Saturday, March 15, 2025

How A New Generation Can Win Back The Deep South


I. The Elusive 10%

The nation’s final election of 2018 was held last Saturday in Louisiana. As widely expected, Republican Kyle Ardoin, who had been serving as the state’s interim Secretary of State since the resignation of his former boss, can drop the word interim from his job title, at least for another thirteen months. If he intends on serving a full term, Ardoin will have to run in November, which effectively means he’ll have to start campaigning again immediately.

Ardoin beat his Democratic opponent, Gwen Collins-Greenup, by more than nineteen points. “Another black Democrat tries and fails to win a Southern state,” is the headline The Times-Picayune affixed to columnist Jarvis DeBerry’s most recent commentary.

“Supporters of Collins-Greenup were sending out handwritten postcards and holding up hand-lettered signs, and she got 41 percent of the vote. That probably indicates that in a one-on-one contest, a black Democrat can get 40 percent in the South just by being a black Democrat,” DeBerry writes. “It’s that extra 10 percent that’s proved impossible to get.”

DeBerry is correct, at least historically. Those ten points have remained elusive for previous black Democratic candidates in Louisiana, but there are legitimate reasons for optimism.

Collins-Greenup, as DeBerry acknowledges, barely ran a campaign, and that is putting it politely.

Her campaign finance reports during the primary raise serious legal and ethical questions: Back then, her single largest contribution came from a church, and her husband “gifted” the resources it used for its paltry amount of campaign materials.

At least one nonprofit organization in Central Louisiana, Help Planners, distributed push cards styled as sample ballots, claiming that Collins-Greenup had been endorsed by former President Barack Obama.

In 2012, the organization claimed in its Articles of Incorporation, to be governed by the laws that apply to 501(c)(3)s, but it never sought federal recognition from the IRS as a nonprofit and has never publicly disclosed any of its finances, including the independent expenditures made in direct support of specific candidates. Notably, former President Obama never issued any endorsements for any candidates in Louisiana. Help Planners had brazenly conducted a disinformation campaign; in addition to supporting Collins-Greenup, the organization also supported the campaign of its own treasurer, Gerber Porter, for Alexandria City Council.

The “sample ballot” distributed by a nonprofit organization in Central Louisiana, falsely claiming former President Obama had endorsed Gwen Collins-Greenup for Louisiana Secretary of State.

Despite her obscurity, Collins-Greenup secured enough votes to earn a spot in the runoff, which she attributes to her outreach to majority African American churches and which others, perplexingly, believe was the consequence of the alphabet; as a result of her hyphenated surname, she was the first Democrat listed on the ballot.

Regardless though, the most important number of the final election of 2018 is not 41%, the share of the vote Collins-Greenup received. (Collins-Greenup actually earned a higher percentage of votes than Chris Tyson, an African American Democrat who ran a serious and credible campaign for the same office three years ago, though Tyson won more votes, in total, than any African-American candidate in nearly three decades).

The most important number is 17.2%. That’s the number of registered voters in Louisiana who bothered to show up on Dec. 8th, and for reasons we will unpack later, that number is deceptive.  

Voter apathy is more effective than any other weapon in the arsenal used to ensure voter suppression, especially in the Deep South. It may sound counterintuitive, but apathy can often be an expensive strategy. It may mean distributing disinformation, investing in a “spoiler” candidate’s campaign, or, in a state like Louisiana with its jungle primary system, misdirecting voters of an opposing political party to its weakest candidate. 

Collins-Greenup’s failed campaign may reveal less about the historic ceiling facing black Democratic candidates than it does about the new floor for any Democratic candidate. In that respect, there is a silver lining that should provide serious Democratic campaigns with a legitimate case going forward.

Consider this: Republicans raised and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to defeat a Democratic candidate whose campaign was completely broke on the day of the primary election. During the runoff, Kyle Ardoin raised at least $132,000, and yet he still couldn’t break 60% against an unknown Democrat who didn’t have enough money to even advertise.

All told (excluding the in-kind contributions made by the Louisiana Democratic Party), Collins-Greenup raised slightly more than $17,000 during the runoff, and her campaign finance reports became so meticulous (and perhaps paranoid) they included any contribution over a dollar. On a per vote basis, though, donors to Collins-Greenup can claim the highest return on investment than any other statewide campaign in modern Louisiana history.

Of course, it is impossible to know the extent to which race factored into that particular election. Would Ardoin have received more votes if he had been running against a well-known black Democrat? Or could a more well-known black Democrat have closed that elusive ten-point gap?

A few things are certain, however. Ardoin’s campaign understood their clearest pathway to victory was against an obscure candidate from East Feliciana Parish with almost no resources and no organization, and in the weeks leading up to the election, his supporters disseminated polling data that showed that particular candidate, miraculously, in second place.

It may be impossible to quantify, but it is also certain that, in the Deep South, race still very much matters, particularly for Democratic candidates.

In 2007, Bobby Jindal became the first Indian American ever elected governor in the nation’s history and the first “non-white” candidate to win a statewide election in Louisiana since Reconstruction.

Former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal at a prayer rally he co-hosted with a recognized hate group in 2014.

Jindal had tried and failed in a bid for governor only four years prior, losing to the first woman ever elected to the office in Louisiana history, Kathleen Blanco. At the time, some of Jindal’s closest supporters believed that his loss was the result of a racist whisper campaign, but according to “The Intersection of Race and Gender in Election Coverage: What Happens When the Candidates Don’t Fit the Stereotypes?,” a peer-reviewed study of the 2003 election conducted by Dr. Lesa Major of Indiana University and Dr. Renita Coleman of the University of Texas at Austin, media coverage of Jindal’s ethnicity was essentially universally positive. Race and gender were not determinative factors in that election; age and experience were. (Jindal was a 33 year old neophyte running against a woman with 20 years in public office and who had won her most recent statewide campaign for Lt. Governor with 80% of the vote).

Jindal’s victory four years later revealed that Louisiana was capable of electing a non-white candidate, but for a couple of glaringly obvious reasons, it seems somewhat disingenuous to place it within the context of Reconstruction. 

Finally, the last election of 2018 proved there is a reason Republican elected officials across the country and especially in the Deep South are quietly satisfied with low turnout and have become loudly and proudly obsessed with “voter fraud.”    


 

II. LBJ’s Prediction Still Resonates.

Credit: AFP/Getty
As told to Bill Moyers, Moyers and America: A Journalist and His Times.


Our neighbors across the Sabine River learned last week the official results of what was arguably the most consequential and compelling race in the country during the 2018 midterms: The battle between Ted Cruz and Beto O’Rourke was the closest Senate election in the state in forty years; the Republican incumbent only managed to get 50.8% of the vote in a race he had been expected to conquer by double-digits. “While O’Rourke lost, groups like Battleground Texas say that margin of defeat is nearly four times closer than they thought was even possible and it has them itching to get to work on 2020,” the Houston Chronicle reported.

Beto O’Rourke, it is said, lost the battle, but he may have won the war: By Election Day in November, Texas had 543,716 more registered voters than it had in March, and as a result, Democrats picked up two seats in Congress, two seats in the state Senate and a dozen seats in the state House; they now control majorities in both the third and fifth state circuit courts. In Harris County, Democrats picked up a staggering 59 judicial seats; 19 of those were black women. 

Statewide, turnout in Texas increased by 18 points since the 2014 midterms, the sixth-highest increase in the country. They were registering more new voters in a month than they typically registered in an entire year. 

Without question, the O’Rourke campaign’s phenomenal success, even in defeat, is largely attributable to the candidate himself, but it’s also due to an enormous surge in turnout and in voter registration. 

There’s an oft-repeated adage about politics that “demographics are destiny;” it may seem intuitive, but it discounts a reality that those of us in the Deep South know too well (and yes, although Texas is so vast it is impossible to pigeonhole the state as belonging to a particular region, it’s also impossible to ignore the fact that a large portion of the state- politically, culturally, historically, and geographically- belong in the Deep South).

Fear of demographics is a far more powerful force than the destiny of demographics.

Our neighbors in Mississippi can certainly attest to this.

Despite his impressive credentials- as a former U.S. Congressman and former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Mike Espy lost his election to the Senate to Cindy Hyde-Smith, a woman who was caught on tape making a bizarre reference to attending a public hanging and “joking” about suppressing the votes of liberal college students. Then, there were pictures of her glowing at Beauvoir, the “presidential home” of Jefferson Davis. In one, she stands next to a man once associated with an organization identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “hate group;” in another, she dons a Confederate-era hat. She captions her photos, “Mississippi history at its best!” And then, of course, there were reports about Hyde-Smith’s attendance at a “segregation academy,” private schools that were established for the expressed intention to avoid the legal mandate of school integration.

In their one and only debate, the first Senate debate in Mississippi in a decade, Hyde-Smith seemed embarrassingly unprepared, relying on a stack of notes to awkwardly answer even the simplest of questions.

Hyde-Smith, the Republican, beat Espy, the Democrat, by more than six points, which may have been closer than anyone had initially anticipated but not close enough to warrant a serious conversation about Mississippi shaking off its reputation as reliably ruby red.

But it’s a conversation worth having.

The most popular elected official in Mississippi and a man who very well could become its next governor is its current state Attorney General, Jim Hood, a Democrat. There are several differences between Espy and Hood, and, of course, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that Espy is African American and Hood is white.

Last year in Alabama, Doug Jones, a white Democrat, narrowly defeated Republican Roy Moore for a seat in the U.S. Senate, but only after multiple women accused Moore of sexually assaulting them when he was in his thirties and they were teenagers. Jones’s victory is almost entirely attributable to massive turnout by African American women.  

Beto O’Rourke, Oct. 2018. Photo by Mark White, The Bayou Brief.

Beto O’Rourke’s campaign may have been the most consequential in the past two years, because Texas isn’t supposed to be in play for Democrats, at least yet. His loss, by 2.6 points, comes only four years after Wendy Davis was defeated in her closely-watched campaign for governor by more than 20 points. And that changes the national map.

It was also compelling because O’Rourke, a white Democrat, rejected the conventional playbook used by other white Democrats that too often takes minority voters for granted (see Donna Brazile’s book Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House about Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign).  

But the razor-thin defeats of Andrew Gillum for Florida governor and Stacey Abrams for Georgia governor may have been the most heartbreaking, because Gillum and Abrams, both African Americans, seemed on the verge of making history in two states that should be competitive.

Abrams’s loss is particularly hard to stomach because of the efforts of her opponent, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, at voter suppression.

“Democracy failed (in Georgia),” Abrams said. “I know that eight years of systemic disenfranchisement, disinvestment and incompetence had its desired affect on the electoral process in Georgia.”

Indeed, “systemic disenfranchisement, disinvestment, and incompetence” have defined Deep South politics for more than a century.

Mississippi, with a population that is 37% black, hasn’t elected an African American to a statewide office since Reconstruction; neither has Alabama, which is 30% black, or Louisiana, which is now 32.2% black.

From L-R: Mike Espy (MS), Andrew Gillum (FL), Stacey Abrams (GA)

Shortly after signing the Civil Rights Act in 1964, President Lyndon Baines Johnson allegedly said, “We have lost the South for a generation.” The quote has become apocryphal, but it’s not entirely accurate. Bill Moyers, the legendary journalist who served as LBJ’s special assistant and informal chief of staff for most of his tenure, recounted a conversation he had with the president on the night of the bill’s passage:

But (Johnson) also knew that not an inch would be won cheaply. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is to many of us a watershed in American history and one of the most exhilarating triumphs of the Johnson years. With it, blacks gained access to public accommodations across the country. When he signed the act he was euphoric, but late that very night I found him in a melancholy mood as he lay in bed reading the bulldog edition of the Washington Post with headlines celebrating the day. I asked him what was troubling him. “I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come,” he said.

Johnson did not say that Democrats had “lost” the South, but that they had “delivered” it to Republicans, and not “for a generation” but “for a long time to come.” That quote may not be as pithy, but it’s definitely more accurate.

Republicans boast about being the “party of Lincoln,” particularly when confronted with its modern record on race relations and social equality, but the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 formalized a party realignment that had been gestating since Hubert Humphrey’s speech at the 1948 Democratic National Convention. To ignore or obfuscate the tangible policy divergences between the two parties is to reject the full and true historicity of the GOP. As a consequence of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the subsequent dominance of the Southern Strategy in national elections, black voters are now almost exclusively registered as Democrats. 

The efforts to clamp down on the specter of voter fraud must be understood within that demographic and historical context. The tall-tales of black voters engaging in voter fraud, which are told frequently by white Southern conservatives, are a work of fiction— a way of justifying a type of modern-day poll tax through passing onerous Voter ID requirements, shuttering polling precincts in majority-minority neighborhoods, and arbitrarily scrubbing voters from the rolls.


III. The Names Have Changed, But The Story Is The Same.

The title page of the document formalizing the creation of the Republican Party of Louisiana, then also known as the Friends of Universal Suffrage.

We can actually learn more about voter trends and party affiliation from Louisiana than any other state in the Deep South, because Louisiana is the only state in the country that actively tracks demographic details about its registered voters.

“If every single person who is already registered to vote in Louisiana actually showed up to vote,” a state political operative recently told me, “we’d be deep blue state.” That may be a slight exaggeration, particularly when one accounts for the effects of partisan gerrymandering, but it’s true that Democrats, at least statistically, enjoy a 12 point advantage over Republicans. Hypothetically, assuming that independent voters track similarly with the rest of the state, in a heads-up contest between a Republican and a Democrat, the Democratic candidate could capture 51% of any statewide election without needing a single vote from a white independent.

But compulsory voting seems antithetical to American democracy, and for many, the decision not to vote in a particular election is an act of protest, not merely a consequence of apathy.  

In total, as of Dec. 1st, 2018, there are 2,999,232 people registered to vote in Louisiana. Here is how those numbers break down by party and by race:

Data from the Louisiana Secretary of State; Dec. 1, 2018.

Data from the Louisiana Secretary of State; Dec. 1, 2018. 

Some argue the reason there are still more registered Democrats in Louisiana than registered Republicans is because of the prevalence of older white voters who simply never bothered to change their party affiliation. The explanation may have made more sense twenty years ago than it does today. For one, any white voter who registered as a Democrat prior to realignment would now be over the age of 75 (approximately 5.7% of the entire population).

However, it is true that party realignment took longer to take hold in Louisiana than it did across the rest of the Deep South, but the underlying reason is due to one of the state’s most peculiar characteristics, the so-called “jungle primary” system.

When it was instituted by Democratic Gov. Edwin Edwards during his first term in office, the “jungle primary” was intended to better preserve Democratic control by forcing Republican candidates to effectively cannibalize their own base. The idea backfired. Instead of protecting Democrats, the jungle primary made incumbents more vulnerable and ensured that, in a runoff, they would likely square off against the strongest Republican candidate. In 1980, after term limits prevented him from seeking a third consecutive term (Edwards would eventually serve two more terms as governor), he was replaced by Dave Treen, the first Republican governor of the state since Reconstruction. 

Among his many nicknames, Edwards is sometimes sarcastically referred to as the “Father of the Louisiana Republican Party.”

This isn’t entirely fair to Edwards, because although the jungle primary system dramatically accelerated Republican representation, the party had already begun reorganizing well beforehand. After going dormant for more than a half of a century, by 1971, as Philip Uzee noted in his contemporaneous article “The Beginnings of the Louisiana Republican Party,” the LA GOP had 58 working committees and counted 15 elected officials across the state among its ranks.

There may be a number of reasonable differences of opinion between members of the nation’s two major political parties, but the “new” Republican Party of the Deep South and, arguably, across the country, was, at least initially, motivated by racial antipathy. In Moyers’s retelling, in the paragraph immediately following LBJ’s quote, he writes:

Throughout that heady year, even as his own popularity soared, the president saw the gathering storm of a backlash. George Wallace took 34 percent of the presidential vote in liberal Wisconsin, 30 percent in Indiana, and 43 percent in Maryland. Watching the newscasts one night, the president said, “George Wallace makes these working folks think whatever is happening to them is all the Negro’s fault. He runs around throwing gasoline on coals that ought to be dying out; he’d burn the whole goddam house down just to save his separate drinking water.”

During his 1968 bid for the presidency, George Wallace won five states: Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. 

Also in 1968, a year that many believe forever changed America, a freshman student at Louisiana State University began his political career by delivering a series of rants on a corner of campus known as Free Speech Alley. Fifty years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated, and David Duke was shouting his way into the spotlight. 

Despite the fact that Louisiana Republicans may have been late to the party (even Duke was initially registered as a Democrat), realignment in the Deep South ultimately had nothing to do with the jungle primary system. It was, first and foremost, a reaction to the enfranchisement of African American voters, the polar opposite of the original iteration of the Louisiana Republican Party, which was founded months after the end of the Civil War and was also known as “Friends of Universal Suffrage.”

The history lesson here is important, because the original Louisiana Republican Party bears almost no resemblance to the party of today. The founders of the state’s first GOP were a coalition of white antislavery Unionists and “free Negroes,” primarily from New Orleans. They were Radicals (with a capital r) who believed in guaranteeing blacks with the right to vote and ensuring that blacks could also become candidates for and get elected to public office; to that end, they worked actively at registering more than 700,000 black voters.

In 1867, when they met to draft a new state Constitution, the document they produced ensured representation based on population, safeguarded the rights of blacks to vote and hold political office, and opened up all public facilities to blacks, including the state university. 

On June 25th, 1868, Louisiana was officially readmitted into the Union, and for the next eight years, the state remained under Republican control, in large part due to the presence of federal troops. The Compromise of 1877 gave the White House to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Louisiana back to the Redeemer Democrats.

On April 24th, 1877, Reconstruction officially ended, and the federal troops that had been stationed in Louisiana were sent home. 

Republican candidates, including a handful of African Americans, enjoyed some modest victories in the decade and a half that followed, but since that day in April 1877, Louisiana has still yet to elect a black candidate to a statewide office. By 1900, after Louisiana adopted the “Mississippi Plan,” there were only 5,320 registered black voters in the entire state.


IV.  The Realities of Realignment.

The portrait of former Gov. Bobby Jindal that was displayed at the entrance of his office in the state Capitol during the majority of his tenure. 

If you dig deeper into the Louisiana Secretary of State’s data, you’ll discover that the racial bifurcation is astonishing, and party realignment is real. 98.2% of registered Republicans in Louisiana are white, while 40.1% of registered Democrats are white. This is one of the reasons Bobby Jindal’s 2007 victory as Louisiana’s first “non-white” candidate to win statewide office since Reconstruction deserves a footnote.

It is incontrovertibly true, but so is the fact that he belongs to a political party in which only 1.8% of its members are “non-white,” in a state that is now 32.2% black. In the Deep South, the enduring legacy of the Civil War and Reconstruction is not something that can be inherited by or redeemed by the election of a first-generation conservative son of two highly-educated professionals who immigrated to the United States from India in 1970.

This should not be read as a way of diminishing Jindal’s historic accomplishment, but only as a reminder that the American Civil War was fought to end the multi-generational enslavement and disenfranchisement of black Southerners. The significance of referencing Reconstruction as a point in history is that it marked the end of a brief era in which African Americans were elected to statewide offices in the former Confederacy. Former Gov. Jindal may not “believe” in “hyphenated Americans,” but racial discrimination is not something that one can end merely by pretending it doesn’t exist.

When Jarvis DeBerry writes about the elusive ten-points that seem out of reach for black Democrats in Louisiana, he is not arguing that it is impossible for a non-white candidate to win in the state; that has already occurred. He is asking readers to confront a political reality and an enduring consequence of party realignment.       

Today in Louisiana, there are fewer than 23,000 black Republicans registered, whereas there are more than 860,000 white voters registered Republican.  

When you measure white Democrats against the entire voting population of Louisiana, they comprise only 17.2% of the total (or fewer than one in five). To be sure, independent voters, who are an ever-increasing percentage of the state’s electorate, more effectively reflect the state’s demographics, as 32.9% are people of color. 

Despite all of this, for a multitude of reasons, the numbers are there for a black Democrat to win resoundingly in Louisiana, which is why Gwen Collins-Greenup’s lopsided loss actually may point to the new floor and not to an old ceiling.  

According to analysis from the United States Electoral Project, there are approximately 320,675 Louisianians who are eligible to vote but not registered to vote. By March, as a consequence of a recently passed law that restores voting rights to a specific group of ex-felons, that number could grow by another 43,000.

This means that more than 10% of eligible voters in Louisiana cannot vote because they’re simply not registered to vote, and we know, essentially, who these voters are: Approximately 18.8% of them are white men and 21.9% are African American men. Women in Louisiana, by contrast, are registered in much higher numbers: 96.4% of eligible African American women  and 97.7% of eligible white women are already registered.

That’s why the abysmal 17.2% turnout in December’s election is a deceptive number; it’s actually far worse.

In fact, Louisiana was one of only two states in the country (the other being Alaska) in which there were fewer voters in the 2018 midterms in November than there were in 2014. Nationally, turnout increased by 13.4 points; Louisiana declined by 0.1 points.

Louisiana’s Secretary of State claims that the state’s overall turnout in November was 50.78%, but the more accurate number, when accounting for all eligible voters, is 44.8%. The difference is substantial, and it disproportionately affects minority voters. Regardless of political affiliation, black voter turnout was significantly lower than white turnout. 

Fortunately, we also know several of the underlying reasons for decreased turnout, and, with the exceptions of gerrymandering and overturning the Court’s decision in Shelby, we know that many of these issues can be fixed rather simply.

Last June, the Louisiana Advisory Committee for the United States Commission on Civil Rights submitted and published a briefing paper titled “Barriers to Voting in Louisiana.” The document outlines and analyzes a number of unnecessary impediments the state has enacted that have directly resulted in voter suppression and decreased turnout. It also includes testimony from the newly-elected Louisiana Secretary of State, Kyle Ardoin, that strongly suggests he either fundamentally misapprehended a critical part of the law or was willfully engaging in obfuscation in order to confuse a simple issue. 

During the past six years, the Louisiana Secretary of State’s office has closed approximately 103 polling places, and according to the testimony provided to the committee, those closures have made it significantly and specifically more burdensome for voters in majority-minority neighborhoods. Quoting (emphasis added): 

(A)lthough the law dictates that only the number of registered voters should be related to the number of polling locations in a geographical area such as a precinct, a census tract, or a Parish, a statistical analysis of the data from Louisiana shows that the racial make-up of an area is a predictor of the number of polling locations in that area.

The testimony of Ms. Williams as well as her subsequent analysis shows that the number of polling locations per 1,000 registered voters in a census tract is negatively related to the number of black residents in that census tract. This indicates that there are fewer polling locations per voter in a geographical area if that area has more black residents. This in turn implies that black residents face longer travel distances to reach a polling location.

Kyle Ardoin, who was then serving as former Sec. Tom Schedler’s First Assistant, told the committee that the closures were necessary due to budget constraints, claiming that each polling place costs the state $1,300. It is worth noting the State of Louisiana spent more taxpayer money to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit against Sec. Schedler than it “saved” by closing all 103 polling locations.

When state Sen. Karen Carter-Peterson inquired about the closure of a specific polling place in New Orleans, which required people without access to transportation to walk 1.5 miles to vote, Ardoin initially claimed “no one (in his office) could find out what (Carter-Peterson) was talking about,” and then disclosed he was aware of “a similar instance there” in which a polling place was moved two miles from its original location.

He attempted to rationalize the decision, stating, “I find it hard to believe that in Orleans, the Clerk of Court, the City Council, the Mayor, would try to disenfranchise people.” In fact, neither the City Council nor the Mayor possess any statutory authority or oversight of the location of polling places; ultimately, recommendations are made by a five-member advisory committee and decided by the Secretary of State. Ardoin, the commission concluded, lacked clarity on the law. The commission also recommended the five-member advisory or “governing committee” be restructured in order to ensure greater accountability from voters (currently, three of the five members of each parish’s committee are unelected appointees).

More urgently, though left unsaid, Louisiana needs to invest in opening additional polling locations in majority-minority communities in order to ensure the same, equitable access provided to citizens living in majority white neighborhoods. 

The commission also noted that although early voting continues to be increasingly popular, the state operates a dramatically small number of early voting locations. There are only 92 places spread over 64 parishes and 3,904 precincts. Alarmingly, there are only four locations in each of the state’s three most populated parishes. Its fourth most populated, Caddo Parish, has only one location. Lafayette, the state’s fourth largest city, also has just one location. All told, that means 37% of the state’s population, those who live in its largest and most diverse urban communities, have access to only 15% of its early voting locations. Ardoin, again, stated the Secretary of State’s office was constrained by its budget, claiming that each early voting location costs between $30,000 to $60,000 to open and at least $10,000 a year to operate. Regardless, the numbers prove the Secretary of State has disproportionately invested in making it easier for rural, predominately white, and predominately conservative voters to take advantage of early voting. 

“Show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value,” former Vice President Joe Biden frequently says. 

There are other issues that could be easily solved: Louisiana could provide citizens the ability to register on the day of an election, as other states have done successfully, or, at the very least, it could reduce the 30-day “waiting period” it now arbitrarily imposes on new voters. It could also loosen Voter ID restrictions, which disproportionately affect the poor, the elderly, and the disabled.


V. Hack Voter Suppression, Not Elections.



Of course, it is highly unlikely that Kyle Ardoin will do anything during the next thirteen months to actually make it easier for people to vote or to ensure more equitable access to the polls. As he made abundantly clear on the campaign trail, he is more than satisfied with the way things are going right now, thank you very much, even if that means scratching plans to replace 10,000 voting machines. 

After the Civil War, the Republican Party of Louisiana was animated by a fundamental belief in expanding access to democracy to those who had been unjustly disenfranchised. They were not all saints or angels, and as in any political party, they had their fair share of bad actors and repugnant decisions. But they believed in empowering African American men with the right to vote (Remember, the 19th Amendment wasn’t passed until 1920, and embarrassingly, Louisiana didn’t actually ratify it until 1971).

The original LA GOP helped register more than 700,000 black voters; more than 32% of its members were black; four of the nine men who wrote the state’s 1867 Constitution were black. This was a political party that vehemently rejected the Confederacy and regarded its leaders as traitors, not as honorable war heroes.

The same can be said about the other Deep South chapters of “the party of Lincoln.” When Reconstruction ended, so too did the hopes of that iteration of Southern Republicanism. The party eventually became so insignificant in Louisiana that it didn’t compete in a single election for fifty years. By the time it reemerged in the Deep South, it was only to fill the vacuum created by a Democratic Party who had finally, if not begrudgingly, decided to embrace the cause of civil rights.

This matters. History is relevant. “The past is not dead. It’s not even past.”

When former President George H.W. Bush passed away on the final day of November this year, many Americans were reminded of a more civil, more decent, more sophisticated, and more high-minded version of the political party now led by Donald Trump, but many also could not forget the infamous Willie Horton commercial and the ways in which his campaign utilized racist dog whistles to lock up the election. The man behind that ad, Lee Atwater, a son of the South, died from brain cancer when he was just forty years old, but before his death, he personally and publicly apologized for the ad, regretting its “naked cruelty.” 

A few days after former President Bush’s death, The Washington Post‘s Eugene Scott reflected on the ways in which the ad continues to resonate today:

But that does not mean that Bush’s presidency was without the accusations of racism that led so many black Americans to look at the GOP negatively then and perhaps even more so today. And for many of those black Americans, understanding why so many within their community look at Trump’s party negatively starts with looking to GOP leaders of the past.

Scott’s explanation is imminently reasonable; he is not reflexively asserting that all Republicans are racists or even that the late former president was a racist. He is, however, explaining why history, when it is told responsibly and no matter how hard it tries, cannot overlook or truly forgive the “naked cruelty” of racism. 

The question still lingers, “How can a new generation win back the Deep South?” 

The easiest way- that is, the way that requires the least amount of work- is to stand back and allow those who traffic in racial resentment and fear slowly but surely get crushed by a country that is inexorably changing. Yes, fear of demographics is a far more powerful force than the destiny of demographics, at least in the short-term, but ultimately, you cannot escape fate. A political party that is 98.2% white cannot sustain itself forever in a state that is increasingly more diverse, more politically-aware, and more connected to the outside world than even someone as prescient as LBJ could have ever imagined.

That’s less of a war of attrition though than it is a waiting game. And even though it may be easiest for most people to just sit back and watch an entire ideology sputter into obsolescence after exhausting the last remaining fumes of a tank once filled with theories about forged birth certificates, caravans of invading terrorists disguised as Hispanic refugees, and busloads of black women from Mississippi driving into Alabama to ensure the candidate accused of child molestation loses an election that God told him he would win, “waiting it out” guarantees that the most vulnerable and the most marginalized members of our communities will continue to suffer.

Therefore, it’s really not an option.

The only real option, the least painful and the quickest solution, is to hack voter suppression  through a coordinated, fully-funded, integrated, and principled counterattack. We know, through hard evidence, that the party currently in control of the overwhelming majority of the Deep South is vastly outnumbered by people who reject their brand of politics. If it isn’t already clear by now, it should be: Their strategy is simple. They’ve spun and sold a story of how American democracy is existentially threatened by fraudulent voters. Shortly after he won the presidency by losing the popular vote by three million and still capturing the Electoral College, Donald Trump told the American public that he would have won the popular vote if it weren’t for the millions of fraudulent votes received by Sec. Clinton. It’s lunacy, but among his base, the story works.

Hacking voter suppression, by the way, doesn’t mean doing anything illegal or unethical. Hacking, in this context, does not mean stealing; it means adhering to Newton’s Third Law: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.   

For example, when the Louisiana Secretary of State argues they cannot open additional early voting locations in the state’s largest cities and parishes, it means that city and parish governments volunteer to pony up the funding themselves. When a city is told it cannot waive bus fares on Election Day, it means supporting and implementing a network of nonpartisan 501(c)(3) organizations that will cover transportation costs to those who need it. When a polling location is closed or consolidated, it means filing public records requests for every single document, each and every time. It means disseminating voter education information more effectively.  

It means working together, as a region, so that voting rights advocates can learn from one another and so that we can more effectively share our talent, resources, and networks. The most significant challenge confronting progressives in Louisiana is not a lack of interest; it is fragmentation, a lack of coordination, and it’s not the result of too many big egos in too small of a state. It’s because well-intentioned people simply aren’t aware of the ways in which their advocacy can be complemented and enriched by other well-intentioned people, and because far too many people are under the mistaken impression that a political party chooses its candidates, when, in reality, candidates choose their party.

In 2018, Southern Democrats and progressives suffered a string of big-ticket losses. Some of them were heartbreaking; some of them were surprisingly close; others were depressingly familiar. But there were a small handful that flipped the script, and there was at least one that taught us sometimes, when you decide to “go big or go home,” that home could be 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

One final note: Hacking suppression may also mean paying all of the costs necessary to ensure someone who needs an ID to vote can have that ID, which is what one brand-new organization in Louisiana will help to provide. That story is next. 

Which Saints deserve Pro Bowl bids?

Tied for the best record in the league and currently holding the #1 seed in the NFC, the Saints seem like a strong bet to garner a big number of Pro Bowl bids this year. And they have a lot of players who are deserving– probably more on offense, obviously, as they have one of the league’s most high-flying attacks, but the strong performance of the defense is in part due to a number of worthy players as well. Without further ado, let’s go position by position. QUARTERBACK Drew Brees is a legitimate MVP candidate and will be the NFC’s Pro Bowl starter. (The game went back to an AFC-NFC format in 2016 after experimenting for three years, although fan voting is still irrespective of conference.) He’s playing at level this year that only Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes is approximating; Brees is also leading the fan voting. Unfortunately, while Taysom Hill has been a valuable part of the team on both offense and special teams, he probably hasn’t done enough to be one of the NFC’s three representatives at quarterback. RUNNING BACK The top five running backs in yards from scrimmage all come from the NFC. Alvin Kamara is one of those five. Unfortunately, there are only three slots for running back in each conference. That means two of Ezekiel Elliott, Saquon Barkley, Todd Gurley, Christian McCaffrey, and Kamara will lose out. Kamara might ride a wave of Saints sentiment, but unfortunately he’s the fifth of those five in yards from scrimmage. (He’s second in touchdowns, though.) I’d like to see a way to fit Kamara in, and I believe he deserves it, but I’m about 50/50 on whether he will get in right now. Mark Ingram has been fine, but he’s nowhere near those top five (and his four-game suspension certainly didn’t help). FULLBACK I honestly have no idea how the NFC’s fullback will be selected, so I suppose Zach Line has a reasonable shot. WIDE RECEIVER Michael Thomas is a lock for one of the four NFC WR slots, as he’s second in the league in receptions, fifth in receiving yards, and first by a mile in catch rate among non-RBs (102/1218/86.4%). Nobody else is close; Tre’Quan Smith’s 371 receiving yards are second on the team at the position. TIGHT END Ben Watson leads the team with 31 receptions for 337 yards. Dan Arnold and Josh Hill’s combined totals don’t reach either. That’s not nearly enough for one of the two NFC tight end slots. (George Kittle and Zach Ertz are miles ahead of everyone else for those spots.) OFFENSIVE LINE This one has been the subject of fascination for me, because the honest truth is, the Saints have an extremely strong offensive line with no weak points. All five starters have played at a level worthy of the Pro Bowl, but it’s even more unlikely for that to happen than it was for all four Saints linebackers to make the Pro Bowl way back in 1992. So which ones are most likely to make it, and which ones would I choose? This actually ended up being simpler than I expected it to be. Terron Armstead has missed four games this season; Andrus Peat has missed three. Armstead has played about 65% of the Saints’ snaps on offense; Peat about 70%. They’ve both been great when they’ve played, but Max Unger and Ryan Ramczyk haven’t missed a single one of New Orleans’ 858 snaps, and Larry Warford has only missed 18. I think those are the three most likely to actually be voted in, too. Pro Bowl voting on the offensive line often manifests in the form of team success and reputation. The offense, and the Saints’ overall record, is certainly of a caliber to get them those votes. Warford was the line’s sole representative last year. Unger was a two-time Pro Bowl pick with Seattle (and All-Pro in 2012), but hasn’t gotten any such recognition with New Orleans. And Ramczyk was a first-round pick last year who was most notable as a rookie for starting the year at left tackle, moving to right tackle, playing every snap, and doing so at a remarkably high level for a rookie. He’s been even better this year, and is well deserving of the honor. (Each conference gets three tackles, three guards, and two centers.) That said, Armstead is, at last count, the leading vote-getter at tackle in the NFC, so he may well get a nod, especially in a year where many of the usual suspects have had down years or been injured (Tyron Smith and Trent Williams come to mind). You know what? I think I’ve talked myself into this. Let’s give Terron Armstead a selection, too. (Sorry, Andrus Peat.) Unger is also leading the fan vote at center, a strong indicator for his chances to be selected (especially with NFC perennial representative Travis Frederick missing the entire season). DEFENSIVE END Cameron Jordan is one of the league’s most relentless defensive linemen, playing nearly every snap and tied for second in the conference with 12 sacks. Last year’s All-Pro (and three-time Pro Bowler) should be an easy selection for one of the three NFC defensive end spots. While Marcus Davenport has been productive on a per-snap basis, between his injury and how he was brought along slowly early in the season, he just hasn’t done enough for a spot. And opposite starting end Alex Okafor is capable, but not Pro Bowl talent. DEFENSIVE TACKLE Perhaps less obvious than Jordan, but also deserving, is Sheldon Rankins, who’s never made a Pro Bowl before but stepped up his game this year, becoming a fearsome interior pass rusher. Playing on an 11-2 team, with some highlight sacks, and an eight-sack total that only trails Aaron Donald and DeForest Buckner among NFC defensive tackles. While I’m less confident he’ll be selected than Jordan, if largely because name recognition so often matters to voters, he’s very much deserving as a crucial part of a defense that has been on lockdown for the stretch run. And he’s not just a pass rusher, but pretty mean in coverage, too: LINEBACKER Each conference gets three spots for outside linebacker and two for inside linebacker. This can make it difficult for off-ball linebackers to get recognition, as inside linebacker spots are limited and outside linebacker spots often go to pass rushers in 3-4 defenses who rack up gaudy sack totals. That said, Demario Davis has been one of the best off-ball linebackers in the league this year, exactly the kind of player the Saints were trying to get in last year’s free-agent linebacker spending spree but didn’t quite land then. He’s been a sure tackling machine– leading the team by a wide margin– strong at diagnosing and stuffing runs, defending running backs in the passing game, and even chipping in three sacks and two forced fumbles. He’s as deserving of the honor as any off-ball linebacker in the league. Unfortunately, he’s listed on the fan ballot as an outside linebacker, which may make it difficult for him to beat out the sack masters. Alex Anzalone is on the fan ballot for the Saints at inside linebacker; he’s been solid, with a couple of signature plays, especially as he’s moved into a clear starting role. It’s probably not enough to beat out stalwarts like Luke Kuechly and Bobby Wagner, though. DEFENSIVE BACK Each conference selects four cornerbacks and three safeties. As a rookie, Marshon Lattimore was a complete lockdown corner, earning Pro Bowl recognition by almost single-handedly turning the pass defense from an atrocious unit into a respectable one. He had a shakier start to the year– as did most of the pass defense– but he rounded back into his usual form after the first few weeks. Even better, he hasn’t missed the time for injury he did last season, when he missed three games and played around 70% of the total defensive snaps. (This year he’s at nearly 90%, with only Marcus Williams playing more for the Saints.) That said, I’m a little unsure of his chances, as the field is stacked with both previous selections playing well (Patrick Peterson, Xavier Rhodes, Darius Slay) and young guys who have taken a serious leap forward this year (Byron Jones, Kyle Fuller). Eli Apple has been good since he arrived from the Giants, shoring up one of the team’s weakest spots, but he’s probably not Pro Bowl-level good, especially considering he’s only played 7 games for New Orleans after falling out of favor in New York. Patrick Robinson was a strong nickel corner before he got hurt, but it’s less common for those guys to get recognition. P.J. Williams has been better at making plays since moving inside, but he’s not going to get a Pro Bowl nomination. At safety, Marcus Williams has mostly been good, although he’s made some visible mistakes, particularly earlier in the year, and those tend to stick out in fans’ minds. He also doesn’t have the big numbers of some of the other safeties, particularly NFC leading vote-getter Eddie Jackson. I do think he’s good and has the talent to be deserving, although he hasn’t taken the kind of step forward this year I had hoped he would. Vonn Bell has been a tackling machine at strong safety, but inexplicably, Kurt Coleman is listed on the ballot as the starter instead of him. Bell is playing about… no, he’s played exactly twice as many snaps as Coleman on defense this season (590 to 295), and he’s trending upward in that regard: The split between Bell and Coleman was 75/25 the previous two weeks, and 80/20 against Tampa Bay. SPECIAL TEAMS Wil Lutz is the leading vote-getter in the league at kicker. He’s also leading the league in scoring, between having kicked the second-most extra points in the league and having only missed one field goal all year. Kicker voting can be somewhat arbitrary, but I believe he’s a deserving choice. Thomas Morstead is having a good year, but in the NFC, Michael Dickson (SEA), Andy Lee (ARI), and Cameron Johnston (PHI) have higher gross and net averages. Plus, the Saints offense is so good that Morstead has punted only about half as often as the other guys. Justin Hardee is the Saints’ ballot option for special teams. I mean, I voted for him, but I couldn’t tell you how the actual process will go. Last year’s selection was Arizona’s Budda Baker, who isn’t on the ballot at the position; Mark Nzeocha of the 49ers is currently leading the fan voting in the NFC. Taysom Hill is on the ballot at return specialist; he might have had more success if he was listed as the special teamer. He’s got a reasonable kick return average, but nothing among the league leaders, and doesn’t return punts (one punt return this year). Tarik Cohen is currently leading the NFC votes, and also leads the NFC in punt return average. So, if you’re keeping score, I’m not certain my selections will be the final ones, but here’s who I’d choose. Bolded means I think they’re locks or close to it. Italics mean I think they have a strong shot:
  • Drew Brees
  • Alvin Kamara
  • Michael Thomas
  • Terron Armstead
  • Ryan Ramczyk
  • Larry Warford
  • Max Unger
  • Cameron Jordan
  • Sheldon Rankins
  • Demario Davis
  • Marshon Lattimore
  • Wil Lutz
Well, twelve is a lot of selections. (Last year, Pittsburgh led the league with eight; New Orleans had six.) This is a fairly optimistic version of the list, where every close case I could think of made it, and I do think all of these players are deserving. Looking at the particular selections I chose and trying to estimate a rough probability on them, a more realistic number is nine, which would still be a very strong showing. The Saints are fully deserving of leading the league in Pro Bowl selections. Fan voting on the Pro Bowl continues through Thursday; the selections will be announced on Tuesday.

A second-half return to form puts the Saints back on track

The Saints opened this game with the kind of sluggishness we’ve seen from them frequently in the early going, especially on the road. Thanks in part to a long pass to Mike Evans where he beat Marshon Lattimore in coverage, the Buccaneers scored on the first drive of the game. After some back-and-forth where not much happened except the Saints kicking a field goal, Drew Brees threw another baffling interception on an attempted screen pass where he couldn’t even see his target. The Bucs turned that into a touchdown and took a 14-3 halftime lead. Coming out for the second half, the Saints almost immediately gave the ball away when Brees fumbled on a sack. That was the end of the Bucs’ good fortune, though, as their offense stalled out and they missed the field goal. The Saints found their groove from there: Although the next offensive possession was a three-and-out, the Saints then came up with a big play of their own, as Taysom Hill blocked a punt to give the Saints a short field.
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They scored three touchdowns on their next three drives, turning a 14-3 deficit into a 25-14 lead. (They would add a late field goal to the total.) The defense shut down Tampa from here, only allowing one first down (which the Bucs quickly squandered with penalties) until the final desperation drive with 1:12 left. The Saints’ defensive prowess has been an underrated aspect of their recent run. They haven’t surrendered more than 17 points in their last five games, including to the high-powered Falcons and Bucs offenses. The unit has taken a real step forward with the addition and integration of Eli Apple, who’s on his seventh game with the team. On Sunday, Apple deflected two passes, and his coverage was instrumental in shutting down Bucs second receiver Chris Godwin, who only caught one pass on his 10 targets.
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The pass rush has been improved as well, in part because the coverage can hold longer since Apple arrived, but also due to the continued improvement of the younger players on the unit. Sheldon Rankins is the most obvious example, having turned into an all-star interior rusher; he picked up his eighth sack of the season, putting him along the league leaders among defensive tackles, behind only DeForest Buckner and the preposterous Aaron Donald (at 16.5 going into Sunday night’s game). David Onyemata and Marcus Davenport have been taking steps forward as well, nearly picking up sacks today and being consistently disruptive.
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Cameron Jordan also pitched in two sacks, pushing his season total to 12, among the league leaders. The defensive line as a whole did a great job of keeping the heat on, drawing a number of holding penalties in addition to the sacks and stops. Even though the Saints are known for their offense, it’s the defense that’s kept them in games recently when the offense has struggled. The Saints were nearly able to pull off the win in Dallas last Thursday largely because the defense held the Cowboys to 13 points; here again, keeping a Bucs offense in check that scored 48 points against the Saints last time around was a major key to victory. One note to add: After giving up the long pass to Mike Evans on the first drive of the game, Marshon Lattimore didn’t surrender another catch to Evans. (Others were credited with coverage on Evans’ other three catches.) The offense didn’t do anything spectacular, but once they got on a roll, they executed their usual gameplan well. Strong running from Mark Ingram and Alvin Kamara, a reliably open Michael Thomas (11 catches on 13 targets), and the occasional play those to a lesser-known target set up by those earlier plays (like the touchdown pass to Zach Line). Steady, consistent execution by a superior unit, with the occasional wrinkle, is a strong formula for success for the Saints, and they pulled it off well in the second half. Once again, the Saints went for it on a crucial fourth down. This time on fourth-and-goal from the 1, Brees successfully leaped the offensive line to sneak across a touchdown. (Strangely, despite the frequency with which Brees does this at the goal line, the Bucs didn’t have anyone lined up over the middle to go over the top and try to meet him in the air.) Simply securing the win was a major boon for the Saints, for two major reasons: First, the win secured the NFC South title for the second consecutive year. (Carolina’s lost, their fifth straight, also would have served that purpose.) Second, the Bears shutting down the Rams in Chicago Sunday night puts the Saints back in control for the 1 seed. (It also suggests that the Rams will again be fallible against the right team; with home-field advantage, the Saints should be favored against either the Bears or the Rams in the playoffs.) A little bonus coming your way this week: Pro Bowl votes will be tabulated soon and selections announced, and the Saints, sitting at 11-2 (tied for the NFL’s best record) and the top seed in the NFC, figure to have a substantial number of selections. I’ll be looking at the roster in a couple of days and determining who deserves consideration. (Although hopefully none of them will get to actually play in the game, as the team prepares for the Super Bowl instead.)

Book Review | “Robert Mueller: Errand Boy for the New World Order” by LA state Sen. John Milkovich

Illustration by The Bayou Brief, based on the film “Being John Malkovich.”

Rating: ½ * out of five stars.


Several weeks ago, Jim Engster, the inveterate Louisiana talk radio host, historiographer, and pantomath of state politics, invited me on his morning show to discuss the news of the day. I think, by now, I qualify as one of his regulars (We spoke just only a few days ago). Here’s usually how it works: His producer will call me about five minutes beforehand, and I’ll get to quietly listen in on the tail-end of his interview with the previous panelists or guest. On that particular morning, I got punched into the show, and because I was in Alexandria at the time, I hadn’t already been listening in. I had no idea who the other guest was. 

For some reason, though, they were discussing Whitey Bulger and then Pan Am 103 and then Ruby Ridge, which, obviously had nothing to do with the news of the day.

“I still don’t understand how this has anything to do with Robert Mueller,” Engster then said, several times. 

I wondered why he hadn’t just moved onto the next caller, before realizing the person on the other end of the line wasn’t a caller; it had to be his guest.

The mystery was quickly solved. “Well, thank you to state Sen. John Milkovich, whose new book is called Robert Mueller: Errand Boy for the New World Order.” 

The overtly deranged title immediately convinced me. “I guess I’ll have to buy his book,” I told Engster when we went on the air. After all, this was a book written by a sitting Louisiana state Senator, a man who was elected in 2015 as a Democrat.   

Milkovich may be registered as a Democrat, but he is arguably the most radical conservative member of the entire state legislature: He is vehemently anti-gay and anti-choice. He authored unconstitutional legislation seeking to criminalize abortions after fifteen weeks of pregnancy and has frequently spoken about his desire to overturn Roe v. Wade. Recently, he was also the lone member of the state Senate to vote against a balanced budget compromise that funded TOPS and healthcare, because, among other things, of his opposition to Common Core, which he contends advances an atheist agenda.

Over the summer, after the legislature finally adjourned, Milkovich turned his attention to writing an elaborate conspiracy theory about Special Counsel Robert Mueller, a theory, he tells readers, that he had been initially inspired to develop after a brief discussion with an unnamed, uneducated, and apparently homeless man.

But make no mistake: This is not gonzo journalism. It is an overdose of meandering and solipsistic rants, a glimpse into the gutters of the internet that poison our politics, and a damning indictment of the competence and mental stability of man in a position of public trust.

Cover of Louisiana state Sen. John Milkovich’s new book.
 

Being John Milkovich

I.

In describing A.J. Liebling’s classic The Earl of Louisiana to a friend of mine who had never read the book, James Carville cut right to the chase: “It’s a book about a man from New York who travels to Louisiana to cover our ‘insane’ governor, Earl K. Long, and discovers, while he’s here, that Earl Long may have been the only sane person in the entire state.” 

Uncle Earl, famously, escaped from the “looney bin,” which is probably a more proper euphemism for the section of the discount bookstore to which Robert Mueller: Errand Boy for the New World Order belongs than it is for an institution that helps those struggling with mental illness.

If this sounds cruel and insensitive, remember, this is a state Senator, a person who possesses political clout and power by mere virtue of his position, attempting to seriously convince readers that he is somehow privy to an elaborate government conspiracy about the “Deep State” that centers around a multi-decade coverup by Robert Mueller. It is an egregious effort to delegitimize the investigation into serious allegations that Donald Trump and members of his campaign conspired with associates of the Russian government and hackers in order to steal documents and emails from Trump’s opponent, spread false information through an expansive social media campaign, and interfere with the 2016 election.

Those familiar with the genre of Christian eschatological fiction- the kind of books authored by people like John Hagee- will undoubtedly recognize the influence. Like those books, Robert Mueller: Errand Boy for the New World Order relies on readers to subscribe to a set of dubious beliefs about an imminent apocalypse based on a convoluted, ignorant, and absurdist understanding of geopolitics and domestic policymaking.

II.

We are supposed to assume that people like state Sen. Milkovich must be smart, not only because he managed to get elected but also because he earned good grades in graduate school.

A Montana native, John Milkovich made Louisiana home more than three decades ago, after graduating in the top 10% of his class at LSU Law and serving on the LSU Law Review. He and his wife Carola, who is also an attorney, eventually settled in Keithville, an unincorporated exurb southwest of Shreveport, near the border of Caddo and DeSoto parishes.

For the past twenty years, he has served on the Board of Directors of Shreveport Community Church, a far-right conservative mega-church led by the charismatic preacher Denny Duron. Duron is such a singularly important figure in his life that he is one of only four people who earns a mention on the state Senator’s official biography page. According to a former member of the church, Milkovich has at least one thing in common with the similarly-named celebrity. Like John Malkovich, John Milkovich is also an actor, appearing infrequently in church performances as a character known as “Verse Man.”

Prior to his election to the state Senate, Milkovich had run twice, unsuccessfully, for U.S. Congress, losing in 2002 to incumbent Jim McCrery by more than 45 points and in 2008 to Paul Carmouche by more than 21 points in the Democratic primary (the election was eventually won by Republican John Fleming, and Louisiana’s brief flirtation with party primaries ended shortly thereafter). During both campaigns, Milkovich relied heavily on personal loans and donations from family members and friends in Montana, South Dakota, and Washington State.

“He’s a Democrat because that’s the only way he could ever get elected in that district,” a person closely affiliated with his campaign candidly acknowledged to me shortly after his election. The person was proud of the bait and switch, but to me, that was nothing more than an overt admission that Milkovich had been running the worst kind of cynical and unprincipled campaign. There was little virtue to be found in someone who would engage in duplicity.

III.

On the book’s very first page, Milkovich writes, “This author, and millions of Americans, are indebted to Dr. Jerome Corsi, Ph.D., for his trenchant insights expressed in Killing the Deep State.” Corsi, for those unfamiliar, is one of the country’s notorious conspiracy theorists. He believes former President Barack Obama forged his own birth certificate, that 9/11 was an inside job, that John McCain was supported by al-Qaeda, and that Adolph Hitler staged his own death and escaped to Argentina, among other things. Currently, Corsi is under investigation by Mueller for allegedly conspiring with Wikileaks and Roger Stone in order to pass along advanced information to the Trump campaign about stolen information from the Clinton campaign. Corsi had initially accepted and then rejected a plea agreement and asserts he never willfully misled investigators. 

Corsi’s name on the first page of Milkovich’s book should be enough for a discerning reader to discredit the remaining 165 pages, but in the event that you are still patient enough to continue, consider the argument Milkovich constructs in his very first chapter: Robert Mueller was an Assistant United States Attorney in Boston during at least a portion of Whitey Bulger’s reign of terror. There is no direct connection between Bulger’s crimes and Mueller’s work as an assistant attorney, except that Mueller was “geographically and temporally” in Boston.

In Chapter Two, Milkovich spends an inordinate amount of attention on the hijacking of Pan Am 103, though it’s completely unclear how or why Mueller is involved at all until, toward the end of the chapter, he obliquely references “research” conducted by a 9/11 Truther named Kevin Ryan, a former lab tech in South Bend, Indiana. Ryan claims, without evidence, that Mueller covered up evidence of a CIA drug-smuggling ring.

Then, there are chapters about BCCI, Ruby Ridge, 9/11, Anthrax, and Weapons of Mass Destruction, all of which seem to be constructed from the same web of repeatedly and thoroughly discredited fringe conspiracy theorists that Milkovich believes to be professional investigative journalists.

Milkovich’s book attempts, weakly, to present some sort of Grand Unifying Theory about Robert Mueller, but instead, he offers a disjointed and incoherent story that calls into question his credibility and competence. It’s like Homeland‘s Carrie Mathison when she is on her meds.     

IV.

Ultimately, though, Milkovich’s book isn’t really about Robert Mueller; it’s an attempt to vindicate the plight of a friend of his from Keithville, a dentist named David Graham, who Milkovich strongly implies was murdered by the government for threatening to self-publish a book about 9/11 that would have conclusively revealed the dentist had alerted the FBI of the presence of two of the nineteen hijackers in Shreveport.

Milkovich, who provided the eulogy at Graham’s funeral, has been attempting to expose the “truth” for more than a decade, according to KSLA. He suggests the government “poisoned” the dentist at a bar near Lake Conroe, Texas, which eventually resulted in his death.

“(T)here is no evidence those terror suspects, Nawaf Al-Hazi and Fayez Banihammad, were ever in Shreveport and said Dr. Graham only mentioned them after 9/11,” Mike Kinder, the FBI’s Special Agent in Charge in Shreveport, told KSLA. “Kinder also said the FBI did not investigate Graham’s death because there was no evidence of any connection between Graham’s writings and his illness.”

One can find Graham’s dubious story on several different “9/11 Truthers” websites, thanks largely to Milkovich’s persistence and his refusal to believe his friend, who was known to be beset with financial problems, would ever hasten his own death.

In that respect, Milkovich’s book, unwittingly, is about a man grappling with personal grief by attempting to reverse-engineer profound meaning out of a senseless loss, and if there is any sympathy to be found in the pages of Robert Mueller: Errand Boy for the New World Order, it is for a seemingly intelligent attorney whose despair devolves into a toxic and nihilistic perspective on the country to which he took an oath to defend.    

Unless you are a member of the Louisiana legislature, there is no compelling reason to read state Sen. John Milkovich’s book. But for those in the legislature, his book should be considered mandatory reading; you need to know the true beliefs of a colleague with whom you are conducting business on behalf of the people of Louisiana.  


It Happens to Everybody

It took me a few days to write about this game because every time I thought about it, I would suddenly get tunnel vision and everything would go red, then black. Once my rage blackouts subsided, I tried to examine what went wrong this game, and what Dallas did well. It was a combination of the two– some of the Saints’ mistakes were caused by great Cowboys play, and some were self-inflicted. Let’s look at the major factors in what caused the Saints’ offense to sputter out Thursday night and only score ten points. Dallas had a great gameplan and personnel for it. The Cowboys have been focused on adding premium athletic talent on defense in the draft in recent years. 2014 pick Demarcus Lawrence (who the Cowboys traded up for at #34 overall) is playing on the franchise tag and has developed into an All-Pro-level pass rusher. Here are the other top-100 picks they’ve used on defenders who are still on their rookie contracts:
  • Byron Jones, CB, 2015 (Round 1, Pick 27)
  • Randy Gregory, DE, 2015 (2-60)
  • Jaylon Smith, LB, 2016 (2-34)
  • Maliek Collins, DT, 2016 (3-67)
  • Taco Charlton, DE, 2017 (1-28)
  • Chidobe Awuzie, CB, 2017 (2-60)
  • Jourdan Lewis, CB, 2017 (3-92)
  • Leighton Vander Esch, LB, 2018 (1-19)
Dallas has mostly hit on all of these picks, too. Six of them are full-time starters, Gregory is a substantial contributor, and Lewis had the key interception to end the game Thursday night. (Only Charlton hasn’t made much of an impact yet.) One common theme here is that almost all of them are astoundingly athletic. Jones is an all-time great athlete. Gregory, Awuzie, and Vander Esch all tested among the top of the league at their positions. Collins tested well above-average for a defensive tackle, with great quickness numbers for a player his size. Smith was an astounding playmaker in college until a severe leg injury nearly cost him his career; he seems to have recovered the athleticism that gave him that ability. That athleticism showed Thursday night, allowing the defense to keep up with the Saints’ best players. Smith and in particular Vander Esch did great work contianing Alvin Kamara and keeping him from breaking tackles and big plays. Jones played maybe the best game in coverage anyone has all season against Michael Thomas. And the pass rush, particularly Lawrence and Collins, gave Drew Brees difficulty all night; Collins clogged his interior passing lanes and vision, and Lawrence regularly beat Jermon Bushrod and even Ryan Ramczyk for pressures. The defense made just enough mistakes that the offense couldn’t overcome. The Saints were generally more successful on the other side of the ball. They sacked Dak Prescott seven times and largely contained Ezekiel Elliott, but two major issues thwarted the Saints just enough to lose: First, they gave up too many third-down conversions (Dallas was 7/14), especially considering how often Dallas was facing a long way to go. Elliott was instrumental in some of these, particularly through the air– he had 6 catches for 60 yards, compared to his 23 carries for 76 yards– but Dak Prescott also had a couple of long scrambles for first downs, and the receivers converted a couple as well. That leads us into our second problem: Michael Gallup and Amari Cooper largely won their matchups. Eli Apple was the victim early on, as Gallup beat him easily for a big play and several other catches, as well as drawing a few penalties. Cooper caught all eight of his targets despite having Marshon Lattimore shadow him for most of the game; his arrival has provided Prescott with the reliable top target he needs for the offense to function. Penalties weren’t just a factor early on in the game; the Saints were deflated at the end by two major miscues. A roughing-the-passer call on Vonn Bell on a third-down incompletion extended a Cowboys drive in the red zone with just three and a half minutes left in the game. After being bailed out with a sack-fumble three plays later, Brees threw a baffling interception and the Cowboys got the ball back. Sean Payton called a timeout before the two-minute warning in an attempt to save time, but this turned out to be a mistake because it allowed the Cowboys to throw the ball without fear of stopping the clock. And on that play, Marshon Lattimore committed pass interference in the end zone on Amari Cooper, giving the Cowboys a first down after the two-minute warning with the Saints out of timeouts, ending the game. The offense made its own share of mistakes. The pass rush may have had something to do with it, but Drew Brees was off from the start, placing balls low or in uncatchable places in uncharacteristic fashion. Given the receiving crew he was working with, it’s possible his sense of timing was off with young guys like Tre’Quan Smith and Keith Kirkwood. With Michael Thomas largely held in check by Byron Jones, and Leighton Vander Esch keeping Alvin Kamara from breaking big plays, the younger guys would have to step up, and they couldn’t quite get it done. The Saints’ one goal-to-go possession underlined the problems they had all night on offense. In hindsight– given that the game was 13-10– kicking the field goal seems like the correct decision on fourth down. At the time, though I agreed with going for it. The drive went wrong on two plays in particular: First, on first down, the playcall is great and executed well, and Brees has Tre’Quan Smith for an easy slant which almost certainly would have scored a touchdown. But Smith drops the ball. (And yes, despite Vander Esch’s hit there, I think that if Smith has the ball secured and isn’t slowing to look for it, his forward momentum carries him through or at least around Vander Esch and into the end zone.)
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Then on fourth down, we suffer from a case of a poor playcall and poor execution. For all the effort Payton has gone into incorporating Taysom Hill packages into the offense, he neglected to use it here. Of all the times you’d want an extra man for the run defense to have to account for, fourth and goal in a close game seems like it. Instead, Payton, so often fond of misdirection and creativity on fourth down, ran a relatively straightforward handoff to Alvin Kamara– and not only that, ran behind the left side of the line, which had been struggling with Bushrod starting in place of Armstead. The run was stuffed.
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(Ironically, Bushrod does a fine job on the play; it’s Andrus Peat and Max Unger who fail to get any push, and it’s an unblocked Demarcus Lawrence who comes all the way from the back side to finish off the play– probably a sign you shouldn’t leave Demarcus Lawrence unblocked even when you’re running away from him.) And, of course, Brees’ ball placement on his interception was absolutely baffling, either the result of a total miscommunication or total misfire. Jourdan Lewis makes a great play to secure the ball before it hits the ground, but the pass is nowhere near where Alvin Kamara actually is.
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The Saints will bounce back. No winning streak can last forever, and a Thursday game on the road against a young, athletic defense is exactly the sort of matchup that would cause the team trouble. The good news is, despite how badly the game went for the Saints, they still only lost by three points; better execution on as few as two plays (say, Smith catching the slant, and Brees not throwing the interception) and the Saints win. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Saints come back fired up against Tampa Bay and try to blow them out. They’re on the road again, but a win would secure the NFC South, and the team must be itching to make a statement after their loss. Terron Armstead is practicing again and Marcus Davenport is off the injury report altogether, so hopefully the team is closer to full strength than it was against Dallas. The really frustrating part is that even being at 10-2 now puts the Saints behind the Rams for the top seed in the NFC. The Saints can win out against their schedule, I think– beyond the Bucs game, a home-and-home with the Panthers remains, as well as a home game against the Steelers– but I’ll definitely be rooting for the Bears Sunday night, as the Rams’ best chance to lose again this season is in Chicago.

Four Days Before Runoff, Wife of Voting Software Company CEO Gives Maximum Donation to Kyle Ardoin

According to a report filed yesterday, Dec. 4th, 2018, Kyle Ardoin, the Louisiana Republican candidate running for Secretary of State, received a maximum, $5,000 campaign contribution from Courtney Leiendecker of St. Louis, Missouri. She is the wife of Scott Leiendecker, the founder and CEO of Knowink, a company that sells and produces a line of voting software technology.  

The company does not currently do business in Louisiana, and the technology they sell does not involve voting machines; their signature product, the Poll Pad, is essentially a customized Apple iPad that facilitates and speeds up the voter “check-in” process.

Neither Scott nor Courtney Leiendecker have ever donated before to a candidate in Louisiana, including Ardoin’s Democratic opponent. The Bayou Brief exchanged emails with Scott Leiendecker, who acknowledged the donation but avoided answering questions about how, when, or why the contribution was solicited.    

Knowinc’s Poll Pad. Source: Knowinc.

Ardoin is currently serving as interim Secretary of State after Sec. Tom Schedler resigned in May. Schedler had been accused of sexually harassing his executive assistant for more than a decade; the case was settled in October for $167,000, with taxpayers footing $149,075 of the bill. Ardoin, as Schedler’s first deputy, assumed the interim position, pursuant to state law. Although he vowed he would not be a candidate for office, Ardoin waited until the final minutes of the qualification deadline to declare his candidacy, throwing an already-crowded field into more uncertainty.  

On the campaign trail, Ardoin took credit for essentially every major decision and accomplishment during Schedler’s time in office, except for one in which he appeared to play a significant role: A controversial bid process involving the purchase of 10,000 new voting machines. After the company Dominion won the contract, which was originally valued at $65 million but quickly ballooned to more than $90 million, one of the runner-up companies complained, claiming  the process had been rigged to effectively guarantee Dominion would be the only company qualified for the work. Ardoin was in charge of the bid selection committee, but he later claimed Schedler had made the last-minute changes to the specifications favoring Dominion. 

After Louisiana’s Chief Procurement Officer determined there were problems with the process, the state canceled the contract with Dominion, a decision Ardoin unconvincingly attributed to partisan politics.

Ardoin recently said he had no “immediate timeframe” to restart the process, noting the possibility of litigation by Dominion.  

Leiendecker’s company does not manufacture voting machines, only “polling book software.” 

“We did not and would not participate in a future contract / RFP regarding voting machines, because we do not produce or support voting equipment,” Leiendecker wrote The Bayou Brief. “We are a software company.”

Knowinc (through its founder’s wife) is not the only voting software and technology company that has contributed to Ardoin.

GCR, a company founded by New Orleans-based political consultant Greg Rigamer, donated a maximum of $5,000 to Ardoin during the general election and another $5,000 during the run-off.

GCR’s donations to Kyle Ardoin

Rigamer sold GCR in December of 2011 to Chestnut Hill Partners, only two months after he was embroiled in a government corruption scandal in Pennsylvania. He was granted immunity in exchange for his testimony.

“(Rigamer) said that in 2005 he retroactively falsified an invoice for a $100,000 payment from the House of Representatives to remove a reference to illegal campaign work,” the Associated Press reported at the time. “House clerks had already processed the original invoice and sent GCR the check by the time Rigamer submitted the revised invoice, which he said he did at the direction of caucus officials.”  

Still, Rigamer had maintained an active role in the company he founded until as late as 2015, and the Jindal years were good for GCR.

The company even managed to score a $2 million contract with none other than the Louisiana Secretary of State. 

“I have never approached or solicited (Louisiana) to do business with (Velocity Reports) or Poll Pad,” Leiendecker claimed, notably.    

The Bayou Brief attempted to contact Ardoin through his campaign, but at the time of publication, it has yet to hear a response. 

Neelyisms: Translating Louisiana’s Junior Senator

Illustration by The Bayou Brief


I cannot believe that I fell for Louisiana Sen. John Neely Kennedy’s tease. I spent the entire year insisting that he’d never give up the limelight and easy times in Washington for the grind of governing the Gret Stet of Louisiana. I weakened in November because it looked as if the GOP field was being cleared for the man I call Neely and others call Senator Soundbite. I was betrayed by Steve Scalise and Jeff Landry. #sarcasm

Neely’s non-candidacy is not the point of this piece, but I had to deal with the party switching elephant in the room. Perhaps he needs his own mythical critter: an elephant with a donkey’s head. He certainly brays like a jackass.

I’m surely not the only one to remember Slate’s Bushisms feature. It was compiled by Jacob Weisberg who started it when he covered George W. Bush 2000 campaign. Weisberg was among the first to note W’s weird use of the language and penchant for malaprops. Weisberg kept at it for Bush’s entire presidency and even produced a successful book of Bushisms.

The wit and wisdom of John Neely Kennedy isn’t quite as spontaneous as your basic Bushism. It’s part of a carefully, albeit mysteriously, calculated image to portray a well-educated professional politician as a cracker barrel philosopher; a character straight out of the long-running teevee show, “Hee-Haw.” In short, our senator and former state treasurer thinks he’s Grandpa Jones only without the banjo and the droopy mustache:

Neely may be a born-again Republican but his wisecracks are reminiscent of one of the most colorful politicians in Louisiana history: Three-time Democratic Governor and brother of the Kingfish, Earl K. Long. He was known in his later days as Uncle Earl. I use the term Gret Stet of Louisiana as an homage to Uncle Earl who knew his way around a colorful country wisecrack. As you will see directly, his favorite foil was New Orleans Mayor Delesseps (Chep) Morrison who he called Dellasoups. 

Since this is a piece about Neelyisms, I will restrict myself to two Uncle Earlisms:

“Dellasoups has $50 neckties, and $400 suits. Put a $400 suit on Uncle Earl — look like socks on a rooster.”

“When I die, I want to be buried in Louisiana, so that I can remain active in politics.”

In recent years, former New Jersey Gov. Brendan Byrne has received undeserved credit from the East Coast media for the second Uncle Earlism. Byrne said, “When I die, I want to be buried in Hudson County, so I can continue to vote,” and no one, including the Observer (when Jared Kushner owned it), has realized that Byrne’s zinger wasn’t evidence of his comedic genius; it just proved he was a skilled plagiarist.

Okay. One more Uncle Earlism, which is probably his most well-known:

“Don’t write anything you can phone. Don’t phone anything you can talk. Don’t talk anything you can whisper. Don’t whisper anything you can smile. Don’t smile anything you can nod. Don’t nod anything you can wink.”

Earl Kemp Long in 1959. Photo by the Associated Press.

The difference between Uncle Earlisms and Neelyisms is that Earl was being real whereas Neelyisms reflect a carefully crafted persona. At First Draft, I’ve called it “hicking it up.” I don’t recall as many hickified aphorisms from Neely’s long tenure as state treasurer, but he was a chronic kibitzer and soundbite machine for the Gret Stet political media. The wave of Neelyisms seems to have started during the 2016 campaign and exploded when Neely hit Capitol Hill.

Here’s Neely’s own take on Neelyisms:

Kennedy said he mostly gets his expressions from reading and he makes an effort to remember the clever sayings he comes across. But most of the time, he said, they just pop out. “I know that is probably a sad testament to the way my mind works,” he said. “But it is what it is.”

After that long introduction, it’s time for some Neelyisms. I’ve assembled a Top Twenty list. They’re organized in a random order because I’m a random guy, but I’m appending the word Neelyism to each entry, so you won’t get lost in the verbiage. Besides, I’m trying to create a catch phrase, so repetition is in order.

Top Twenty Neelyisms:

Neelyism #1:

We begin with the seminal Neelyism, the senator’s stock line from the 2016 campaign trail.

“I’d rather drink weed killer than support Obamacare.”

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not. He has subsequently applied the term to a variety of situations. I’d rather drink weed killer myself than name them all.

On that note, let’s continue our round-up of annotated Neelyisms. I’m mostly omitting specific dates to protect my sanity; being knee deep in Neelyisms is hard enough.

Neelyism #2:

This one offended some people who are famous for being famous:

“You realize to many Americans right now, that looks like we’re giving Lindsay Lohan the keys to the minibar.”

In a headline grabbing move, her parents threatened to sue. They did not.

Neelyism #3:

The senator even quoted Meat Loaf lyrics during a hearing:

“Meat Loaf also said there ain’t no Coupe DeVille in the bottom of a Cracker Jack box. In other words, we live in the real world.”

At least he didn’t quote the song “Bat Out Of Hell.”

Of course, Trump loves Meat Loaf who appeared on a season of Celebrity Apprentice. He cried a lot, Meat Loaf, not Trump. 

Though Neely may have wept when Donald (The Insult Comedian) Trump finally told Meat Loaf he was, in fact, “fired.”

Only a week ago, The Daily Advertiser conducted an interview with the senator, resulting in a Pulitzer-worthy report titled, “Sen. John Kennedy inspired by the music of rock legend Meat Loaf,” along with a two-minute long video testimonial. 

“I can’t think of a song  I don’t like,” Kennedy said.


Neelyism #4:

Befitting a former state treasurer, many Neelyisms involve fiscal matters:

“Our country was founded by geniuses, but it’s being run by idiots,” Kennedy said dismissively last week, as a government shutdown loomed. “I think most Americans are wondering how some folks up here made it through the birth canal.”

Quite a few Neelyisms have been inspired by the senator’s role as a member of the Judiciary Committee:

Neelyism #5:

I gotta link to Fox News for this one, what can I tell ya?

“By all accounts he’s an honest fella, he’s smart, but he doesn’t have any experience in federal court,” Kennedy said about Matthew Peterson, the nominee. “And as I said at the time, just because you’ve seen ‘Judge Judy’ or ‘My Cousin Vinny’ doesn’t make you qualified to be a federal judge.”

I’d love to hear Neely do a Joe Pesci imitation and say, “a pair of yutes.”

Neelyism #6:

Neely had some scathing comments about the Kavanaugh hearings:

“In my opinion, this has been an intergalactic freakshow. As far as I’m concerned, Congress has hit rock bottom and started to dig.”

Holy mixed metaphor, Batman.

Neelyism #7:

On Neil Gorsuch:

“I guess what I want is a cross between Socrates and Dirty Harry and I believe you just might be that person.”

The annotation below comes from NOLA.com/The Zombie Picayune’s Drew Broach whose work I have drawn on for this piece:

“This is another phrase that Kennedy has used several times: in 2015 to describe Louisiana gubernatorial candidate David Vitter, in 2017 to voice his hopes for what Neil Gorsuch would be on the Supreme Court and the same year to encourage FBI Director nominee Christopher Wray.”

Neelyism #8:

On Facebook:

“Facebook is a great company, but it’s no longer a company; it’s a country. That’s how powerful it is. And its behavior lately has kind of been getting into the foothills of creepy.”

I believe the foothills of creepy are somewhere in the vicinity of Bunkie.

That reminds me of another Neely post from First Draft wherein I posted this image by my friend Cait Gladow:

Consider that lagniappe. What’s a Gret Stet political piece without a bit of lagniappe?

Neelyism #9:

On gun control:

“I am petrified of giving the power to confiscate guns and ask questions later to public officials. … If you trust government, you obviously failed history class. The Native Americans gave up their guns, too.”

Thank you, Big Chief Neely. He’d look pretty darn weird in a Mardi Gras Indian suit.

Neelyism #10:

On greedy defense contractors:

“We’ve got … some hogs who have all four feet and their snout in the trough. And we got to find out who they are gentlemen.”

In addition to being a cornpone comedian, Neely is a professional cheapskate.

Neelyism #11:

On Donald (The Insult Comedian) Trump after he fired Rex Tillerson:

“As we say in Louisiana, President Trump is a hard dog to keep on the porch. He’s not a porch dog; he’s a running dog. He likes to do things his way.”

Trump hates dogs. I doubt he cared for the canine characterization.

Neelyism #12:

On credit monitoring company fees:

“It is ridiculous. I don’t pay extra in a restaurant to prevent the waiter from spitting in my food.”

I must admit that this one was on point and made sense. It had to happen, y’all.

Neelyism #13:

This one is a tweeted quote with an embedded video:

Rock on, Neely.

Neelyism #14:

On police misconduct:

“My attitude is if you hate cops just because they’re cops, then the next time you get in trouble, call a crack head. That’s the way I feel about it.”

Is there a crack head hotline that I’m unaware of? Is it 666?

Neelyism #15:

A testicular euphemism:

“And some people, quite frankly need to grow some oranges. They were sent up here to do a job.”

No comment.

Neelyism #16:

An icky analogy:

“Upon leaving a private meeting about the GOP tax bill in December 2017, Kennedy told reporters: “This is Washington, D.C. Politics is in everybody’s blood, kind of like herpes.”

Neely is prone to say “it’s good to be back in America” when he’s in Louisiana. I’m relieved that it never calls it “herpes-free” America. I guess that’s implicit.

Neelyism #17:

Another oddball analogy in a question for plutocratic Education secretary Betsy DeVos:

“Now I can go down to my overpriced Capitol Hill grocery this afternoon and choose among about six different types of mayonnaise,” he said. “How come I can’t do that for my kid?”

I sincerely hope the Senator wouldn’t put mayo on political herpes. Some people put it on everything.

Finally, Neelysims #18-20:

These are all vintage country aphorisms presented in a three-fer on the Tweeter Tube by CNN. It doesn’t get more new-fangled than that:



I make no pretense to having unearthed every Neelyism out there. There will surely be more to come as he’s our Senator until at least 2022. I’m glad he’s not running for governor as it seems to indicate that John Bel Edwards is in better shape than the early polls indicate.

I hope this column leaves you feeling as tough as a boiled owl. I’d hate to think it went through you faster than green grass goes through a goose. Neelyisms are not only catchy; they seem to be contagious, like herpes.

That completes our lesson in Neelyisms. Class dismissed.


Kennedy Choosing Cultural ‘Enlightenment’ Over Conscience

No matter what else you may think about US Senator John Neely Kennedy, he is far from stupid. He earned law degrees from UVA and Oxford, after having graduated magna cum laude from Vanderbilt with degrees in Political Science, Philosophy, and Economics.

In his less than two years in Washington, he’s become the darling of the soundbyte-seeking U.S. Capitol press corps – always ready with a cornpone comment: “Our country was founded by geniuses, but it’s being run by idiots”; “We’ve got some hogs who have all four feet and their snouts in the trough”; “President Trump is a hard dog to keep on the porch.”

Adolf Hitler described this modus operandi in Mein Kampf: “All propaganda must be presented in a popular form and must fix its intellectual level so as not to be above the heads of the least intellectual of those to whom it is directed.”

It’s the classic “common man” or “plain folks” propaganda technique – relatively harmless in and of itself — and Kennedy is very, very good at it.

But now Kennedy – who has said he’ll announce his decision on whether to enter the 2019 Louisiana governor’s race by December 1 – is stepping up his propaganda game, trying another method. While it’s a tactic that has, in the past, been highly effective, the results of its use have also – historically – been universally condemned.

It’s an appeal to fear, with some flag-waving, appeal to prejudice, and exaggeration thrown in. It’s also known as “Reductio ad Hitlerum.

Here’s what Kennedy wrote in a letter to the editor of The Advocate, published this week.

A recent column by Lanny Keller lamented a drop in the number of international students studying in the U.S. under the Trump administration. I’d like to offer another perspective on this issue.

Earlier this year, FBI director Christopher Wray warned against naivete when it comes to Chinese students on American college campuses. More specifically, Wray said: ‘(China is) exploiting the very open research and development environment that we have, which we all revere, but they’re taking advantage of it.’

No other country sends more students to the U.S. than China. Approximately 350,000 Chinese students further their education in the U.S. every year. We know that some of them spy and steal. They’re not stealing the answers to a history quiz or sneaking into Coach O’s office to look at his playbook. They’re stealing our technology, whether it’s agricultural advancements or automobile innovations.

They want our research, our ideas and the results of all those hours spent working in university laboratories. More simply put, they want our intellectual property.

Three of my colleagues and I raised this issue when we met with Li Keqiang, premier of the State Council of the People’s Republican of China, a few weeks ago. We had a frank discussion in which we made it clear that China needs to stop cheating if it wants to be a true trade partner.

I’m not suggesting that every Chinese student is stealing from us. Those who play by the rules are welcome; Americans should be happy to have them. I also believe, however, that the number of Chinese students who don’t play by the rules, and who are encouraged to steal our intellectual property by the Communist Party of China, would surprise you.

China is pursuing a “Made in China 2025” policy to gain an edge against the rest of the world in a number of high-tech industries. Stealing U.S. intellectual property would greatly help China achieve this initiative.

The problem is that China isn’t just in a race to catch up with the U.S. and other global leaders. They want to surpass us, and they’re not adverse to cheating.

Earlier this year, a Chinese citizen who came to the United States on a student visa was arrested in Chicago for spying on defense contractors. October brought the arrest of a Chinese intelligence officer who worked for years to wrestle trade secrets away from aerospace experts in the U.S.

America is a country known for innovation and entrepreneurship. College campuses stimulate our creativity and ambition. University research gave us rocket fuel, GPS, oil refining, seat belts and pacemakers.

Despite the brainpower on college campuses, naivete remains a concern. If we’re not careful, we’ll export our ‘Made in America’ brand to China.”

You read that right. Our illustrious junior senator is trotting out the old trope of the “Yellow Peril”, a.k.a., the “Yellow Menace” – defined as “a racist-color metaphor that is integral to the xenophobic theory of colonialism: that the peoples of East Asia are a danger to the Western world.”

Make no doubt about it, it IS racism, and it’s not the first time this particular demonization has been used here in the United States against Chinese people legally allowed to be here. As Diana Preston (a historian and BBC broadcaster, who was also trained at Oxford) defines it so succinctly in her book, The Boxer Rebellion, “The racialist politician calls for white unity against the non-white Other who threatens from Asia.”

When the Burlingame Treaty of 1868 normalized US-China trade relations, and authorized Chinese immigration to the United States, it prompted an influx of Chinese workers, many of which came to work toward completion of the Transcontinental Railroad. They were the ones tasked with placing the bottles of nitroglycerin used to clear the rocky mountainous paths for the rails.

Political cartoon from the 1870s

Yet many working class white people of the day saw these people of different skin-tone, appearance, culture, and language as having “stolen” their job opportunities. The clamor against “the filthy, yellow hordes” became so fierce that there were mass lynchings in Los Angeles, riots and arson that destroyed Chinese enclaves in Denver, Seattle, Wyoming, and Oregon.

Even Horace Greeley (of “Go West, young man!” fame), founder and publisher of the New York Tribune, penned an editorial calling for cessation of Chinese immigration, saying “The Chinese are uncivilized, unclean, and filthy beyond all conception, without any of the higher domestic or social relations; lustful and sensual in their dispositions; every female is a prostitute of the basest order.”

All of this savage Sinophobia led to passage of the Page Act of 1875, the first restrictive immigration law in US history. It prohibited the immigration of Chinese women and was followed in 1882 by the Chinese Exclusion Act, prohibiting immigration of all Chinese laborers. That law remained in effect until 1943.

Book by M.P. Shiel, originally published 1899.  Still being reprinted: most recently, as paperback in Aug. 2017

At that point, the United States was battling another “Yellow Peril”: Japan. And this country was rounding up American citizens of Japanese descent (along with those of Korean and Taiwanese descent), confiscating their property, and sending them to internment camps (including Camp Livingston in central Louisiana).

The Los Angeles Times, in an op-ed published April 22, 1943, stated, “As a race, the Japanese have made for themselves a record for conscienceless treachery unsurpassed in history. Whatever small theoretical advantages there might be in releasing those under restraint in this country would be enormously outweighed by the risks involved.”

Sound familiar?

Yet under Republican President Ronald Reagan, through the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, this nation formally apologized to Japanese Americans, and made restitution for the internments, as being “unjust and motivated by racism and xenophobic ideas rather than factual military necessity.”

Under Republican President George H.W. Bush, another apology was issued through the Civil Liberties Act of 1992. Bush sajd, “No nation can fully understand itself or find its place in the world if it does not look with clear eyes at all the glories and disgraces of its past. We in the United States acknowledge such an injustice in our history. The internment of Americans of Japanese ancestry was a great injustice, and it will never be repeated.”

So why is Republican U.S. Senator John Kennedy dredging up the dirty device of the “Yellow Menace” now?

His party’s President, Donald Trump, has been engaged in a trade war with China for most of this year. Trump imposes tariffs on Chinese goods; China retaliates and imposes tariffs on U.S. products, including soybeans, chemicals, oil, and liquified natural gas. The products targeted account for 80.8% of Louisiana’s $7.9-billion in exports to that country.

At least 15% of Louisiana’s $5.6-billion soybean crop was plowed under this year, with most of the rest sitting in storage, accumulating fees for the farmers who grew the beans, but cannot now sell them.

LNG shipments from Louisiana to China are down 90.6% from a year ago, according to an Oct. 30, 2018 article in Forbes.

“My state is in trouble,” Kennedy told FoxNews last evening, when asked about his possible run for governor.

But don’t blame Trump or his tariffs for those economic woes – blame China? Cultivate distrust by accusing Chinese students attending our colleges and universities of “cheating, stealing and spying.” They are the “Yellow Menace.”

Nevermind that Trump’s far-right senior policy advisor, Stephen Miller, is behind this. The Financial Times reported in early October that Miller, the architect of Trump’s travel ban against Muslims – as well as author of the policy of separating undocumented immigrant children from their parents – has been championing the idea of ending all Chinese student visas.

On March 13, 1933, the Third Reich established the “Ministry of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment” (which also controlled the press, radio, theatre and film) with goals of establishing enemies in the public mind: Jews, Romani (gypsies), homosexuals, Bolsheviks (communists), along with cultural trends including “deviant art”. Joseph Goebbels was appointed as the agency’s Minister.

It appears Stephen Miller is the Trump Administration’s modern-day Goebbels. Goebbels, too, spoke against the “Asiatic hordes”.

John Kennedy, having majored in philosophy, is undoubtedly familiar with the George Santayana quote from Reason in Common Sense: “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

Yet he steadfastly toes the party line.

When asked about the recent gassing of women and children at the US-Mexican border, he says, “I understand that our Border Patrol agents were attacked. And when our agents are attacked, they should be allowed to respond.”

He rallies racism by writing about the hordes of Chinese students stealing and spying on our college campuses.

It is all eerily and frighteningly repetitious.

John Kennedy, flattery-operated by all the attention he receives from the Washington media, has become complicit in disseminating the administration’s propaganda. Rather than applying his well-trained intellect to dispassionate reflection on the similarities between the current course and the historical path it replicates, he is reflecting now on his ambition to become governor. Maybe he doesn’t realize that, along the way, he seems to have swallowed his conscience.

“Drinking weedkiller” might have been preferable.

Eminent Domain – or Imminent Domination?

You have ownership in a piece of land, along with dozens of your cousins. Your great-grandparents and grandparents used to live there, until a flood of epic proportions forced them out.

It’s a precious place – to your personal history, your family history, in the history of your home state.

It’s isolated, accessible only by boat. The waters around it still rise annually, making it unsafe for continued human habitation. But because of its isolation, Mother Nature’s community has thrived: deer, raccoons and squirrels, egrets and herons, woodpeckers and cardinals – all living in and beneath the shade of ancient oak trees. Bald cypress stretch their knobby knees far and deep, providing perches for sunning turtles above the swamp surface, and shelter for sac-a-lait and crawfish flourishing in the rich waters and mud beneath.

Photo courtesy: L’Eau Est La Vie on Facebook

But…

Since you’re not “using” this land (and even if you were), a for-profit company is demanding that you give it up to them, so they can bring bulldozers through it, remove the trees, dig a trench and lay a pipeline to transport their oil from thousands of miles away.

They’ll give you and your dozens of cousins each a dollar or two, so the company’s owners and shareholders can continue to make and divvy up the profits, like the nearly $9-billion they made in 2017.

No? You say no to this “deal” they’re offering? They’ll take all of y’all to court, and force you to give up the land, because it’s for the “common good.”

But before they file their lawsuit to take that land through eminent domain, they’ll come onto your land and start bulldozing and trenching.

You invite friends to come onto your land, to protest and document the land’s destruction, while this company pays off-duty police officers to come in and arrest your friends, charging your guests with felony trespassing on their worksite.

Wait a minute, you say. This is Louisiana, and my property rights are constitutionally protected! In fact, in 2006, we the people voted to add additional protections to our state constitution, and specifically prohibit the abuse of expropriation for private gain.

On Tuesday, Nov. 27th, in St. Martinville, the owners of a 38-acre parcel of land in the Atchafalaya Swamp will face off with Energy Transfer Partners, the builders and operators of the Bayou Bridge Pipeline, over these very issues. In next week’s trial, State District Judge Keith Comeaux will attempt to sort out the issues of eminent domain, property ownership, trespassing, destruction of property, and constitutionality of the competing laws and interests.

Photo courtesy: L’Eau Est La Vie on Facebook

“Here, Bayou Bridge Pipeline decided on its route, began approaching landowners along that route for easements or rights of way, and began constructing its 162.5-mile pipeline, before all the necessary easements or expropriation judgments for property all along the route had been obtained. (And in fact, it constructed the pipeline on the property at issue in this matter before obtaining necessary agreements and expropriation judgments; and before permits have been finalized).” – from the landowners’ pre-trial memo

Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality and the state’s Department of Natural Resources, along with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, all held hearings prior to the start of the Bayou Bridge Pipeline Project.

“They received over 23,000 comments against the project,” says Ann Rolfes, with the Louisiana Bucket Brigade.

“Yet before they trespassed on our property, there was no legal action we could take,” explains Peter Aaslestad, a historic preservation consultant and one of the landowners in the lawsuit against ETP and BPP. “We refused their offer of money for the easement, so they came on our property without our permission, destroyed it, then filed for eminent domain.

“I don’t believe there should be any eminent domain for private gain,” he adds.

Louisiana lawmakers felt the same way in 2006. That year, 14 separate proposed constitutional amendments were filed for legislative consideration – each to restrict the purposes for which property could be expropriated.

It was a reaction to the 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Kelo v New London, in which the Connecticut city had used eminent domain to condemn privately-owned and occupied homes to make way for a private developer to build a shopping mall. The question was whether that “public purpose” qualified as a constitutional “public use” under the “takings clause” of the Fifth Amendment. In a 5-4 decision, SCOTUS said it did.

At that time, state and local officials in Louisiana were also grappling with how to best handle property damaged and destroyed by Katrina and Rita. SB1, which was CA No.5 (of 13 on that ballot), said government takings of property for a “public purpose” would be limited to a “general public right to a definite use of the property”; publicly-owned property dedicated to specific uses; or the removal of a threat to public health or safety. Nearly 55% of all votes cast in the September 30, 2006 election were to approve that constitutional amendment, which was described on the ballot as “providing home and business owners with increased protection against eminent domain abuse.”

Yetjust as state legislators in 2007 and 2008 disassembled the provisions of 2002’s voter-approved CA No.2 (also known as the Stelly Plan) via statute, in 2012, lawmakers pulled a fast one on the people’s stated intent regarding the use of expropriation. The legislature passed HB 274 by Rep. Franklin Foil (R-Baton Rouge), a statute (meaning it didn’t require voter approval) that added pipelines to the allowable “public purpose” for exercising eminent domain.

That law also designated pipelines as “common carriers”, like trucking firms, and put them under the regulation of the Louisiana Public Service Commission. Yet legislators never authorized the PSC to promulgate rules and establish a permission process for pipelines.

Bill Quigley.  photo courtesy: law.loyno.edu

“That results in essentially a ‘blank check’ for the oil and gas companies,” says Loyola law professor Bill Quigley. He, along with attorneys from the Center for Constitutional Rights, is representing the landowners in this case.

“There is no state or federal governmental oversight,” Quigley explains. “Private oil pipeline companies can unilaterally decide on their own routes, and begin taking private property without any certification or oversight. In many instances, they can even construct their pipelines without having to obtain any approval, certification, or authorization from any state or federal agency before doing so.”

Along the 162.5-mile Bayou Bridge Pipeline route, running from Calcasieu Parish to St. James Parish, quite a few property owners initially said no to ETP building across their land. The company told them, “We’ll see you in court.” Unable to afford a legal battle with a multi-billion-dollar corporation, most gave in. About two dozen went to court, and although they ended up getting higher compensation for their land, all – but the owners of this parcel – surrendered their property.

“My great grandfather Carl Larson came to this country from Sweden,” says Theda Larson-Wright, one of the landowners engaged in this lawsuit. “First he went to Salt Lake City, and while there he became a naturalized U.S. citizen. Not long after that, he took a scouting trip to Louisiana, to Bayou Chene.

“He fell in love with it, and with the woman who would become my great grandmother. He stayed stayed, bought a farm, built a store, and ultimately served as a St. Martin Parish police juror from 1900 to his death.

“My grandfather lived on the property until the 1927 flood,” Larson-Wright continues. “After that, when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers created the spillway, they told residents to leave, but gave them little compensation and no aid to relocate. My grandfather held onto the land, even though it was no longer safe to live there. My ancestors are buried there.”

“Louisiana is my home,” says Katherine Aaslestad, a history professor at WVU. “Our parents met at LSU, and although dad’s job took us elsewhere, we always came home to Louisiana. We are grounded here, and my brother and I see ourselves as stewards of this land.”

“Bayou Bridge has been trying to paint a picture of us as ‘outsiders’ – because we object to and reject what they’re doing. They are the outsiders,” Peter Aaslestad says. “Ninety percent of the pipeline construction workers are from out of state and the profits from Bayou Bridge will go to shareholders outside of Louisiana. In addition, they claim this pipeline is in the public interest, because it is ‘necessary for America’s energy security,’ yet all the oil it transports is going to be exported.”

Photo courtesy: L’Eau Est La Vie on Facebook

The trial will examine the legality of ETP’s Bayou Bridge construction crews going onto the property and starting work without having first secured the legal authority to do so. It will also review the constitutionality of the pipeline company using eminent domain to expropriate private property, and – the landowners hope – address the lack of any regulatory authority overseeing the pipeline building process or its operational safety.

“Wetlands, with all their fragility and vulnerability, are important to the past, present and future of this state,” says Katherine Aaslestad. “We have to protect them from devastation, and from companies like Energy Transfer Partners and Bayou Bridge, who trespass and destroy them.”

“This is a sloppy company. With them it’s not a question of ‘if’ there’s a leak – it’s ‘when’ there’s a leak,” Peter Aaslestad says. “They have a terrible record, and we want this land to be forever beyond risk, instead of an environmental waste zone.”

That’s the family’s idealistic hope for their land. Yet, in view of the clear-cutting, bulldozing, and trenching already done, they are also realists.

“We don’t think any one can stop this pipeline,” Peter says.

“We’re asking that they return the land to owners, and remove the pipeline, and remediate the land,” Quigley says. “If that is not possible, we expect them to pay damages for having taken the property without permission.

“Additionally, we believe this violates federal ‘due process” protections, and the burden of proof is on them to show the ‘public purpose’. We would like the suit to result in Louisiana’s unregulated permissiveness to the oil and gas industry being stricken.”

Quigley adds, “At the very least, we hope to prevent a next time.”

Today, Mississippi can turn the page


Two weeks ago, on Twitter, I published a ten-second video clip of US Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi that made most of us from the Deep South wonder, “What in tarnation?” You see, “What in tarnation?” is an actual expression folks still use in the South, a more polite and less irreligious way of asking, “What the hell?” But what Hyde-Smith said in the video clip- “If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row” were her precise words- is not and has never been on anyone’s list of quirky Southern euphemisms.

The New York Times interviewed Paul Reed, a sociolinguistics scholar from Alabama, who noted the phrase had appeared before in written works from the mid-1800s through the Civil Rights Era. “I cannot believe that someone would use that today,” he noted.

The video went immediately viral not because her comment was quixotic, but because in the Deep South, a reference to a “public hanging” doesn’t mean the same thing as it does in a Turner Classic Movie about the Wild West. Here, when people talk about public hangings, there is only one historical and cultural point of reference: The brutal lynchings of African Americans that continued for generations before and after the Wild West was tamed.

“Sen. Hyde-Smith’s remark is curious and could certainly be read as referencing Mississippi’s white supremacist history,” Michael Pfeifer, a history professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the author of several books on lynchings, explained to the Times. “Even as an ‘expression of regard,’ this racialized historical context in Mississippi is important for understanding such a remark.”

Hyde-Smith’s opponent, Mike Espy, it just so happens, is seeking to become the first African American elected to the US Senate from Mississippi since Reconstruction. (He previously earned the distinction of becoming the first African American from elected Mississippi to the US House of Representatives, before serving a brief stint as Secretary of Agriculture during the Clinton administration).

Four days later after the “public hanging” clip, I published a second video clip of Hyde-Smith in which she seemingly endorsed targeted voter suppression efforts against liberal college students, which means something vastly different in California than it does in Mississippi, a state with seven Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and a population compromised of more African Americans per capita- 37%- than anywhere else in the country. Hyde-Smith may have been speaking with a group of students at Mississippi State, but she wasn’t “joking”  about disenfranchising the liberals at Ole Miss, a school whose mascot was, until recently, a rebel.

In fact, while Hyde-Smith tried to defend herself as if she was merely a comedian whose humor had been taken out of context and weaponized against her (also known as the Michael Richards or Kramer from Seinfeld defense), a small group of intrepid and courageous independent journalists, almost all of whom are from Mississippi, began digging deeper.

When a four-year-old photo on Facebook of Hyde-Smith wearing a Confederate cap during a tour of Beauvoir, the “presidential” home of Jefferson Davis, most of the media, perhaps understandably, focused on that singular image.

Source: Cindy Hyde-Smith’s Facebook.

 

But that image was part of a collection she posted, all under the same caption- “Mississippi history at its best!”- and the very first photo in that collection was with a man named Greg Stewart.  A journalist named Judd Legum picked up on it on Twitter, though it was largely unnoticed.

Cindy Hyde-Smith and Greg Stewart. Source: Cindy Hyde-Smith’s Facebook. 

In the early 2000s, Stewart was specifically identified as a leader of a recognized hate group- Free Mississippi- by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The group went defunct, and as a result, it was de-listed by the SPLC. But you can still find his name on their database. He  served as the group’s “parliamentarian.”

You can also still easily find him on Facebook, where he makes it abundantly clear that he is very much still involved in the business of the Lost Cause. (Stewart enthusiastically supported Chris McDaniel in the general election and is now cheering on Hyde-Smith).

Here is just a sampling of Stewart’s public posts on Facebook:










Stewart’s Facebook makes it clear: He isn’t merely a hobbyist; he’s more like a lobbyist for the Confederacy and the Lost Cause movement.

But this election isn’t about him. He’s not on the ballot.

It’s about a candidate who publicly promoted his distorted and bigoted opinions as an example of “Mississippi history at its best!” 

Source: Cindy Hyde-Smith’s Facebook

When I first received the video clip of Hyde-Smith’s comment about a “public hanging,” I wasn’t naive about its potential impact or about the inherent risks of sharing it online. The white supremacist movement feels much more emboldened and politically relevant today than it did four years ago, when I broke the story of the third most powerful member of Congress, Rep. Steve Scalise, attending an “international” conference of white nationalists associated with David Duke.

Back then, in the immediate aftermath, I heard Rep. Cedric Richmond, a man for whom I respect and who now represents me in Congress, declare definitively that Scalise didn’t have a “racist bone in his body,” even though Scalise once described himself to a respected columnist as “David Duke without the baggage.” Meanwhile, a handful of in-state corporate media reporters cared more about getting out-scooped by a “blogger” than about getting the story right, relying on the word of David Duke’s former campaign manager and his obviously concocted story about Scalise attending a meeting for a nonexistent neighborhood association that just so happened to be at the same hotel on the same day. Scalise subsequently confirmed his attendance at the hate group conference and apologized for it. Ultimately, Scalise kept his job; Richmond became chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus and an amateur psychiatric orthopedist. I was still nothing more than a haughty, self-aggrandizing blogger.

My reporting was true, but it made things complicated for other reporters who believed they had to go along to get along.

There was also the possibility that calling attention to Hyde-Smith’s comments would unwittingly help her. “You’re just guaranteeing her a greater share of the white racist vote,” a friend told me, in all seriousness.

I don’t believe that is true, but if it is, that – I believe- is an even more compelling reason for us- not only the people of Mississippi but the entire country- to confront them, fearlessly. There is at least one right-leaning poll showing Hyde-Smith comfortably ahead by ten points; to accomplish that, though, they had to severely under-sample African Americans.

Immediately on receiving the first and then the second video, I sought out partnerships with publications in Mississippi. This time, I wouldn’t tackle this alone, only to then get blindsided by journalists who wanted to compete and not collaborate.

Fortunately, I found the Jackson Free Press at the exact moment I needed them most. I already knew their values and how much they aligned with ours. This was a story much bigger than Mississippi, but it had to be told first by Mississipians. I sent them everything I had, and what they didn’t have, I convinced my source to provide it.  Their reporting, particularly the articles written by Ashton Pittman, told the story fearlessly and truthfully, and it was an absolute honor to work with Ashton and his indefatigable editor, Donna Ladd.

It has been a highlight of my career, because I know, regardless of the outcome, we told stories that have needed to be heard.

Our collaboration may not be enough to change an election, but it may have already helped turn the page.