October to determine whether Gov. John Bel Edwards should continue to lead the state for another four years, his two major Republican challengers, Ralph Abraham and Eddie Rispone, have attempted to bolster their campaigns by mimicking Trump’s appeals to nativism and white supremacy, all while feigning surprise and indignation at “lunatic liberals” who criticize campaigns fueling racism, xenophobia, and bigotry.
Ralph Abraham stands in front of his private plane. Source: Ralph Abraham campaign.
The Abra-Fam-Scam:
Shortly after Donald Trump argued that four Democratic members of the U.S. House, all women of color, should go back to their countries, Rep. Abraham offered to pay for their flights. While he may argue it was merely a joke, Abraham was actually just repeating a white supremacist trope that has been a part of the racist vernacular since at least Reconstruction. His comment is all the uglier when one considers that Abraham is an Arab-American, the grandson of immigrants from Lebanon.
Of course, this is not the first time the congressman has offered to pay for something in order to score some cheap political points.
When he first campaigned for Congress, he pledged to donate his entire salary to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital and to a charity that provides support, services, and equipment to quadruple amputee wounded veterans.
After a staffer slipped up and told a member of the press that Abraham had intended on keeping his paycheck during a recent government shutdown, his office was forced to acknowledge he had never actually made good on his promise; they have yet to provide any evidence of a substantial donation he made to either charity, though they assert, without any evidence, Abraham gave away his salary during his first two years. Importantly, he prominently featured his pledge to donate his salary on his website when running for a second term and kept references to the pledge on the site when he ran last year for a third term.
That’s rich on multiple levels: Ralph Abraham is actually paid to vote for a living (again, money he promised to give away), and he leads the nation in absences from votes.
Shortly after winning, he also told constituents that he would be closing down his medical practice and selling his clinic in Mangham, Louisiana in order to carry out his constitutionally-mandated duties Washington. Two years ago, on Father’s Day, his daughter Ashley praised her dad on Facebook for giving up a “thriving medical practice” to serve the people. Abraham shared her post on his public account.
What both father and daughter neglected to tell their followers: That very year, Ashley and her mother- the congressman’s wife- quietly incorporated a brand new medical clinic in Rayville, Louisiana. Neither of the two are medical professionals, but they found two nurses to staff the rural clinic. And fortunately, they have a medical doctor in the family: Ralph Abraham is the only physician at the clinic; he is deriving an income from it, and when he should have been voting on a critical Flood Insurance bill, he was practicing medicine at his wife’s and daughter’s clinic.
Abraham may have a small private plane and a private practice and a collection of cashed checks totaling in the millions for him and his family, all courtesy of Uncle Sam, but if his opponent, Eddie Rispone, woke up to discover they both had the same net worth, he’d likely sink into a deep depression.
Eddie Rispone: Political “outsider.”
Insider Eddie:
In his first television commercial, Eddie Rispone, the mega-millionaire cofounder of ISC, an electrical installation construction company, delivers a video Val-o-gram to Donald Trump. Trump is mentioned more frequently than Rispone, almost as if the candidate for Louisiana governor was an afterthought.
Rispone may have been largely unknown in Louisiana before he decided to put aside more than $10 million of his own personal fortune in an attempt to purchase the lease on the Governor’s Mansion, but despite his attempt to sell himself as an “outsider,” Eddie Rispone has been one of the most powerful “insiders” for most of his professional career.
Like Abraham, he is a (wealthier) white man who believes the way to win in Louisiana is by campaigning against unauthorized immigrants, demonizing the poor, and mimicking the hateful hyperbole that turned a reality television star who peddled a racist conspiracy theory about Barack Obama being born in a foreign country all the way into the White House. His campaign team is attempting to market Rispone as, literally, “Louisiana’s Donald Trump,” and they’ve already spent a fortune to let voters know Rispone supports the construction of a fantasy border wall (that Mexico was apparently supposed to have already paid for), mass deportations of “illegal immigrants,” and ending “sanctuary cities.”
In Louisiana, that means New Orleans, a city that is 60% African American. Undocumented immigrants compromise approximately 3% of the city’s population, and the vast majority of these immigrants arrived in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, after the Bush Administration suspended laws about prevailing wages in order to help construction companies like Rispone’s hire cheaper labor. Rispone’s vitriol against unauthorized immigrants, who are primarily from Mexico, isn’t only misplaced and hypocritical; it is dangerous and dehumanizing.
In the aftermath of the recent massacre in El Paso, it seems particularly reckless.
During the next two months, voters and the media should be willing and able to ask Rispone about his use of foreign workers and the reason he decided to settle with nearly 100 former employees. They should also ask him about his first and only book, Cucho: A Journey from Cuba to Freedom, a biography of Dr. Louis Antonio Balart, Sr.
Eddie Rispone has been a behind-the-scenes powerbroker for several years, and he was reportedly a key financier of the campaign to carve out of Baton Rouge a new, breakaway, and predominantly white city called St. George.
Rispone has also been a prominent supporter of the school voucher program, which has been riddled with corruption and failure. While he publicly claims his support of vouchers is animated by his Catholic faith and his earnest hope to help impoverished children receive a high-quality education, the truth appears to be much more cynical and self-interested.
In the past, Rispone has donated as much as $1 million in a single year to a voucher school program; if he did the same this year, he could turn a profit of $319,000.
28 years ago, when the former klansman ran for governor, he traded in his sheets and his hood for a suit and a tie; he got plastic surgery. He claimed to be a born-again Christian. He attempted to distance himself from the racist and neo-Nazi beliefs he had been espousing for years.
If you ever have the time and the inclination, search YouTube for the 1991 debates between Edwards and Duke. Duke may have once published articles promoting the idea of racial and ethnic minorities “going back” to other countries, but he tried to be careful- in the same way George Wallace had once been- in couching his racism in coded language.
It would have likely seemed unimaginable to Duke that less than three decades later, the United States would be led by a man who kicked off his campaign by calling Mexican immigrants “rapists,” who disparaged a decorated war hero and POW, who mocked a disabled reporter, who called for a “complete and total ban on Muslims” entering the country, who bragged on video about grabbing women by their genitals, who peddled the racist conspiracy theory that his predecessor was not a real American citizen, who defended white supremacists and shared their comments online, who promised to construct an enormous border wall and force Mexico to pay for it, who befriended brutal dictators, who locked children up in cages, who ordered the mass deportation of hundreds of people in the Deep South, leaving small children without their parents, and who told four women of color in the United States Congress to go back to their own countries.
And if you’d told the people of Louisiana, 28 years ago, that two of the top candidates for governor agreed with this man and that one of those candidates was spending millions of his personal fortune to promote his relationship with this man, I bet most people would’ve respond with the same exact question: How the hell did David Duke become President?
* Update: Three years after publishing this commentary, following a more thorough review of the evidence, including the transcript of the Coroner’s Inquest, the autopsy report for Carl Weiss, the Final Report on the 1992 Re-Investigation, and a set of previously unpublished photographs of Long’s clothing, and after reading more than a dozen books on Long and the subject of the assassination, I no longer hold the position that Long was accidentally killed and believe there is sufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Dr. Weiss was, in fact, the assassin.
“The House that Huey built,” the Louisiana state Capitol building in downtown Baton Rouge, towers over the city’s skyline. If you’re traveling into Baton Rouge on Highway 190 East, the route most commonly taken by people from central and northern Louisiana prior to the construction of Interstate 10, the building comes into view several miles before you reach the Mississippi River, appearing to stand alone, in the same way the Emerald City materialized in front of Dorothy.
It is the nation’s tallest state Capitol, and as its nickname suggests, it was conceived and built by Huey P. Long, the Kingfish, the Louisiana governor who never really left the mansion when he was elected to the U.S. Senate, a politician who had once been so feared than even Franklin D. Roosevelt considered to be one of the two most dangerous men in America.
“It’s also the nation’s tallest tombstone,” current Louisiana Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne once observed of the state Capitol building. The body of Huey P. Long is buried on the Capitol grounds. Atop his grave, there’s a statue of Long overlooking his building.
Photo by Rev. Charles Ward.
At 9:22PM on September 8th, 1935, Long, then a U.S. Senator, was shot while walking down one of the building’s corridors. He died two days later, at 4:06 in the morning, only 42 years old and still generally considered to be the most powerful politician in Louisiana’s history.
The official version of Long’s death is that it was an assassination carried out by a 29-year-old, well-respected Baton Rouge physician named Carl Weiss. Weiss, the story goes, was angry that Huey P. Long had orchestrated the ouster of his father-in-law, Benjamin Pavy, from a judicial seat in St. Landry Parish. The Pavy family were outspoken opponents of Long, and according to unsubstantiated rumors, Long had once claimed the Pavys had “Negro blood,” which some speculate had also driven the young physician to confront Long that night.
For the past eight decades, students of Louisiana history have been taught that Carl Weiss approached Huey P. Long, exchanged some heated words, and then pulled out a gun and shot him once in the abdomen. Long’s bodyguards immediately returned fire and killed Weiss, shooting him 61 times.
Long had initially survived the shooting and was able to walk down a flight of stairs and across the grounds of the Capitol and then hail a car to take him to the hospital. He lived for another 32 hours, and many believe that he only died because of incompetent medical care.
****
The assassination of Huey Pierce Long has earned a central place in the mythos of Louisiana. It ensured he would not merely be remembered as a powerful and ruthless politician but as a man who had sacrificed his own life in service to the people of Louisiana. The word assassination is reserved only for a select few, and in a macabre way, the term itself is an expression of respect for the victim.
Only a leader can be assassinated, and only when their life was taken by someone opposed to them for political or religious reasons. In that respect, an assassination is also a political statement, a way of intimidating and silencing those who supported and respected the fallen leader.
83 years after Huey P. Long’s death, we should acknowledge a compelling body of evidence that suggests the story we have told about Huey P. Long’s death is wrong, even if the true story diminishes the mystique of the Kingfish. Huey P. Long wasn’t assassinated by Carl Weiss.
More likely than not, he was killed accidentally by a stray bullet fired by one of his bodyguards, likely either Joe Messina or Murphy Roden.
The front pages of three Louisiana newspapers- The Monroe News Star, The Ruston Daily Leader, and The Alexandria Daily Town Talk. September 10th, 1935
****
There are bullet holes from that night still visible in the Capitol’s marble walls. But more significantly, there are holes in the government’s story about who is responsible for causing the death of Huey P. Long, and some of those holes have only come into view in the past twenty years.
Eight years ago, at a symposium held in the Old State Capitol, Dr. Carl Weiss, Jr., who was only an infant when his father died and who has spent much of his life researching the events of that night and retracing his father’s steps, spoke for the first time at length about his long-held belief that his father did not actually shoot Huey P. Long. In fact, he asserts his father wasn’t even carrying a gun that night. (Thankfully, because of the great work of Louisiana Public Broadcasting, you can watch the lecture here).
Carl Weiss, Sr. did confront Long. He was angry, though the exact reasons why are unknown and will probably always remain unknown. His son dismisses the long-standing theory that the confrontation had anything to do with defending his father-in-law. “I don’t think it makes any conceivable sense that a person would carry out an attack like that on behalf of a father-in-law who was ready to retire anyway,” his son contended.
“The other reason is equally fuzzy, but it’s suggested that Huey may have made some kind of racial slur, which my father interpreted wrong and chose to avenge himself. Again, I don’t think that’s the least bit likely.”
Weiss may have not carried out an attack on behalf of his father-in-law, but historian Ed Reed believes the most likely explanation is that he simply wanted to plead his father-in-law’s case. According to Reed, Carl Weiss had attempted to talk with Long three times, stationing himself in plain view outside of the door to the governor’s office, and each time, he was rebuffed. Several other historians agree and argue that the likeliest story is that after Huey P. Long made an insulting comment to Weiss, the young doctor punched him in the face. At that point, Long’s bodyguards opened fire.
This theory is bolstered substantially by the sworn affidavit of Jewel O’Neal, a nurse who had attended to Long that night. According to O’Neal, Long told her, “That’s where he hit me,” while she was treating his bruised lip. Another nurse confirmed O’Neal’s account.
Decades later, Carl Weiss, Jr. had his father’s body exhumed, and according to a forensic analysis, there was evidence of a small fracture in one of his hands consistent with the type of injury from throwing a hard punch.
If Weiss had planned on killing Huey P. Long that night, he made no indication of his motives to anyone who knew him. The Weiss family home, it’s worth noting, was on Lakeland Drive, very near the state Capitol. “My father’s daily route home literally took him through the parking lot of the Capitol,” his son explained.
That day, Weiss had attended to a man named Morgan, who later told police investigators that the physician was not acting unusual and did not seem disturbed at all. He also made plans to perform surgery the following morning, and at dinner that night, he tried to cool the temper of an uncle who was arguing about politics.
His actions that day did not seem like those of a man who was plotting to kill the most famous man in Louisiana.
****
There is also significant evidence that police engaged in a hasty cover-up in order to place a weapon in Weiss’ possession. His brother, Tom Ed Weiss, arrived at the scene within an hour and discovered that police had moved the doctor’s Buick from where it had been originally parked and had also pilfered through the car’s glove compartment, which is where Weiss kept his gun, a .32 caliber pistol he had purchased on a vacation in France.
A security guard on duty that night, Elois Sahuk, told the historian Ed Reed, “One of the bodyguards, who is now dead, told me that he felt that that gun was a throw down gun, that one of the bodyguards had gone out to the car that Carl Weiss had driven up in, had gotten that pistol and had thrown it next to the body.”
There was a gun next to Weiss’ body, but curiously, his car keys were missing.
When surgeons operated on Long, they were able to recover a .38 caliber bullet, the same caliber as the weapons carried by his bodyguards. Weiss’ .32 caliber pistol was never a match, and for decades, the weapon was nowhere to be found.
Then, in 1991, a researcher hired by James Starrs, a professor of law and forensic sciences at George Washington University, made an astonishing discovery: The weapon was owned by Mabel Guerre Binnings, the daughter of Louis F. Guerre, the man who headed up the investigation into Long’s death.
“It is submitted that there is significant scientific evidence to establish grave and persuasive doubts that Carl Austin Weiss was the person who killed Sen. Huey P. Long,” Starrs announced at a meeting of the Academy of Forensic Scientists in 1992.
****
A year later, in 1993, the son of Huey P. Long, the late U.S. Sen. Russell Long, met the son of Carl Weiss. Russell Long had steadfastly maintained his public belief that his father was assassinated by Carl Weiss, but privately, he wasn’t always as adamant.
Three years ago, the writer Jonathan Alter unearthed a letter that Russell Long sent to Tom Ed Weiss, Carl’s brother. “We shared a personal tragedy,” he said of himself and Carl Weiss, Jr.
“It was my fortune to know some of the eyewitnesses and respect them,” he wrote about his father’s bodyguards. “I do not want to do anything to cast doubt on what they testified under oath. Yet I remain of the view that only the Eternal could know all that happened and why it happened as it did.”
Something else happened in 1993. Colonel Frances Gravemberg, who served as the Superintendent of the Louisiana State Police in the 1950s and a man who earned a sterling reputation for his work against organized crime, stated in a sworn affidavit that he knew the identities of the men who were responsible for shooting Huey P. Long.
Two troopers who were eyewitnesses to the shooting had told Colonel Gravemberg they watched Long’s bodyguards plant a gun on the unarmed Weiss shortly after accidentally wounding Long; the fatal bullet was aimed at Weiss but ricocheted off of a marble wall and struck the Kingfish.
****
In the late 1990s, the Louisiana State Police reviewed their investigation on Huey P. Long’s death, an investigation which, by all accounts, was flawed from the very beginning. “On September 16, 1935, a sham inquest was held, in which only fervent Long loyalists (including a puppet judge who later admitted he hadn’t seen the shooting) were allowed to testify and no autopsy or ballistics tests were conducted,” Jonathan Alter explained.
Despite the substantial evidence that Carl Weiss was not the shooter- indeed, could not have been the shooter, the police did not change their ruling. “We believe from a law enforcement standpoint that he had motive. We believe he had opportunity. And we believe he had the means to do the job. And we know that he was there,” they wrote then, a position that, presumably, they still hold.
The story of Huey P. Long will be told in Louisiana for generations to come, but hopefully, some day soon, we will tell the truth about the final chapter.
By Megan Graham, Lamar White, Jr., Heather Miller, and Cayman Clevenger, Senior Ministers of Social Media and Creative Marketing for the Ray Nichols Memorial Working Group.
Ray Nichols took and shared thousands of photographs, documenting nearly every event he attended and the stories of nearly every person he met. But he never referred to himself as a writer or photojournalist or even a documentarian (though he was all three). On his LinkedIn profile, he listed his current jobs as, among other things, Development Intern for The Lens, Photography Intern for The Trumpet, Minister of Social Networking for the Poynter Institute, and Evangelist for the New Orleans Institute for Resilience and Innovation.
Ray was a superconnector, a sense-maker, a builder of human infrastructure, an inimitable and prolifically talented lobbyist for the marginalized and the overlooked.
Yesterday, after a brief illness, he passed away at Ochsner Hospital in New Orleans. He was 73.
“(Ray) was a great friend to me and in the trenches with neighborhood leaders throughout the city,” wrote New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell. “He was a tireless advocate for what he believed was important, and a dedicated philanthropist.”
Mayor LaToya Cantrell and Ray Nichols.
For nearly 30 years, from May 1983 to December 2012, Ray served on the Board of Directors for Goodwill Industries of Southeastern Louisiana, spearheading a program in housekeeping training that resulted in the creation of hundreds of jobs for the physically or developmentally disabled. He spent 24 of those years also actively volunteering for the United Way.
Ray was especially proud of his work as a founding board member of Priestley Charter School and serving as president of Maple Area Residents, Inc. (MARI) in 2004.
A decade ago, Ray first met Drew Curtis, a bestselling author, former candidate for Governor of Kentucky, and the mastermind behind the news aggregate blogsite, Fark.com, the first “indie blog” to earn more than $1 million a year in profit.
“As someone who likes to stir shit up himself, Ray and I got along instantly,” Drew tells the Bayou Brief. “Ray, however, was one of those rare people whose instigation targeted public figures and institutions that badly needed targeting. He knew who he wanted to go after, and he assembled the resources to do it. He found kindred souls doing the same thing, and helped them do their jobs better. Every single person he introduced me to was trying to change the world for the better, and Ray spent the majority of his time trying to help them achieve their goals. He was a disrupter in the truest sense of the world.”
While Drew holds up Ray as a role model for the previous generation, Ray believed Drew was a role model as well.
“If every member of Ray’s generation had remained a punkass after they grew up like Ray did, the world would be a much better place. I’m glad he never stopped fighting the system,” Drew wrote. “And I’m also glad he inspired and enabled hundreds of others to do the same. His legacy will live on through them.”
Ray Nichols, state Sen. Karen Carter-Peterson, Gov. John Bel Edwards
New Orleans City Council President Helena Moreno also became close friends with both Ray and his wife Bev.
“He lived his life as a strong advocate for equality and fairness,” Moreno wrote in a statement posted on Facebook. “Ray loved New Orleans and was always an encouraging voice to those of us who work hard on its behalf. This is a big loss.”
Throughout his life, Ray was never afraid to speak truth to power or to call out bigotry and hatred whenever he saw it. In Louisiana, that can sometimes verge on being a full-time job, which is why his passion and commitment, his seemingly effortless energy and enthusiasm, and his deep and fierce loyalty for all of those who gravitated into his orbit will be genuinely missed by the thousands who had the privilege of calling him a friend.
“The loss of Ray Nichols is one that is felt deeply throughout our Democratic Family,” state Sen. Karen Carter-Peterson told the Bayou Brief. “Ray inspired us to be better, to fight harder and to stick up for those who needed us most and when we needed a kick in the pants, Ray was there. Rest in power.”
A former HR executive who began “enjoyin’ retirement” at the age of 44, Ray spent the remaining three decades of his life connecting people who knew how to write about our most important problems with people willing to think creatively about how to best solve those problems.
Bev and Ray Nichols.
When he was eighteen years old, Ray enlisted in the United States Air Force, where he was assigned as a Sentry Dog Handler. During his first year and a half, however, he spent the bulk of his time securing the 27-mile-long perimeter fence at a base in the Philippines. “Since other obligations resulted in only three to four Dog Handlers being free to conduct these duties, I can’t claim any major successes,” Ray wrote.
He moved back to the states in 1965 and didn’t want to waste another minute. He turned 20 in October, and a month later, he tied the knot with the girl from Abbeville he knew would forever be the love of his life, 19-year-old Beverly “Bev” Richard.
“I make friends; Bev keeps ‘em,” Ray would say, his face always beaming with pride when he talked about Bev.
Three years later, when his stint was finally over, Ray returned to Acadiana and enrolled at the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now known as the University of Louisiana at Lafayette), earning a Bachelor’s of Science in Management in 1971.
Ray would spend the next dozen years working his way up the corporate ladder until he decided to hang his own shingle and launch the Crescent Group, a consulting firm specializing in human relations management, in 1984.
“When we started The Crescent Group, Ray had three goals: to make a difference, to support clients he cared about, and freedom. For the rest of his life, he lived each day manifesting those goals,” says his former business partner and longtime friend Rebecca Ripley. “Ray was a consummate thinker, committed to making this world—and especially New Orleans—a better place.”
By 1990, however, he was ready to try out a different line of work.
More than fifteen years before there was Facebook or Twitter or anything remotely resembling the smartphones of today, Ray Nichols was connecting people. He would spend the remainder of his life contributing to the public good — and boasting about the German Shepherd dogs that Ray’s Facebook friends grew to know and love: Willie, Elza and Rocco.
Willie.
Elza.
Rocco.
If you were lucky enough to raise a glass or share a meal with Ray Nichols, it meant he believed in you, that he would be a champion for you, and that you could count on his unyielding support. It did not matter whether you were on your way in or out of Louisiana.
In 2008, Damien LaManna co-founded Net2no, also known as “Net Squared New Orleans,” the so-called “granddaddy of the tech startup” in the city and a way for a diverse group of innovators and social entrepreneurs to virtually collaborate on a range of projects and ideas. Damien, a native of Buffalo, New York, moved to New Orleans after graduate school in an attempt to do something that had never been done before.
Ray was all-in.
“In a city full of unique characters, Ray Nichols managed to stand out. He was a founding patron of Net2no, and the truth is Jessica Rohloff and I couldn’t have done any of it without him,” Damien tells the Bayou Brief. “I’ve lived in a few cities since New Orleans, and literally everywhere I go I find someone who not only knew Ray, but loved him. I don’t know how one human could change so many lives, but somehow, he found a way.”
Net2no was the most successful project of its kind in the nation, growing its membership from 30 people to more than 700 in one year.
Kim Voorhees and Ray.
Ray had the uncanny ability to spontaneously forge friendships, to keep you in his orbit, to continuously celebrate your successes, and to let you know that he was proud to be your friend.
“I’d rather have lunch with smart kids than hang on the golf course with balding Republicans,” Ray would say with an unabashed grin.
Ray and Bev never had children of their own, but they mentored and uplifted countless young people who owe their success stories to Ray and Bev Nichols.
“I have never in my life worn a hat so often as in the years I have known Ray Nichols. I have also rarely felt as supported, as honored, and as loved as Ray’s friendship made me feel,” said Laura Paul, executive director of lowernine.org. “His unconditional positive regard has been my saving grace on more occasions than I can count, and his unflinching commitment to me, to my work, and to the work it can sometimes take just to put up with me as a friend has, over the years, lifted me up and given me the strength I needed to carry on over and over again.
“I will forever be grateful for his influence in my life, and on the city I now call home,” she continued. “He has been an integral part of making me feel welcome here, and I will miss him every day.”
****
Senior Ministers of Social Media and Creative Marketing for the Ray Nichols Memorial Working Group:
Megan Graham. Originally from Washington, Louisiana. Currently living in Portland, Oregon.
Lamar White, Jr. Originally from Alexandria, Louisiana. Currently living in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Heather Miller. Originally from Lafayette, Louisiana. Currently living in Seattle, Washington.
Cayman Clevenger. Originally from Many, Louisiana. Currently living in New Orleans, Louisiana.
****
“If it were easy, everybody’d be doing it.” -Ray Nichols
At the start of the final day of qualifying for the statewide races, it looked to be a sleepy day with little action. Then, just about lunchtime, the stream of would-be candidates began flowing.
Rao Uppu, a naturalized US citizen and SUBR professor of biomedical science and toxicology, was the first to qualify Thursday, as he became Billy Nungesser’s first challenger in the Lt. Governor race. Originally from India, he said he’s running because he thinks it’s wrong to let someone win an election simply because no one bothered to challenge them. He says, “Democracy needs candidates, or it becomes extinct and non-existent.”
Willie Jones, Lt. Gov. candidate. Credit: Sue Lincoln
In the last hour of the day, another candidate for Lt. Governor signed up. Willie Jones, a New Orleans Democrat who works an independent claims adjuster, says, “The Lt. Governor’s office and the Tourism Department are long overdue for diversity. It’s time they push tourism in every parish, rather than just in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Lafayette.”
Teresa
Kenny, with no political party affiliation, has qualified for the
Treasurer’s race. An alumnus of UC-Davis, she runs a bookkeeping
service for small businesses in New Orleans, and said she has been
thinking about public service for awhile.
Gary
Landrieu, one of the “vanity candidates” for governor (those who
have no realistic chance of winning, and presumably enter the race
just to see their name on the ballot), who qualified Wednesday,
finally filed a campaign finance report on Thursday. He loaned
himself $75,000 and has spent nearly $59,650 of it ($35,600 on
billboards, $10,000 on TV time, $5,000 on radio – all in New
Orleans).
Bradley Zaunbrecher, candidate for Agriculture Commissioner. Credit: Sue Lincoln
Bradley
Zaunbrecher, a rice and crawfish farmer from Egan in Acadia Parish,
is running for Agriculture & Forestry Commissioner as a
Republican. Though he says “Mike Strain is doing a wonderful job,”
he also says, “I need to speak for my area, because the loss of our
young farmers is a red flag.”
Charlie
Greer, is making his second attempt to become Ag & Forestry
Commissioner. For Greer, who spent over twenty years doing
enforcement in the Forestry Division under Bob Odom, his antipathy
for the present incumbent, Mike Strain, is personal.
Charlie Greer, running for Agriculture Commissioner. Credit: Sue Lincoln
“From day one, he has decimated the agency. He has the ‘God syndrome’, and so many have suffered at the hands of this career politician that I’ve got a good shot this time,” Greer says.
Thomas
“TJ” Kennedy is running for Secretary of State again. He competed
last year in the special election, and with no funding managed to
draw nine percent of the total primary vote. He expects to push
harder and actually raise money for his campaign this time around,
because he believes “Voters are still looking for a clean sweep of
this office, and they haven’t gotten it yet.”
M.V.
“Vinny” Mendoza, a Democrat from Ponchatoula, and Patrick Doguet,
a Republican from Rayne, each signed up for the governor’s race.
With
one hour left on the final day of qualifying, Ike Jackson, a Democrat
from Plaquemine, signed up as the lone challenger to incumbent
Attorney General Jeff Landry. Four years ago, in the five candidate
open primary, Jackson garnered 11-percent of the vote.
So
after three days of qualifying, here are the totals of candidates on
the ballots for each of the statewide elected positions:
Nine
candidates qualified for Governor: five Republicans, one independent,
and three Democrats – including the incumbent Gov. John Bel
Edwards.
Three
are signed up for Lt. Governor: the incumbent, Billy Nungesser, a
Republican, and two Democratic Party-affiliated challengers.
Incumbent
Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin, Republican, has two challengers from
his own party, and one who is a Democrat, making a total of four
names in that ballot category.
Republican
Attorney General Jeff Landry faces a single Democrat on October 12.
Treasurer
John Schroder has a Democrat and a “no party” challenger each
looking to unseat him.
Five
candidates will be on the ballot for Commissioner of Agriculture and
Forestry: three Democrats, including one female; and two Republicans,
including the incumbent, Mike Strain.
Incumbent
Jim Donelon has a single challenger for Insurance Commissioner. Both
candidates are Republicans.
(We’ll
have full-length stories on both the Agriculture Commissioner and the
Insurance Commissioner races within the next week.)
While
the following races will not be on every ballot in the state,
candidates for these races are required to qualify at the Secretary
of State’s office in Baton Rouge, rather than at the Clerk of Court
office in the parish where they reside. Therefore, we’ll give you a
brief tally of these ballot qualifiers, too.
Four
Republicans qualified for the 1st
District Associate
Justice position
on the Louisiana
Supreme Court. The opening on the high court resulted from Greg
Guidry’s appointment to the federal bench.
Eight
seats on the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE)
are up for election this fall. (The other three BESE seats are
filled through appointment by the governor.) Three
of the seats are “open,” with the current BESE member choosing
not to run again, and four of the five incumbents seeking re-election
collected one or more challengers.
In
BESE District 1, incumbent Jim Garvey, a Republican from Metairie who
is seeking his third and final term on the state education board,
drew three challengers. The two women are Republicans. The male
competitor is an Independent.
Kira
Orange-Jones, 2nd
District incumbent and Teach for America executive garnered
two other contenders for her BESE seat. All three women in that race
are Democrats.
Janice
Perea, a Houma Republican, is trying to unseat incumbent and fellow
Republican “Sandy” Holloway in BESE District 3, while in District
4, incumbent Tony Davis of Natchitoches, will be re-elected
unopposed.
District
5 is an open seat, with Woodworth Republican Stephen Chapman doing
ballot battle with Ashley Ellis, also a Republican, from Monroe.
Four
folks signed up to run for the open seat in BESE District 6: two
women and two men. One of the women is a Democrat; the other is an
Independent. Both of the men are Republicans.
District
7 incumbent, Holly Boffy, a Lafayette Republican, will have to battle
for her third and final term with BESE. Boffy is being challenged by
a Gueydan woman, an independent
candidate.
Four
Democrats are vying for the open BESE seat in District 8: two women
and two men.
Mailboxes
filled with campaign postcards and pushcards are coming soon!
The lone statewide incumbent who had not qualified for re-election on the first day of sign-ups was Treasurer John Schroder. He remedied that by moseying into the Secretary of State’s office mid-morning Wednesday.
“I’m
running again; on a platform of common sense, cutting spending, and
eliminating waste,” the Republican from Covington told the quartet
of reporters in attendance on Day 2.
Known
for being a chronic complainer while he served in the state
legislature, Schroder continues to air grievances as part of his
political persona, patterned on his Treasurer predecessor, John Neely
Kennedy.
“Good
policy decisions should not be political, yet Louisiana’s
legislature and administration continue to spend every dime,”
Schroder says. “It doesn’t work any place else, and it’s not
something you do in real life.”
Treasurer John Schroder, after signing up for re-election. Credit: Sue Lincoln
The incumbent Treasurer listed examples of the spending, culled from state capital outlay expenditures on a plethora of local recreational projects, culled from the agenda of the most recent Bond Commission meeting.
“We’re going to be spending $4.9-billion over the next 20 years, with $1.2-billion of it going to non-state projects,” he observed. “If we continue to prioritize our politics, we’ll drive our state into more and more debt because we borrow the money to do all this.”
Saying he has yet to determine where and how he will spend his own campaign funds, Schroder says he has no specific thoughts regarding this race, rather that he’s simply looking forward to doing the work.
Schroder
had drawn a challenger the previous day: Derrick Edwards, the
Democrat who’d made it to the November 2017 state Treasurer runoff.
After signing up Tuesday, Edwards delivered his statement to the
media.
“I’m running for Treasurer to fight for the soul of Louisiana’s economy. I’m the most qualified person, and I will use my financial and legal background to lower the state’s bond rate,” he said. It was a virtual repetition of his talking points from the previous race.
Derrick Edwards, state Treasurer candidate, 8-6-2019. Credit: Sue Lincoln
After concluding his statement with a plea for contributions, Edwards declined to answer questions from the media, saying he needed to get to a meeting elsewhere.
It seemed to be a pattern, as Gwen Collins-Greenup, the Democrat who’d made it to the Secretary of State runoff against Kyle Ardoin in December 2018, had similarly refused interaction with reporters when she qualified on Tuesday. She declined to speak with the media at all.
Yet a third qualifier for Secretary of
State who appeared Wednesday, just minutes before the doors closed,
was anything but reluctant to talk.
Amanda “Jennings” Smith, Secretary of State candidate. Credit: Sue Lincoln
Amanda
“Jennings” Smith is a Republican from Bastrop, who says she is
running because she is “concerned about the influx of new voters,
due to the prison reforms we’ve enacted in Louisiana, along with
security for the ten thousand new voting machines we just got.”
(Louisiana
hasn’t even put out the bid requests yet.)
She
says another reason she is running for Secretary of State is the
position’s oversight of state museums.
“I
want to see the Cajun Navy in museum exhibits all over the state,”
Smith says.
“Proudly
patriotic”, she states she is “self-taught and self-educated,”
and will be campaigning mostly via social media. She claims, “I can
make things go viral.”
Her campaign’s Facebook page is festooned with images of Confederate flags.
The
governor’s race attracted two more candidates on Wednesday: Manuel
Russell Leach and Gary Landrieu.
Manuel Russell Leach, LA Gov. candidate. Credit: Sue Lincoln
Leach
is a Republican from Natchitoches, a contractor who owns Bridgeway
Building Services, but was reluctant to discuss his platform
publicly. After some encouragement, he did reveal that he’s running
because, “My God has placed this on my heart. It’s an obligation
I have to something bigger than ourselves.”
Landrieu,
on the other hand, was all about engaging the media. Although
reticent to discuss his finances, the independent from Metairie
didn’t hesitate to pick a fight with the Secretary of State, and
try to draw reporters into the controversy over the way his name
would be listed on the ballot.
Gary Landrieu, LA Gov. candidate. Credit: Sue Lincoln
“I
went in and tried to put my name on the ballot the way I wanted it –
as ‘Go Gary Landrieu.’ Secretary Ardoin wouldn’t allow it; said
it was a slogan, not a nickname,” Landrieu stated. “My mother was
ready to attest to it as my nickname, but he said no. He told me to
either file or leave.”
Landrieu
says with 750,000 registered independents, he expects to cruise right
into the Governor’s Mansion through the support of the “free
people.” He is allegedly Mitch and Mary’s first cousin (though he
wouldn’t talk about them, preferring to refer to his descendance
from Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, Sieur de Bienville), and says he wants to
move Louisiana off the top of the bad lists. He acknowledges the main
reason we are 49th or lower in everything good is because
“We are poor.”
“So
let’s not be poor anymore,” Landrieu says. “The easiest way to
do that is by making Louisiana into the ‘Las Vegas of the South’,”
through expanding the number of land-based casinos.
Perhaps
the gaming industry is the source of his campaign funding. He’s
been running TV ads, has put up billboards, and pulled up at the
Secretary of State office in an RV emblazoned with his face, name and
link to his campaign website. Yet “GoGary” hasn’t yet filed a
campaign finance report for this election cycle.
The “Go Gary” RV. Credit: Sue Lincoln
I
asked him about that.
“We
filed yesterday. That was the deadline, wasn’t it?” he said with
a smirk and a wink.
No,
Gary, you didn’t. And no, it wasn’t. You haven’t filed since
February 2017, and the most recent finance filing deadline for this
year’s governor’s race was July 15.
“Fill
us in on your source of funds in the meantime?” I asked.
The first day of qualifying for Louisiana’s fall statewide elections seemed to be more focused on signage than on signing up.
Incumbent Kyle Ardoin, who had been the last to qualify in last year’s special election for Secretary of State, wasn’t waiting till the last minute this time. He was the first to pay his fees and sign up to run.
And, as has become more usual, the designated area for the candidates to meet the press showcases a banner that prominently features the name of the current Secretary of State.
Credit: Sue Lincoln
Perhaps it was seeing Ardoin’s name writ large, but while Attorney General Jeff Landry was signing up to run for re-election, his supporters were busy affixing one of his campaign signs to the front of the lectern. Despite members of the media questioning Ardoin and his staff about the propriety of Landry’s sign, it was not removed until Landry left.
Old LA DOJ seal (left), new LA DOJ seal (right).
Another form of signage was on the AG’s mind, though, as more than once he mentioned “designing a new seal” for his department as one of the important accomplishments of his first term.
His contingent kindly brought in coffee and muffins for the media, with the containers festooned in “Jeff Landry for Attorney General” stickers.
Coming in on Jeff Landry’s heels, Eddie Rispone became the initial qualifier for the marquee race of the fall ballot – Louisiana Governor. The construction mogul, a Republican, had his own squad of sign-waving disciples, ready to cheer his every utterance.
“Louisiana
needs a pro-Trump person, the
kind of person that is not beholden to special interests!” Rispone
began, eliciting a chorus of yesses from his all-Caucasian
contingent.
“If
LSU was last in the SEC in academics and athletics, we’d be
demanding they find a new system president and provost,” he
said. “Yet in Louisiana, we stick
with what we always do: we stick with career politicians. We’ve
never had a governor with my skillset. I’ve created thousands of
jobs and have gone on to fill them through education and training. I
recruit the best people. And I believe we can be number one, as long
as we don’t accept the status quo.”
Asked
about the biggest problem facing the state, Rispone said, “We’re
over-taxed. Our taxes have been raised $4-billion in the past four
years, and we have a surplus of $300-million. That’s proof we’re
overtaxed.”
How
does he propose fixing the problem?
“We
need to look at all the taxes, and do so all at once. We should have
a constitutional convention, and create competitive structural
changes. Look at Texas,
Tennessee and Florida.
None of those states have
personal income tax: all have
lower sales tax. Yet people are
moving there, to those states, rather than moving away.”
He
then shifted to a topic that would get his retinue riled up – what
Rispone calls Louisiana’s
“epidemic of illegal immigration.” When one reporter reminded him
that is a federal, not a state-level issue, Rispone got
hot and bothered, raising his voice
and becoming quite shrill.
Eddie Rispone. Credit: Sue Lincoln
“Not
a state issue? That’s what you
say! We have 70,000
illegal aliens
in this state, and they’re committing crimes every week, doing
rapes and pornography. I take exception when you make light of that!”
Asked
how he expected to beat the other major Republican, when both have
similar platforms and are appealing
to like-minded voters, Rispone said, “Look at my resume’. I
create thousands of jobs and fill them with people I’ve helped
educate and train. I recruit the best people. Legislators are excited
to work with me. Louisiana has never had a governor with my skills.”
The
next gubernatorial candidate to qualify was Ralph Abraham. The
congressman from northeast Louisiana was asked how he differs from
fellow Republican Rispone.
“Unlike
my opponent, I’m proud to say I am
serving the people,” Abraham
replied, taking issue
with Rispone’s oft-repeated castigation of “career politicians.”
“Like
my opponent, though,
I do believe
the state can do better. I don’t, however, look in the rearview
mirror for guidance. I look out the windshield and look ahead.”
Ralph Abraham. Credit: Sue Lincoln
I
asked what he
sees through
that windshield, if
he looks five years into the future, upon completing
a term (if elected).
“We
will have lowered
taxes and incentivized
businesses,” Abraham predicted.
“We’ve lost 70,000 residents, including one of my daughters, who
has moved to Texas, and we want ‘em back. It’s because our taxes
are out of control, and when we lower taxes we’ll bring in the
businesses. We can make Louisiana a global power with our oil and gas
resources, and our agriculture and forestry.”
(Did
you notice? Eddie Rispone bewails the influx of 70,000 illegal
“aliens”, while Ralph Abraham laments the loss of 70,000
residents through out-migration. Hmmm.)
Expanding
on the idea of reducing taxes, Abraham continued, “Look
at all our taxes. Our sales tax is high. Our car insurance is high.
Our severance tax is highest in the nation. Texas, unlike Louisiana,
has a thousand people move in each week. It’s
Economics
101, not rocket science or neurosurgery. If you cut taxes, more
people buy into the system.”
I
pointed out that Texas is reliant on
substantial property
taxes to fund government,
which Louisiana – due to the
homestead exemption – doesn’t
have, essentially. Abraham
disagreed.
“Property
taxes in Texas are a little higher than what we have here, but what
they do is provide local-level funding, and benefit local government
in visible ways. Compare that to what inefficiencies in our state
capital
do to push our taxes higher.”
Asked
about criticisms that he’s been
spending time campaigning in
Louisiana, rather than doing the
job he
was elected to do in Washington, DC,
he said, “The time spent around this state is vitally important. No
one place is less or more important than another, and it’s a
challenge to reach all the places. I intend to keep showing up at
events, at lunches, at Rotary Clubs.”
He
also said he had
just spent $2-million
on statewide ad buys.
Ralph
had a fewer followers than Rispone, but they were toting outsized
signs, and they hung around with those bulky billboards, awaiting the
arrival of Governor John Bel Edwards and his entourage.
“Four
more years! Four more years!” the biggest crowd of the day chanted,
as the Governor and First Lady Donna Edwards stepped out of the black
SUV, strolled smiling and waving through the swarm
of supporters, and into the
Secretary of State’s office.
Once
he had paid his fees and signed all the requisite paperwork, the
Democratic incumbent strode confidently to the lectern, radiating
what is sometimes termed
“command presence.”
Gov. John Bel Edwards. Credit: Sue Lincoln
“Here
we are,“ he said, “And compared to when we were last here four
years ago, we have put the largest budget deficit in the history of
the state behind us.”
He
was rewarded with a chorus of “amens”, which increased in number
and volume as the governor ticked off his list of accomplishments.
“We
have now given teachers a much needed and deserved pay raise. Our
economy, specifically our state GDP, is growing at the tenth highest
rate in the country, while we have one of the nation’s lowest
unemployment rates. And the question now is, ‘Do you want to go
back to the failed policies of the past?’ It’s what my opponents
want, whereas there is no doubt that in the last four years we have
become much better off.”
Asked
about his policy proposals and goals, Gov. Edwards said he would like
to maintain the momentum, continuing to invest in education, and in
higher education, in particular. He said he’s intent on preserving
the progress of criminal justice reforms enacted during the past
couple of years, and keep the emphasis on reinvesting the savings
into reducing recidivism.
Asked
what he hopes to have accomplished five years into Louisiana’s
future, the governor said he’s not ready to look to his legacy yet,
since there’s still another term to win and much left to
accomplish.
“I
do hope Louisiana will continue to show how much better government
can be when it operates in a bi-partisan manner, rather than
continually engaging in the divisiveness we see in D.C.”
Louisiana’s
non-partisan blanket primary system, also known as the “jungle
primary,” means elections – and governor’s races, in particular
– attract a menagerie of colorful characters. That arena did not
disappoint on this first day of qualifying.
Patrick
“Live Wire” Landry is a Navy veteran
and a Republican who last ran for
governor in 2003. A resident of New Orleans, his platform includes
“taking over the Causeway, and eliminating tolls.”
“Liberalism
is a bad thing,” he states. “All liberals are atheists, and we
should all be right-minded.”
Landry
says the state should do the right thing and hold to Biblical ideals.
Schools should be teaching that there are “only two genders: those
with the X chromosome and those with the Y chromosome.”
He
has no website, no retinue, and no campaign signs like the previous
three qualifiers displayed. But he is an artist, and so he brought
along his own illustrations as
visuals for show-and-tell.
“People are GULLible” says Patrick “Live Wire” Landry. Credit: Sue Lincoln
“The surplus is manure,” Landry says. Credit: Sue Lincoln
“Democrats belong to the parasite party,” Landry says. Credit: Sue Lincoln
He
is confident, however, that his faith in the Lord guarantees his
campaign will take off.
The
last gubernatorial qualifier of the day was Oscar Omar Dantzler of
Hammond. A Democrat, he claims to have 26 years experience in law
enforcement, although his campaign
materials note that for the past 26 years he’s been a “dedicated
bus driver with the Tangipahoa Parish school system.The same campaign
pamphlet says he is the “owner and manager of a security company,
bail bond company, and lawn care company.”
Oscar Omar Dantzler. Credit: Sue Lincoln
Dantzler
is running on a platform of “equal
protection under the law for all people.” He says that means making
sure all laws are enforced, and states, “The governor oversees
state police, which oversees sheriffs and local police.”
His
goals include “pay raises for all law enforcement,” and seeking
“grants to improve all emergency situations such as hurricane
relief, interstates and roadways.”
It’s
only been one day: there are two more days of qualifying to go. So
why does my brain
keep hearing that comedian whose
routine uses the punchline, “Here’s your sign”?
Last week, the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation awarded $50,000 to New Orleans writer, artist, and curator Kristina Kay Robinson for her work in arts journalism. The 35-year old whose work in various genres has been published in the Atlantic, Elle.com, Guernica, and the Nation is one of eight writers in the country to receive the unrestricted grant.
“The intellectual and creative contributions of visual arts journalists help sustain and shape artists’ careers,” the Foundation’s website explains. “Reviews, articles, blogs, narrative videos and other forms of critical writing provide the first historical record of living arts communities.”
Dorothea and Leo Rabkin. Source: Rabkin Foundation.
Dorothea’s experiences as a young, Jewish art enthusiast in Nazi Germany, Leo’s career as an artist in Manhattan, and the collection of so-called outsider art they built as a couple heavily influenced the Rabkins’ value for arts journalism. Together, these combined experiences point to the way arts institutions perpetuate political oppression by marginalizing work that challenges the popular ideologies driving the social climate.
Arts journalists present alternatives to institutional records and interpretations – pulling artists, practices, theories, and histories out of the margins to the center of discourse. In doing so, they undermine the presumed naturalness of domination – be it ethnic, racial, gender-based, economic, geographic – that is used to justify institutions’ choices to exclude certain types of art by certain types of people from the archive.
For more than a decade, Robinson has been doing just that through various media, through her writing, exhibitions, and performance art. In a recent appearance during the New Museum’s IdeasCity New Orleans, Maryam da Capita – Robinson’s alter ego – held court in a partially renovated cathedral adjacent to a middle school-turned-artist-housing-development in the historic Treme neighborhood.
Wearing a blood red jumpsuit, the lace of her bra peaking over its neckline and the tips of her blonde hair sweeping the ground, de Capita knelt before the Temple of Color and Sound, the instillation that she travels around the fictional nation of Republica which spans the Gulf Coast from Galveston to Miami. Visitors join her in meditation, conversation, and prayer surrounded by seven-day candles, roses, draped cloths, and other sacred imagery of which the Temple is comprised.
Robinson’s alter-ego Maryam de Capita in her installation, “The Temple of Color and Sound.” Courtesy of Robinson.
De Capita is a spiritual leader, cultural diplomat, and a socialite, who, as Robinson explains, “is famous for being famous.” She’s as likely to be offered 100 racks for a club walk-through as she is to be asked for assistance with hex reversal.
Republica, which seceded from the Union following the victory of the German Coast Uprising in 1811, is hardly a utopia. It simply is. A place of Afro-Indigenous deciding, Republica belies moralism in service of reality, albeit an alternative one.
A third-generation Xavier graduate, Robinson completed her MFA in creative writing at UNO before returning to her alma mater to teach World Literature. Concurrent with her professorship, she co-edited and independently published Mixed Company, an anthology of writing and visual art by Black and Brown women based in New Orleans.
In 2017, months before the captivity of African migrants in Libya became international news, Robinson curated “A Disappearance,” an exhibition of drawings by Sudanese artist Khalid Rahman who pulls viewers into Khartoum’s increasingly desolate landscape with his depictions of the empty homes migrants have left behind.
Khalid Rahman’s “Pink City.”
The time in-between her larger productions Robinson has spent writing for national and international publications, in conversation with writers and scholars around the world, and editing Antenna Works’ Room 220 which under her oversight has developed from a nascent digital publication to a consistent stream of writing and programs.
Announcing her reception of the grant, Robinson wrote on her social media, “This comes at a critical time in my artistic and writing practice.” It’s an equally critical time for the city’s cultural sector, which has been destabilized by leadership crises and internal conflict.
Last Fall, the Contemporary Arts Center and the Joan Mitchell Center saw the resignation of their directors – both amidst allegations of racial hostility toward them by staff and board members.
Patrick “Melon” Dufauchard, the city’s most popular cultural documentarian, has been charged with first degree rape, implicating a network of artists, musicians, filmmakers, and national and local publications that have continued to support his work.
A fledgling “racial justice” organization publicly protested the 100-year old Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club’s use of black face paint – coincidentally, on the same day that the City Council voted to not rescind their decision to site a plant in the predominantly Black neighborhood of New Orleans East.
Robinson, in an article published by the Times-Picayune in response to that protest, wrote: “It remains our right as human beings to grapple with these ideas in the way we deem intellectually and artistically fit.”
Heretofore, local publications have placed the power of narrative preservation in the hands of white journalists who have done all but grapple. While there has been an obvious increase in the amount of coverage allotted to work produced by Black artists and cultural workers, little adds critical value to the field and much of it reinforces the preeminence of the white gaze as the ultimate value marker.
With the increasing popularity of politically-engaged work, local journalists have held any artist who markets their allegiance to the Left above critique, in spite of implicit (and sometimes explicit) racism, misogyny, and regional prejudice – an incredible disservice to the culture.
As national attention focuses not only on our culture but on who is writing about culture, it is becoming difficult for publications to describe their consistent editorial decisions to almost exclusively champion white voices as anything other than what they are: institutional efforts to marginalize perspectives that bring their decision-making power into question.
Robinson’s Rabkin Foundation award may signal a necessary turning point in the shaping of New Orleans’ cultural narrative.
By all accounts, life aboard a Spanish galleon in the early 16th Century was brutal. Sailing west in the Gulf of Mexico on the last leg of a conquistador’s voyage halfway around the globe would have left any crew surly.
Forget the close quarters onboard or the fact that the ship’s surgeon was likely a barber or that bathing was considered to cause disease and sickness, more importantly, the food onboard was horrific. With most meals consisting of rancid salted meat, stale biscuits and some moldering horse beans, it’s perhaps not surprising that the conquistadors arrived in the New World in a sour mood.
Rampaging through indigenous cultures up and down the coasts of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea for gold and silver led to the holds of these galleons filled with plunder, but unknown to these men at the time were the real treasures hidden below decks – the seeds to grow tomatoes, paprika and cayenne peppers.
Chefs and well heeled foodies often list devices such as ovens or refrigeration or the fishing net as crucial culinary innovations, but there is scant mention of the boat. Recreational boating didn’t come into existence until the 19th century. Before then, boats were strictly utilized for mobility, commerce and warfare. In these roles, they were also the first manmade mechanism that opened up the world and started to blend and mix it together.
History books nebulously mention “spices” when describing the age of sail and European exploration, but what’s missed is that the boat was likely the most important culinary device ever engineered.
As the French explorers Bienville and his younger brother Iberville bounced like water on hot oil along the Northern Gulf Coast in 1699, frigates had replaced galleons; there still wasn’t a practical solution to determine longitude at sea, and it would take another 66 years before the creation of the world’s first restaurant in Paris.
Taught by indigenous Americans to throw reed castnets for shrimp or to wade out in the shallows for oysters, the bountiful seafood on the Gulf Coast was already known to Bienville as he founded New Orleans on a less damp portion of ground along the Mississippi River in 1718.
As he and his men staked out what is now known as the French Quarter, Bienville likely left his footprints in the mud where the second-oldest restaurant in the United States would eventually rise.
Arnaud’s Restaurant in New Orleans.
The primary ingredients for a shrimp cocktail had already wound their way in the holds of ships from far flung corners and gardens of the world to Europe, but the ingredients would still have to simmer together over time and then make the long voyage back to the New World.
The Aztecs were the first culture to concoct a version of tomato sauce utilizing their native fruit, known as the “tomatl,” but the tomato seeds Cortés and others returned to Spain were only grown ornamentally in Europe for nearly two centuries. With their similarity to the deadly nightshade plant, tomatoes were initially considered poisonous.
It wasn’t until New Orleans was founded that the royal kitchens and houses of Spain, France and Italy were stirring up their own nascent versions of tomato sauce.
The seeds and the recipes percolated outwards in Europe, and by the time the sextant was invented in 1759, Italians had discovered their soils and climate were ideal for growing delicious tomatoes and that they paired well with pasta.
With the dirt of the Mediterranean island of Sardinia still lodged in his boots, a teenaged Francis Vigo joined the Spanish army as a private and sailed to Havana seeking adventure and fortune. In 1775, Vigo transferred from Cuba to the now Spanish held colony of Louisiana and carried with him one of the first rudimentary recipes for ketchup onto the wooden docks and piers on the river in New Orleans.
A statue of Francis Vigo. Courtesy: National Parks Service.
Vigo’s ketchup was simple, consisting of a reduction of crushed tomato juice and beef “gravy”, but new culinary smells and notions were already mixing in the New Orleans air and changing with every immigrant and slave’s first step off of the gangplanks.
Forcibly ejected from Nova Scotia by the British and seeking new homes and lives in the former French colony, the French Acadians settled in the swamps and prairies to the west of New Orleans. More commonly known today as Cajuns, they brought with them a rustic culinary experience from the colder latitudes of Nova Scotia but quickly adopted the native Indian’s flat bottomed canoes known as pirogues to access the seafood bounty of Louisiana.
They were followed by refugees from the slave revolution in the French colony of Haiti who brought with them foodways that had already stewed African and French influences together. The first appearances of traditional French sauces modified with local ingredients likely appeared with these two groups of arrivals in South Louisiana.
Mayonnaise came first in the early European cookbooks and then Antonine Carême defined the first iteration of the “mother sauces” in Paris in 1854, known today as béchamel, velouté, espagnole, hollandaise and tomato sauce.
Antonine Carême’s cookbook.
Perhaps the oldest ancestor to a modern cocktail sauce was remoulade that descended from mayonnaise spiced up by the French with anchovies, gherkins, capers, tarragon, chopped parsley and scallions, but would be unrecognizable to most today with its white coloring, mayonnaise consistency and used primarily as a dressing for salads or cold meats.
As the United States pushed westward, steamboats and paddlewheelers became more common sights on the rivers, while on the Gulf Coast, luggers took on the yeoman’s work of hauling in shrimp and oysters.
Shrimp drying out in the sun. Courtesy: Louisiana Digital Media Archive.
New Orleans drew the eye of two invasion forces arriving by sea – the United States Navy succeeding where the British Navy failed some 50 years earlier and a banker devastated by the Civil War retreated to his wife’s family’s island in the vast swamps to the west of the city to grow hot peppers.
Family lore of the McIlhenny family is that Edmund McIlhenny acquired the seeds to grow these Mexican peppers from a soldier or traveler returning from Vera Cruz around the time of the Mexican-American War.
Edmund McIlhenny
Tabasco hot sauce was first bottled in 1868.
Waves of Italian immigrants were descending into New Orleans at this time, primarily from Sicily, on what were known as the citrus boats delivering lemons. As they trundled off the steamships bringing a robust cuisine that was now heavily infused with tomatoes and tomato sauces, it was shortly afterward that the earliest Creole New Orleans cookbooks had traditional French remoulade sauces suddenly turning red with the introduction of the tomato and its derivations, which eventually included cayenne pepper, paprika, horseradish and Tabasco hot sauce, all served with a wedge of lemon.
What is considered a remoulade sauce, or what’s known as a comeback sauce throughout much of the rest of the Deep South, is attributed by many to Arnaud Cazenave, a French wine purveyor who opened up his namesake restaurant, Arnaud’s in the French Quarter in 1918, which is still serving patrons today. However, remoulade sauces would have been common in the kitchens of many home cooks, and a cocktail sauce is simply a less complex version of a remoulade.
April 1946: Count Arnaud Cazenave posing for a picture at a bar. (Photo by Jerry Cooke/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images/Getty Images)
Like the nautical charts of old with here there be dragons along the edges of the known world, digging into the origination of a recipe is fraught with many unknowns. However what is not unknown is that boats of all stripes carried ingredients, recipes and people from their native lands and introduced them into new cultures and foodways where they bubbled and simmered for centuries. In many cases, these recipes became the indigenous foods of their adopted regions and have become inseparable from them.
This process continues today and can be clearly seen with the fusion of Cajun and Vietnamese foodways brought about by the large population of refugees from the Vietnam War that settled in southern Louisiana. With the similarities to their native Southeast Asia, many of these native Vietnamese and their American-born children have taken to the water to ply the estuaries and the Gulf of Mexico alongside Cajuns for Louisiana shrimp, best served with a delicious cocktail sauce.
