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Commentary | Breaking color barriers and glass ceilings

By
Lamar White, Jr.
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Part One: Shreveport and the Patrick Williams Rule

After I declared on social media that I considered the election in Alexandria to be the state’s most fascinating, a friend of mine with ties to Shreveport wrote me privately. “One minor correction,” he said, “Shreveport’s election is the most consequential.” That’s not what I said, I reminded him. I said Alexandria’s was the most fascinating, not the most consequential. There is a difference.

Maybe both of us are correct.

In this commentary, I argue both, using vastly different analytical approaches. In Alexandria, my hometown, the location of the state’s most fascinating election, I rely both on my own personal observations and political science to examine the ways in which whites and blacks have failed the community by both refusing to honestly confront and by cynically exploiting endemic racism as an instrument of political organizing.    

But I begin with Shreveport, the consequential election, and I attempt to explain why the absurdly crowded and tightly competitive field could result the third largest city in Louisiana ushering in a new, visionary, young, and progressive era of leadership or a sharp return to a style of power politics and quid pro quo dealmaking that treated elitism as a virtue.

Hundreds of protestors march in Shreveport in support of women’s rights on January 21, 2017.


Shreveport’s election is consequential because a relatively unpopular incumbent, Mayor Ollie Tyler, is locked in the toughest battle of her political career, and she does not intend to go down without a fight. When Tyler became the first African American woman elected mayor of a major city in Louisiana, the entire nation took notice, and her victory helped create precedent for two other African American women to win historic victories in the state’s two largest cities, Sharon Weston-Broome in Baton Rouge and LaToya Cantrell in New Orleans.  

Tyler’s win may have been an historic breakthrough, but her job performance during the past four years has left many of her own supporters disappointed. 

Initially, Tyler drew an astonishing nine opponents. Since then, two of those candidates, Kenneth Krefft, a white Independent, and John-Paul Young, a white Democrat, withdrew.

And then there were seven.

They are: Anna Marie Arpino, a white Independent who allegedly called African Americans “negroes” at an event hosted by an HBCU during her previous run for mayor four years ago and is known for making outlandish statements about her family essentially “building” Shreveport; Tremecius Dixon, an African American Democrat who has largely avoided campaigning; Steven Jackson, an African American Democrat and outgoing Caddo Parish Commissioner who was instrumental in ordering the removal of a white supremacist monument from the front lawn of the parish courthouse (and whose campaign was endorsed by Young, following his withdrawal); Adrian Perkins, an African American Democrat who returned back to Shreveport after a nearly 15 year absence and first announced his intention to run for office in an editorial published in the student paper of his law school in Massachusetts; Jerone Rogers, an African American Democrat and civil engineer; Lee O. Savage, Jr., a white Republican businessman whose campaign biography is heavy with references to his Christian faith and whose platform appears to be a standard recitation of conservative platitudes about crime, gangs, drugs, and unspecified “corruption,” and Jim Taliaferro, a white Republican who appears directly out of central casting for the role of career police officer (which he was and even has the mustache to prove it).

Given the crowded field, the polling is predictably all over the place. Republican-backed polls suggest that one of the two GOP candidates will likely emerge in a runoff election. Other polls suggest the race will come down to two Democrats. But one thing is certain: Mayor Tyler is heavily favored to finish in first place in the primary.

In the absence of public data, some political observers assume that newcomer Adrian Perkins is in the best position to capture the other spot in the runoff election on Dec. 8th, but that analysis is based entirely on Perkins’ strong fundraising numbers. (No one believes Tyler could possibly win outright in the jungle primary.) However, Shreveporters would be wise to remember the Patrick Williams Rule before presuming that a candidate with the most money is necessarily in the best position, especially when voters discover the sources of a candidate’s largesse may not necessarily reflect the values they espouse on the campaign trail.

For those unfamiliar with the Patrick Williams Rule from the 2014 Shreveport mayoral election, the following charts should be illustrative:

Williams raised twice as much as his nearest competitor, Ollie Tyler.

Williams raised 63% of the total money contributed to all candidates combined. 

Despite raising 63% of the total money in the election and twice as much as his closest opponent, Patrick Williams missed the runoff by three points.

The bulk of Perkins’ major contributors, for example, were businesses and individuals tied to the nursing home industry and major engineering firms, which generally prefer conservative candidates.  

During the past month, Perkins also played a minor role in the Kavanaugh hearings, signing a letter in support of the judge’s nomination to the  Supreme Court and then awkwardly attempting to retract his name from the letter by first blaming The Bayou Brief for reporting it and then his own law school classmates for never getting his permission. (Only seven other students were signatories). Perkins’ response to the controversy was clumsy and strangely conspiratorial, and if your only news source was The Shreveport Times, you may be under the mistaken impression that Perkins’ minor role was a minor story; it actually received hundreds of thousands of readers. Perkins never denied his support for Kavanaugh’s nomination. 

Most recently, although it has not yet been disclosed, sources familiar with Perkins’ campaign claim that he has hired a well-known lobbyist and political consultant in Baton Rouge. Three sources told The Bayou Brief that individuals connected with the Perkins campaign have been floating a rumor that Gov. John Bel Edwards plans on endorsing Perkins prior to the election. I reached out to a member of the governor’s senior staff who told me that they had been frustratingly aware of the rumors and then unequivocally denied there was any truth whatsoever to the speculation.

“The governor is not at all issuing an endorsement,” the staffer told me.

At the same time, Steven Jackson’s campaign quietly began making strategic investments in voter contact technology and building up a more durable coalition between African Americans and white progressive voters, many of whom had been initially attracted to Perkins because of his impressive resume but eventually became disillusioned by his aggressive courtship of white social conservatives and big business donors. Some also expressed dismay that Perkins has never before cast a vote in Shreveport. 

With only eleven days until the election, the contest in Shreveport may come down to a competition of electoral philosophies: The empowerment model versus the strategic candidate model, which I will explore in greater detail in the discussion about Alexandria. 

Although Tyler remains the frontrunner, there has been a long-held assumption that she would likely lose in a runoff election if she faced anyone other than a Republican. That assumption may need to be amended, however, if the Patrick Williams Rule still applies. 

For the purposes of full disclosure, I made a personal contribution to Jackson’s campaign after he received threatening and racist hate mail urging him to drop out of the election. I am not involved in his campaign, and I did not consult or interview anyone associated with his campaign about this analysis. I do not regret or apologize for my donation. I regret Louisiana is still a place in which African American candidates are threatened with racist violence merely for having a desire to serve their communities.

Part Two: Alexandria, the Future Great

Front Street Alexandria during the 1880s, the decade in which Edgar McCormick founded The Town Talk. Photo credit: Louisiana History Museum.
 

The managing editor and co-founder of The Alexandria Daily Town Talk, Edgar McCormick, was arguably the greatest cheerleader the city has ever known. McCormick embodied a philosophy that Robert F. Kennedy would articulate nearly a century later. “Some men see things as they are and say why,” Kennedy said. “I dream things that never were and say why not.”

For McCormick, his dreams weren’t just about his fledgling little newspaper; they were about his hometown. In column after column, he extolled Alexandria as “the Future Great.” He imagined it could one day become Louisiana’s answer to Atlanta. 

“Undaunted by the ‘postage stamp’ size of his struggling paper, or the fact that rural central Louisiana of the 1880s lacked the means to support a daily, McCormick zealously publicized local affairs, boosted central Louisiana’s farm and timber industries, lobbied for more railroads, promoted town businesses, and championed (with limited results) New South manufacturing enterprises,” the late historian Frederick Spletstoser wrote in his remarkable book The Talk of the Town: The Rise of Alexandria, Louisiana and the “Daily Town Talk.” 

McCormick was, in many respects, a man both of his time and ahead of it, but more than anything else, he was someone who considered aspiration to be a virtue. 

When I first encountered Spletstoser’s book, I read it in a single day, enthralled not only by the character and the relentless enthusiasm of the man who had founded what would eventually become one of the nation’s most innovative newspapers but also disheartened by the fact that Alexandria never believed in itself as much as Edgar McCormick believed in it. I bought twenty copies of the book from LSU Press. At the time, I’d been working for the newly-elected mayor, Jacques Roy, and the story of McCormick had echoes of the optimistic vision we had crafted during his campaign.

When we had to chose a theme for his first inauguration, we all agreed it should be called, “A renewed spirit.” And during my first few years working for his administration, any time an out-of-towner would arrive to find out exactly what this young new mayor envisioned for a town that the late political writer John Maginnis characterized, perhaps accurately, as a place frozen in time, I would give away one of my own copies of The Talk of the Town. We could be the “Future Great.”

During the past two weeks, I have published two reports on the upcoming mayor’s race in Alexandria, both of which, in various ways, were perceived by some as rabidly critical of one of the three candidates, state Rep. Jeff Hall, an African American Democrat who had run unsuccessfully for the office four years ago.

Although I have grown accustomed to criticism for just about everything I have ever published, I was not prepared for the viciousness I encountered, but in hindsight, I should have been.  

I have made it a part of my life’s work to become as knowledgeable as possible on the politics, the history, and the people of my hometown. I’ve written more about Alexandria than any other single subject, and I have always understood, since I was a young boy, that race permeates every aspect of daily life and racism infects the city’s politics like a cancer that at times seems in remission only to reemerge more deadly than ever.

It is difficult to talk about racism in Alexandria, particularly among other white people who do not understand or refuse to acknowledge that racism is structural and institutional and constructed on regimes of power inherited over generations. We lack the vocabulary too often to differentiate between racism and hatred or prejudice, though these concepts can be sometimes interchangeable.

When African Americans from my hometown read a report, written by a white man, that may seem critical of an African American elected official or candidate, some of them may assume the criticism is informed by racial animus. Given our city’s history, this assumption is not without merit, and it is my obligation- indeed, my challenge as a writer- to demonstrate otherwise to a community struggling with the legacies of slavery, Jim Crow, mass incarceration, and the simple fact that there remain institutional barriers for African Americans to achieve leadership positions in the public and private sectors, despite the fact that Alexandria is a majority-minority city.  

But this also requires we all confront some basic truths: There is no excuse for political corruption. We lose our sense of shared humanity when we fail to repudiate a white elected official who builds his political base by accommodating white supremacists just as we do when we fail to reject a black elected official who builds his base by smearing one of his black colleagues merely for speaking with a white constituent, which is what City Councilman Jules Green attempted to do to fellow Councilman Roosevelt Johnson recently.

We also lose our moral and our ethical compasses when we judge people first and foremost by the color of their skin. 

Depending on who wins, the next mayor of Alexandria will be the first person in city history to break the so-called “color barrier” or the first person to shatter the glass ceiling. Only one of the three candidates, however, has ever lost and won an election.

For several years, local African American political organizers have argued that the failure of black candidates in mayoral competitions is a consequence of fragmentation and the repeated inability to “clear the field” for a single African-American candidate. This, it turns out, is largely incorrect, at least according to the data. After all, in the 2014 mayoral election, the three African American candidates received a combined total of 45.12%, nearly ten points below the combined total of the two white candidates.

A 2014 study by Dr. Paru Shah, titled “It Takes a Black Candidate,” examines the likelihood of success for African American candidates specifically in local elections in Louisiana, the only state that collects racial demographic data on all candidates, concluding that a black candidate is twice as likely to win in Louisiana if there are multiple black candidates in the race.

Not surprisingly, a black candidate is four times more likely to win if they are already the incumbent. This is not only due to the power of incumbency; it is also due to the fact that approximately 60% of all local elections in Louisiana lack even a single African American candidate. It also speaks to the notion that once a community elects its first person of color in a position of power, that community is far more likely to accept minority leadership in the future.

Dr. Shah’s study also finds that African American candidates, like state Rep. Hall, who have previously run before are five times more likely than others to run again, though prior campaign experience has only a negligible effect on their chances of ultimately winning, particularly in races for mayor or parish president. 

After publishing “It Takes a Black Candidate,” Dr. Shah, who earned her PhD in political science from Rice University and is currently a professor at the University of Wisconsin, turned her attention specifically to mayoral elections in Louisiana with minority candidates, collaborating with scholars at Penn State and Ohio State.

Obviously, underlying all of the data are the legacies and realities of discrimination and racism. One of the reasons African American voter registration and turnout in Louisiana lags behind whites is directly due to institutional barriers in education and employment opportunities. We know, for example, that African American candidates are significantly less likely to win office in communities with a high rate of black unemployment. Opportunity begets opportunity. 

That said, political science scholarship may also provide a blueprint for an African American candidate to win local and regional elections in Louisiana, and this could explain why state Rep. Hall now appears to be losing ground.

Even in majority-minority communities like Alexandria, black candidates seeking citywide offices are never successful when their campaigns exclusively concentrate on bolstering and cultivating support among other African Americans (i.e. the empowerment model). This is not merely because of registration and turnout numbers, though; it is also because voters of both races prefer candidates whose campaigns engage in coalition building (i.e. the strategic candidate model).

There may still be enough time for state Rep. Jeff Hall to bounce back into a more competitive position in the race to become the next mayor of Alexandria, Louisiana. Yesterday, U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond, the lone Democrat in the state’s federal delegation, endorsed Hall at a small event the Hall campaign called, somewhat ironically, a “Unity Rally;” none of Hall’s competitors had been invited.

The event was sparsely attended; between three and four dozen people showed up, according to one participant and based on video footage and photographic documentation of the event. Richmond delivered an almost identical speech he had given a couple of months prior in New Orleans in support of Texas congressional candidate Colin Allred, an African American Democrat in Dallas who is locked into a close race with long-time Republican incumbent Pete Sessions. (Full disclosure: I personally contributed to Allred, who lives within earshot of my former home in Dallas).

In their study of successful black mayoral candidates, the four political science scholars arrive at a simple but profound conclusion: To win, an African American candidate must first demonstrate their viability in the primary election, and viability means more than merely shoring up the entire available universe of black voters. There is no meaningful increase in voter turnout in a primary election featuring a black candidate (the attendance at Rep. Richmond’s rally is illustrative); the increase only occurs during a runoff election.

However, win or lose, there are already lessons to be learned from Hall’s campaign strategy, particularly for those in Alexandria who have long hoped the majority-minority city could one day elect a person of color to lead City Hall.

As I reported previously, a local nonprofit is currently circulating a sample ballot that falsely asserts former President Barack Obama endorsed a slate of local candidates based on their race. 

Here is what the former president actually said on the subject:

“We need to reject any politics that targets people because of race or religion. This isn’t a matter of political correctness. It’s a matter of understanding what makes us strong. The world respects us not just for our arsenal; it respects us for our diversity and our openness and the way we respect every faith.” 

****

Yet Robert F. Kennedy may have articulated this idea better than anyone, and, in so doing, provided a model for a “future great” to which all of us should aspire. Quoting in full:

“We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children’s future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge. 

“Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanquish it with a program, nor with a resolution.

“But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.”






Update: EMER18-003, According to DNR

By
Sue Lincoln
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When the Oilfield Site Restoration Commission, the state’s board in charge of “orphan wells”, held their quarterly meeting Thursday, October 18, they gave scant attention to what may be one of the state’s larger environmental disasters.

Known variously in the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources files as “Smyrna Area 9, DeSoto Parish” or, more commonly, “EMER18-003”, the official update on the gas and water emergency given to the OSR board was brief.

“18-003 is ongoing. The information in your packets shows the cost-to-date is $1.8-million, but we’ve received some new invoices. The total is now $2.4-million. Though this started off as one well, it’s become a fairly large investigation. At present, we are looking at three other wells to the east of the original problem.”

The six members of the ten-person OSR Commission in attendance – DNR Secretary Thomas Harris, Don Briggs and Steve Maley of the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association, Tyler Gray of the Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, Cynthia Dupree of the Louisiana Land Association, and Barney Callahan of the Louisiana Wildlife Federation – let it go at that. They were far more interested in the subsequent presentation on a new technology for bringing low-yield wells back into production, extending that 15-minute briefing into an hour-long question-and-answer session.

On the other hand, I had numerous questions about recent results of water testing in the nine square mile “area of concern”, and beyond. DNR Communications Director Patrick Courreges was delegated to provide me with answers.

“I understand Indigo Minerals went in over Labor Day, uncapped the Mason and Hanson wells, and sampled the wells’ water. Testing showed high levels of benzene, is that correct?”

“Yes,” Courreges replied. “They found 106 parts-per-billion of benzene in one well, and 30 parts-per-billion in the other.”

“And the legal limit for drinking water is…?”

“Five parts-per-billion.”

“So it is confirmed? The Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer is ‘charged’ with gas?”

“That’s correct.”

“And what are you doing about it?”

“We still don’t know where it’s coming from,” Courreges confessed, “So we’ve asked all our operators in this nine-square-mile section of the Bethany-Longstreet field to sample every drinking water well and rig-supply well they can locate, and to also sample every gas well they operate – their active wells.

“We’re also asking them to report any irregularities in their noise logs, cement bond logs and gamma logs,” he said.

“What do those tell you?” I inquired.

“The water flowing down into the well, and the gas it’s pushing up and out should make steady sounds, and we track those. Any dropoff of the decibel levels could indicate a leak. Likewise, the concrete casings that encircle the metal well bores vibrate as everything flows. Because these wells go so deep, the concrete casings get concentrically narrower, and where one that’s wider is joined to a narrower one, there’s a cement bond that seals them together. That’s a potential location for a crack and a leak, so well operators are required to monitor those vibrations for sudden variations.

“Gamma logs measure the radiation that naturally occurs throughout the deeper layers of the earth. Any spike or drop in a well’s gamma rays is an indication of a leak in – or out,” Courreges explained. “All of those should help us determine which well is the source of the problem.”

“Additionally, we’re asking all our well operators to tell us about any plugged and abandoned gas wells they find, so we can declare those to be “orphaned”, legally accessing and opening them to sample the gas in them.

“There are four layers of gas-bearing geology below the Carrizo -Wilcox aquifer in DeSoto Parish. Well, five,” Courreges added, “but we’re not drilling in the Smackover – yet. There are wells in the Rodessa, Hosston, Cotton Valley, and Haynesville formations, and gas from each formation has different characteristics and different chemical signatures. We’re trying to match the gas in the water wells and aquifer with the gas from a well into one of these formations.”

“At one time, y’all stated it was from the Hosston formation. You’re not so sure now?”

“No, as you pointed out in one of your articles, the geologist who analyzed that gas said it was ‘most like’ Hosston gas, but far from identical,” Courreges acknowledged.

“And at that time, no Haynesville Shale gas was offered for comparison, right? Are you finally considering the possibility this could be coming from fracking the Haynesville?”

“Yeah, we are,” he said, hanging his head a bit. “We’re looking at every possibility. As you heard in the meeting, we’ve expanded our investigation east, looking more closely at three other wells.”

“Are these wells outside the 9-section area?” I asked.

“No, they’re still inside it, in section 27.”

There are 17 gas wells in that single mile-square section. Three are plugged and abandoned; three are dry and plugged; four are listed as “permit expired”; one was declared “orphaned” in February this year; three are shut-in, yet are also categorized as “productive, with future utitlity”; and three are active producing wells. They’re drilled into the Rodessa, Hosston, Cotton Valley and Haynesville formations.

There are also seven water wells in that section. Four are rig supply wells, one is a private drinking water well, one is agricultural water, and one is the Keatchie Water Company’s Smyrna well, a public drinking water supply well.

I asked about DNR coordination with the other state and federal agencies overseeing drinking water. Courreges acknowledged there hadn’t been much intentional co-ordination, so I suggested – at the very least – they alert DEQ, and make as many of the water well test results available to them as possible, since their triennial sampling and testing of the aquifer is scheduled to be done before then end of this calendar year.

I also asked if they had alerted Texas, since the Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer flows beneath 66 or our neighboring state’s counties.

“They have their own problems with the aquifer,” Courreges replied. “That’s a mess over there, with battles over excessive drawdowns, and so forth.”

In other words, let’s keep this problem to ourselves for now. Nevermind that we’re not actively investigating how far the plume of contamination spreads. Instead, DNR is narrowly focused on simply seeking the source within a finite area, just trying to find the avenue of gas migration into the aquifer.

Courreges and I discussed the possibilities of a hitherto unknown fault, or even micro-faults, that might be exacerbated by the pressures of fracking. He said that since Louisiana has never been earthquake-prone, there’s been no real research into fault lines. As for the idea that faults could form due to fracking pressures, he holds to the U.S. Geological Survey conclusion that so-called “frack quakes” result from pumping fracking wastewater into deep injection wells, rather than being caused by the pressures created when shale miles underground is blasted apart to release its encapsulated gas.

However, in Lancashire, England, where fracking operations restarted last week after a seven-year hiatus, the British Geological Survey reported Monday they’ve registered five temblors in the first three days of renewed fracking near Blackpool. Fracking there had been halted in 2011, due to earthquakes.

“We just don’t have those earthquake problems here in Louisiana, like they do in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Oklahoma,” Courreges insisted, “because we don’t do the kinds of injection wells that cause them.”

Indeed?

DNR’s Sonris website (comprehensive database listing wells, operators, etc.) shows there are 41 permitted injection wells in DeSoto Parish, with 23 of those permitted during the past three years. None are in the “area of investigation”, but several are within five miles’ proximity to it, including one due east. That particular injection well, #174049, is the deepest injection well listed within the parish. A former Hosston gas well, it was converted to a “saltwater disposal well” in 2010, and just this past July, its operator, Amplify Energy Operating, LLC, was fined and assessed civil penalties for production audit discrepancies. Then last month, their authorization to operate was suspended for “injection and mining violation.” Certainly, this potential link to the aquifer contamination warrants further investigation, and comparisons of the chemical signatures from this well’s contents to the chemical signatures of water and gases from wells in the affected area.

Most importantly, I asked Courreges what-all they were doing to inform the residents of the emergency, and the potential hazards of drinking their well water, breathing their air, and –considering the season — burning their autumn leaves.

“We’ve been keeping the property owners in the affected area informed, as needed,” he stated.

“But what about those properties that may be occupied by tenants? And what about residents nearby – just outside this limited nine-square mile area?” I asked. “Why haven’t you held a single public meeting to inform the people of DeSoto Parish what is going on?”

“They haven’t asked for one,” the DNR spokesman replied.

On sample ballot, Larvadain family nonprofit organization deceives voters about support from Obama

By
Lamar White, Jr.
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A rendering of former President Barack Obama and Louisiana attorney Edward Larvadain, Jr. Artwork by The Bayou Brief, 2018.


Six years ago, on July 13, 2012, long-time attorney Edward Larvadain, Jr. and his wife, both of Alexandria, established a new organization with the banal name Help Planners Inc. It may sound like a financial planning company or a service that helps customers organize their homes, but Help Planners, Inc. is actually a nonprofit corporation. Edward Jr. and his two sons Malcolm and namesake Edward III are all prominent attorneys in Alexandria. The elder Larvadain, slowed down his practice, after a successful career for nearly 53 years, and the nonprofit organization he founded, at least on paper, appeared to provide an opportunity for him to dedicate his twilight years performing important charitable work for his community.

Larvadain named nine others to join Help Planners as board members, and in their articles of incorporation, they articulate their vision for the organization: strengthening and empowering the African American community and helping to keep families together. On paper, at least, there appeared to be nothing unordinary about the nonprofit, which is organized as a 501(c)(3).

However, there is scant evidence that Help Planners Inc. has ever done any type of charitable educational and social welfare work, particularly the type they are required to do in order to maintain their status as a tax-exempt, tax-deductible 501(c)(3).

This year, in the run-up to the midterm elections, Help Planners, Inc. has made their presence known, and their activities should call into question a number of serious legal, campaign finance, and ethical violations. 

The organization is now distributing a sample ballot, specifically endorsing candidates, a direct violation of the laws regulating the activities of 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations. Activities such as these are expressly prohibited, and they demand further investigation into the nonprofit’s prior activities. For years, the group had been rumored to have been behind a series of smear campaigns against candidates for office, including a particularly vicious and cruel rumor about a local elected official’s young family.

The sample ballot been distributed by Help Planners, Inc. 


Despite their obligation to do so, the organization has never filed a single 990 report with the Internal Revenue Service, according to publicly available records. This ensures that- for the past six years- the organization under Larvadain, Jr.’s control has never disclosed a single donor or expenditure. 

Their decision to publish a sample ballot this year, though, will almost certainly ensure that the political activities of Larvadain and his board members, under the pretense of operating a charity, will be forced to file something. 

Just as egregiously and in a sign of enormous disrespect, the organization’s sample ballot is prefaced with statement falsely attributed to former President Barack Obama. 

Also incredibly, one of the candidates endorsed by the organization, Gerber Porter, is a board member of the nonprofit, which means that, as a fiduciary, he has apparently agreed or at least permitted for the resources of a 501(c)(3) to be used, in part, to help bolster his own campaign. 

The ballot was attached to this cover letter:

The  letter again makes it abundantly clear the purpose of the organization is to promote a particular political candidate for a particular office.
 

On a personal note, I studied nonprofit law in law school and have spent the past dozen years researching and writing about campaign finance law. I have never encountered a more brazen example of what should be precisely prohibited than what the Larvadain family nonprofit organization is apparently doing.  

For those interested, I tried to make things somewhat easier. Here is everything they’ve filed with the Secretary of State. (No surprise, they’ve haven’t reported anything on campaign finance reports).

Click to open the entire file.
In its Articles of Incorporation, Help Planners Inc. claims to be “organized exclusively… within the meaning of Section 501(c)(3).”  

Update and clarification: The Internal Revenue Service does not list Help Planners Inc. as a federally registered nonprofit organization, and, as previously stated, a comprehensive search reveals the organization has never filed any documentation or reports with the IRS.

According to other nonprofit law experts, the corporation would therefore be considered a Louisiana nonprofit and would not qualify for the exemptions and deductions otherwise guaranteed under federal law. If, in fact, Help Planners Inc. failed or elected not to avail itself to federal protections, it would not be considered a 501(c)(3).

However, its activities are still governed and constrained by Louisiana state law, and the false assertions that former President Barack Obama both assisted in creating this ballot and endorses the candidates listed on the ballot appear to be in direct violation of La. R.S. 51:1905, which states, in full (emphasis added): 

Prohibited acts (of charitable organizations): 

A.  It shall be unlawful for any charitable organization, solicitor therefor, or person owning, managing, directing, representing, or acting as agent for any charitable organization, an organization soliciting contributions for any charitable organization, or an organization claiming to sell merchandise, products, goods, or services for charitable purposes to engage in unfair methods of competition, unfair or deceptive practices, or misrepresentation.

B.  Prohibited acts include, but are not limited to: 

(1)  False claims that an organization is charitable, nonprofit, or tax exempt.  

(2)  False claims that an organization is composed of other named or unnamed charitable organizations.  

(3)  Unauthorized use of the names and implied endorsements of bona fide charitable organizations in the absence of written, notarized authorizations dated less than six months prior to the date the solicitation or sale is made.  

(4)  False claims concerning the number or membership characteristics of members within the charitable organization.

(5)  False claims of the contributions made to other bona fide charitable organizations.  

(6)  False claims made concerning the date, location, number of participants or attendees, or nature of staged charitable events.  

(7)  False claims concerning the number of employees or solicitors paid by an organization, the salaries and expenses paid to its staff, management or directors, or the percentage of administrative costs involved in any fund raising activity.  

(8)  Use of false or fictitious names or addresses for a charitable organization or use of false, fictitious names or aliases by any solicitor, employee, representative, agent, or management official.

(9)  False claims that merchandise, products, goods, or services are made by, provided by, or sold on behalf of a charitable organization.

(10)  False claims that the profits from sales of merchandise, products, goods, or services are predesignated as contributions to a charitable organization.  

In addition, the sample ballot, which includes an endorsement for a board member of the nonprofit organization, also appears to be in violation of La. R.S. 18:1463, which clarifies prohibitions on certain types of political materials. Again, quoting in full (emphasis added): 

Political material; ethics; prohibitions

A.  The Legislature of Louisiana finds that the state has a compelling interest in taking every necessary step to assure that all elections are held in a fair and ethical manner and finds that an election cannot be held in a fair and ethical manner when any candidate or other person is allowed to print or distribute any material which falsely alleges that a candidate is supported by or affiliated with another candidate, group of candidates, or other person, or a political faction, or to publish statements that make scurrilous, false, or irresponsible adverse comments about a candidate or a proposition.  The legislature further finds that the state has a compelling interest to protect the electoral process and that the people have an interest in knowing the identity of each candidate whose number appears on a sample ballot in order to be fully informed and to exercise their right to vote for a candidate of their choice.  The legislature further finds that it is essential to the protection of the electoral process that the people be able to know who is responsible for publications in order to more properly evaluate the statements contained in them and to informatively exercise their right to vote.  The legislature further finds that it is essential to the protection of the electoral process to prohibit misrepresentation that a person, committee, or organization speaks, writes, or acts on behalf of a candidate, political committee, or political party, or an agent or employee thereof.

B.(1)  No person shall cause to be printed or assist in the distribution, transportation, or transmission by any means of any facsimile of an official ballot or cause to be printed, distributed, transported, or transmitted any unofficial sample ballot with the number of a candidate unless the name of the candidate to whom the ballot number was assigned is correctly listed on the ballot.

(2)  No person shall cause to be printed or assist in the distribution, transportation, or transmission by any means of any facsimile of an official ballot, or cause to be printed, distributed, transported, or transmitted any unofficial sample ballot containing a photograph, or likeness of any person which falsely alleges, with an intent to misrepresent, that any person or candidate, or group of candidates in an election is endorsed by or supported by another candidate, group of candidates or other person.

C. (1)  No person shall cause to be distributed, or transmitted, any oral, visual, or written material containing any statement which he knows or should be reasonably expected to know makes a false statement about a candidate for election in a primary or general election or about a proposition to be submitted to the voters.

(2) Whenever any person, political committee, entity or organization makes a disbursement for the purpose of the financing of any electioneering communication, such communication shall comply with the following items under the following circumstances:

(a)  If the communication is paid for and authorized by a candidate, an authorized political committee of a candidate, or its agents, it shall clearly state that the communication has been paid for by such authorized political committee.  The name of the political committee paying for the communication shall be given in full and no acronyms shall be used.

(b)  If the communication is paid for by other persons, but authorized by a candidate, an authorized political committee of a candidate, or its agents, it shall clearly state that the communication is paid for by such other persons and authorized by such authorized political committee.  The name of the authorized political committee shall be given in full and no acronyms shall be used.

(c)  If the communication is not authorized by a candidate, a political committee of a candidate, or its agents, it shall clearly state the (i) name, (ii) physical address (not post office box), and (iii) telephone number and the world-wide web address if available of the person, committee, entity or organization who paid for the communication and state that the communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate committee.  The name of the payer shall be given in full and no acronyms shall be used.

(3)  If an individual, association, organization, committee, or corporation is responsible for or causes the distribution or transmission of any statements relative to candidates or propositions which do not fully disclose the name of the individual or the name of the association, organization, committee, or corporation, and the full and correct name and address of its chairman or other chief administrative officer and whether or not such individual, association, organization, committee, or corporation supports or opposes such candidate or proposition, such individual, association, organization, committee, or corporation shall report all expenditures incurred in relation to the publication, distribution, transportation, or transmission in accordance with R.S. 18:1491.7, 1495.5, or 1501.1.

(4)(a)  No person shall misrepresent himself or any committee or organization under his control as speaking, writing, or otherwise acting for or on behalf of any candidate, political committee, or political party, or any employee or agent thereof.

(b)  No person shall willfully and knowingly participate in or conspire to participate in a plan, scheme, or design to misrepresent himself or any committee or organization under his control or under the control of any other participant in the plan, scheme, or design as speaking, writing, or otherwise acting for or on behalf of any candidate, political committee, or political party, or any employee or agent thereof.

(c)  A radio or television broadcaster who broadcasts a paid political announcement or advertisement, the content of which the broadcaster had no input in or control over, is not subject to the provisions of this Paragraph.

(5)  For purposes of Paragraph (2) of this Subsection, the term “electioneering communication” means any broadcast, cable, or satellite communication that refers to a legally qualified candidate for elected office and is broadcast within sixty days before any election in which such candidate is on the ballot.

D.(1)  An affected candidate or voter shall be entitled to an injunction to restrain future violations of Subsections B and C of this Section.

(2)  In the event a permanent injunction is granted, reasonable attorney fees shall be allowed the petitioner by the court which shall be taxed as costs to be paid by the defendant.

E.  No person shall cause to be distributed or transmitted for or on behalf of a candidate for political office any oral, visual, or written material constituting a paid political announcement or advertisement, which is paid for by a third-party entity, without providing the name of the third-party entity on the face of the advertisement.  The name of the third-party entity shall be included on written material, political announcements, and advertisements so that it is clear and understandable.  The name of the third-party entity in visual and oral political announcements or advertisements shall be included so that it is clearly understandable as well as audible and visible for not less than three seconds.  If the advertisement is placed by a public relations firm, advertising agency, media buyer, or other person who purchases media advertising or time or space for such advertising, such person shall provide the information required by this Section.  For the purposes of this Subsection, “person” means any individual, partnership, association, labor union, political committee, corporation, or other legal entity, including its subsidiaries; however, “person” shall not mean any radio station, television broadcast station, cable television company, or newspaper.

F.  Whoever violates any provision of this Section shall be fined not more than two thousand dollars or be imprisoned, with or without hard labor, for not more than two years, or both.


Guts and Glory (and a little luck to this story) in a Saints road win

By
Nath Pizzolatto
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The Saints went into Baltimore as 2.5-point underdogs, a spread which, in all honesty, seemed fairly reasonable given the Ravens defense and the way the addition of receivers like Michael Crabtree and John Brown seemed to have revitalized Joe Flacco and the passing game. The Saints could win this game, certainly, but it would never be a walk in the park and they were going to have to fight tooth and nail to come away with the win. And the Saints delivered one of the toughest and boldest games of football I’ve seen in a long time. Well, at least for about 58 minutes or so, before they needed a final stroke of luck to bring it home. “Bold” can’t be overstated here. Many NFL coaches are content to play it safe, to try to make decisions that avoid criticism. They’re content to keep the game close and hope it all works out in the end. Sean Payton called a game that showed he came here to take the win. Even though the Saints didn’t score on the opening drive, it set the tone for how the team was going to play that day: Aggressive, confident, and fighting for every yard and every first down to the very end. I’m not sure the NFL has ever seen an opening drive like it: Sean Payton went for it on fourth down four times. The first attempt was all the way back at the Saints 34-yard-line, on a fake punt where Taysom Hill, lined up as the up-back, took the snap from center and simply ran for the first down up the middle, where the Ravens were outmatched by the numbers.
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The second time was just four plays later; on fourth-and-inches, Drew Brees ran a quarterback sneak by leaping over the line, just getting the ball across before being seriously knocked backwards to the ground. And on fourth-and-2 at Baltimore’s 31-yard-line, rather than bring in Wil Lutz for a field goal, the Saints ran a handoff to Mark Ingram for five yards. It wasn’t until the twentieth play of the drive, facing 4th-and-1 at Baltimore’s 4, that the fourth-down luck finally ran out. Taysom Hill ran the option but failed to press the option defender to commit; Alvin Kamara would have had a tough time getting the yardage anyway in that case, but Hill’s pitch was poor and high and fumbled as a result. But even without getting any points, the Saints took over ten minutes off the clock and sent a clear message: We’re not going to stop pressing with our offense, and we’re not going to give up. That would matter in a game with a low number of possessions (each team only got three real possessions in the first half; in the second, the Ravens got five to the Saints’ four– I’m not counting either of the Saints’ kneeldowns in this case). The Saints would punt on their next drive before scoring a touchdown; after going down 17-7 in late in the third quarter, the Saints would score 17 straight points– stopping the Ravens on a critical fourth down to boot– before kicking off and pinning Baltimore inside their own 15-yard-line with little over two minutes left. And this brings up to one of the two major ways the defense struggled Sunday: the two-minute drill. Perhaps it was because the pace kept the defense on its heels, tired out, and prevented substitutions; perhaps it was because the defensive calls played too safely and gave the Ravens too much underneath room. Whatever the case, the Ravens shredded the Saints in the two-minute drill. To wit: Ravens in the two-minute drill: Two drives, 12 plays, 156 yards, 13 points Ravens outside the two-minute drill: Six drives, 52 plays, 195 yards, 10 points The difference is rather stark. Holding a team under four yards per play is incredible. Giving up thirteen yards per play is… well, also incredible, but for the opposite reasons. The other major weak spot, as suspected, was the coverage away from Marshon Lattimore, particularly on John Brown. Brown’s speed makes him a great fit for Joe Flacco’s powerful downfield arm, and the Saints too often left Ken Crawley on him without enough help. This was most noticeable in the first half two-minute drill, where Brown was wide open on a deep dig route and took the pass for 56 total yards before Marcus Williams chased him down at the two yard line. Brown also scored the touchdown for the Ravens to attempt to tie the game, where somehow Vonn Bell and Marshon Lattimore had a coverage mistake. It’s not clear whose fault it was, but Lattimore apparently covered the short zone expecting to hand off Brown to Bell over the top, but Bell was lined up far out of position to do such a thing, and Brown was wide open on his touchdown catch. For the day, Brown caught all seven of his targets for 134 yards and a touchdown. (On a side note, Marcus Williams wasn’t on the field for the final two-minute drill with an unspecified injury, which hopefully isn’t serious.) The pass rush has to improve, too. They consistently got close to Flacco but never enough to actually disrupt him, only sacking him once. (On the bright side, several Flacco passes were tipped at the line.) Baltimore usually has a pretty good offensive line, though in this case they were relying on backups at several positions, meaning the Saints need to be able to take advantage there. Moreover, some of the passes completed by Flacco were a result of him having an impressive amount of time in the pocket. Coverages can only be expected to hold up for so long. On the offensive side of the ball, even though this wasn’t a high-flying game for a team that’s broken 40 points three times this season, the consistently on drives as well as the way the team executed in multiple parts of the game was very encouraging. Last week, Mark Ingram out-touched Alvin Kamara; this week, Ingram got more work early on but Kamara was used more down the stretch. That’s more how I expect the balance of work to look: Since the Saints don’t want to overwork Kamara, they’ll use Ingram earlier on in the game to keep him fresh. If the team gets way ahead (as they did against Washington), Ingram will be the clock-killer; if the team is in a tight struggle and needs to play their best football to secure the win, Kamara is going to be more of a factor. Taysom Hill also continues to see his workload increase. Besides the fake punt, Hill ran the ball six times and pitched it on several other option plays. Those six carries went for 35 yards; Hill is a remarkably fluid and efficient runner, and not just for a quarterback. It also seems like the Saints have settled on a running mate for Michael Thomas, and it’s Tre’Quan Smith. Smith started on the outside opposite Thomas today, and his six targets tied for second on the team. Though he only caught three of the passes, he nearly came down with some difficult grabs on his missed connections, and he showed some outstanding body control to stay inbounds on this catch:
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The offense didn’t fly as high as it has previously this year– in part because Baltimore has an excellent defense, and particular to high-flying-ness, a secondary with enough talent not to risk challenging downfield– but the Saints found ways to consistently execute across all parts of the field. Especially impressive considering starting left guard Andrus Peat was hurt, and his replacement, Josh LeRibeus, was also injured during the game and didn’t return. The Saints won this game with third-stringer Cameron Tom playing most of the game at left guard. Oh, and of course, there’s this:
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You didn’t think I’d write the story of this game without the final stroke of luck that sealed the Saints win, did you? New Orleans answered the bell on their first test in a difficult five-week stretch after the bye. Next week, they head to Minnesota, which was the site of some unpleasantness last year. The Vikings themselves have had their struggles, but they’ve now won three in a row to get to 4-2-1, which means this game has a chance to have a substantial impact on the playoff chase. It’s vital that the Saints don’t suffer a letdown this week and show up to play in prime time on Sunday night.

Poll Exclusive: Michiels Surges Ahead as Frontrunner; Hall Trends in Reverse

By
Lamar White, Jr.
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According to an independent poll conducted last week and obtained exclusively by The Bayou Brief, Kay Michiels, an attorney and former chief of staff for the City of Alexandria, is dominating the three-person field competing to replace outgoing Mayor Jacques Roy, with a double-digit lead. 

The poll was neither commissioned by nor provided to any of the campaigns. It was conducted on Oct. 15-17 by Myers Research and Strategic Services, a small but well-regarded firm in Washington, D.C. It sampled 400 likely voters and has a margin of error of +/- 5%.

The poll offers Alexandria residents the first public snapshot into a campaign season that kicked off unusually late and, for the first time in the city’s history, does not include a white male candidate. It may also upend the conventional thinking about voter behavior on the basis of race and the long-held assumption in Alexandria that a single African American candidate in the primary would consolidate the support from an overwhelming majority of the city’s black voters.

In fact, in an extensive 2014 study on minority candidates in Louisiana by Dr. Paru Shah, titled “It Takes a Black Candidate,” the historical data reveals that a black candidate is twice as likely to win when there are multiple black candidates competing in a primary election. 

Source: Myers Research and Strategic Services. Illustration by The Bayou Brief.

Kay Michiels now appears solidly positioned as the frontrunner, commanding support from 42% of voters. She also currently leads among likely voters in all but one of the city’s five council districts and among every demographic in the city.

Michiels only trails in Council District 5, a majority white district held by Chuck Fowler; currently, according to the poll, Catherine Davidson is ahead in District 5, though, importantly, the district also includes the highest number of undecided voters, 35%. 

In total, however, only 13% of voters remain undecided, split evenly between African Americans and whites. Slightly more than half (54%) of undecided voters are men.

41% of poll respondents were reached on cellphones, and 59% were reached on a landline. 48% of respondents were white, and 50% of respondents were African Americans, a number that matches historical turnout averages. 57% were Democrats, 26% were Republicans, and 17% were independents, which also is in line with citywide voter registration numbers.

Perhaps most surprisingly, state Rep. Jeff Hall, initially considered to have had the best opportunity of finishing first on the Nov. 6th primary, now appears trending toward a distant third place, the poll reveals. 

Today, Hall is polling at 18%, and if the trend continues, there may be very little time for him to rebound, without an expansive and unprecedented ground game operation. Only a month prior, two internal polls, not released to the public, claimed Hall had between 41% and 42.5% respectively, according to multiple sources familiar with the results. 

According to Myers, all three candidates enjoy positive perceptions, though Hall narrowly broke 50%. Candidates by positive and negative perceptions:

Source: Myers Research and Strategic Services. Illustration by The Bayou Brief.

An earlier poll, conducted by Myers in July, showed Hall with a paltry 34% job approval.

State Rep. Hall’s backwards slide appears to have primarily benefitted attorney Catherine Davidson, who may now be in firm control of second place. Davidson, who has run a surprisingly competitive grassroots campaign despite initially low name recognition and significantly fewer resources, is now polling in second place with 27%, more than tripling the support she had counted in a previous poll. 

Perhaps ironically, Davidson now leads Hall, who many believe to be allies of one another, by siphoning off votes in majority African African precincts., as the data reveals.

All three candidates are Democrats. 

Attorney Kay Michiels now dominates the field in the race for Alexandria Mayor, according to the most recent poll. Photo source: Facebook.

Attorney Catherine Davidson, who has run a low-budget, grassroots-oriented campaign, is now in sole position in second place. Photo credit: Charles “The Rev” Ward, 2018.

State Rep. Jeff Hall has plummeted in the most recent scientific poll of the Alexandria mayor’s race and now appears headed toward a third place finish. Photo source: Facebook.

Myers Research has previously worked for President Barack Obama and more than 300 other clients across the country, including former Rapides Parish Sheriff Chuck Wagner, current Rapides Parish District Attorney Phillip Terrell, and nearly two dozen Louisiana state representatives and state senators.

What could possibly explain Hall’s disastrous three weeks? The poll provides some potential explanations.

As previously mentioned, an earlier poll by Myers showed Hall with only a 34% approval in his current job as state representative. This is perhaps not surprising to those who have followed his career.

Hall’s record in the legislature has been largely unremarkable. During his three and a half years in office, he has been one of the least productive of state house’s 105 members, shepherding through only three local bills: One that created a downtown development district in Pineville, one that provided additional funding to improve a sewerage system in Pineville, and another that closed a loophole in the Rapides Parish Sheriff Department’s pension fund. His proposal to reconstitute the defunct Alexandria Central City Economic Development District failed in committee for three consecutive years, following the strong objections of the Rapides Parish Police Jury, the City of Alexandria, and the Cenla Chamber of Commerce.

During the state’s six special sessions, in which legislators tackled the most critical budget crisis in modern state history, the only piece of legislation Hall introduced was a resolution commending a local art teacher on his retirement.

There are other significant factors that may be attributable to Hall’s poor showing. According to Myers Research, City Councilman Joe Fuller is perceived negatively by a majority of voters, by a ten point margin. Fuller is actually less liked in Alexandria than the utility company Cleco.

In recent weeks, Fuller has taken on a much more public role as a surrogate for the Hall campaign, regularly issuing factually incorrect, controversial, and racially divisive video commentary on his Facebook account promoting Hall’s campaign. The target of Fuller’s ire is often outgoing Mayor Roy.

The same poll also found Roy with the highest approval rating of any current officeholder. All told, 61% of voters approve of the job he has done, including 65% approval among African Americans. 

Polling data indicates that Councilman-at-large Joe Fuller may have negatively affected state Rep. Jeff Hall’s campaign for Alexandria mayor. Source: Facebook.

There is compelling evidence to suggest that Fuller’s prominent role as a surrogate for Hall’s campaign has backfired. In addition to his relentless criticism of the outgoing mayor, Fuller has frequently made unsupported and conspiratorial allegations about the operations of the city’s utility department. 

Only 10% of voters trust Fuller to be truthful about utility rates, according to Myers Research. 60% believe the current city administration. Hall, a former Cleco executive, has adopted some of Fuller’s talking points about utility rates. Only 16% of voters trust him to be truthful about utilities. Incidentally, 54% of voters have a negative perception of Cleco, and 58% believe the City of Alexandria should maintain control of its own utility company.  

There is another, arguably more obvious negative impact that Fuller has inflicted on the Hall campaign, his sustained attacks on one of his colleagues on the City Council, Roosevelt Johnson. Johnson, who is seeking reelection, is one of the most respected leaders in the community. He represents District 2, a majority-minority area in the heart of the city. Fuller may not be on the ballot, but he is campaigning heavily both for Hall and against Johnson.

Alexandria City Councilman Roosevelt Johnson is one of the most respected officials in the community. He is also the first elected official in Louisiana to pass a smoking ban in restaurants and bars. Photo credit: The Town Talk.

Hall should be able to attract a bulk of his support in Johnson’s council district. Instead, Kay Michiels is polling at 51%; Davidson is at 27%, and Hall is polling at an anemic 8%, according to the data. The decision to publicly oppose Councilman Johnson, who is known to be one of the most hardworking campaigners in the state (he famously knocked on every single door in the entire city during his 2006 bid for Alexandria mayor), appears to have been an enormous strategic error. 

Indeed, while Michiels leads in four of city’s five districts and Davidson leads in one, Jeff Hall is only polling in second place in District 3, currently represented by Jules Green.

It is critical to recognize this is only one poll and offers a snapshot in time of the race. During the final two weeks of any campaign, there is always a possibility that the dynamics can change dramatically, and an effective ground operation can negate current voter perceptions.

One thing should be clear from this data: 2018 is indeed the year of the woman.  


Grading the Saints at the bye

By
Nath Pizzolatto
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Okay, “grading” is not exactly accurate– I don’t want to try to quantify performance at any position. But I do want to look at how each unit has performed so far this season, and what they have to do to fix any issues going forward, in order to be a championship team. QUARTERBACK Obviously Brees has been as great as ever this year. Not much to say there. Taysom Hill has also been good in his odd hybrid role of option QB / kick returner / gunner, although he did miss a pitch to Alvin Kamara against Washington that almost certainly would have resulted in a touchdown. What can improve going forward: Hill should make that pitch. RUNNING BACK The return of Mark Ingram was the biggest factor the team needed to get the offense humming again. None of his replacements were capable of carrying the load in the same way, and the team had to rely on Alvin Kamara far too heavily. Ingram is not as impressive as Kamara but he’s steady and productive and capable of producing big plays. Giving the Saints two reliable running backs (nobody else even played a snap at tailback against Washington) allows the offense a greater diversity and a set of fresh legs to get through games and the season. Kamara’s talents will be much more valuable in the playoffs. Fullback is rarely utilized in the offense. Zach Line’s usage against Washington– 15 of 66 snaps, 22.72%– was almost exactly his usage for the season (22.61%). I can’t honestly offer a more detailed critique of his play. What can improve going forward: Really, Ingram back in conjunction with Kamara was the big concern here. I don’t expect it to always be as easy as it was week 5, but that’s much closer to what the offense ought to look like. WIDE RECEIVER Word broke late this week that Ted Ginn Jr. is headed to injured reserve, which will open up playing time on the outside for Cameron Meredith and especially Tre’Quan Smith. Smith dazzled on a couple of deep balls against Washington; he probably won’t be almost ten yards open regularly, as he was on his first touchdown, but the bye week, presumably, will have allowed him more practice time in that role and hopefully a better rapport with Drew Brees. Michael Thomas has, of course, been the driving engine of the passing offense and will continue to be so. He may not actually set a receptions record this season, but there’s no reason he can’t finish with an absurd catch rate and the kind of production that firmly stakes his place in the upper echelon of NFL wide receivers. What can improve going forward: Smith isn’t a speedster like Ted Ginn, but he’s fast enough that, in conjunction with his size, hands, and route-running, make him a very good deep ball target who can still keep a defense honest. With Ginn out, he’ll need to be integrated more into the passing offense. Hopefully over the bye Meredith will have been integrated more as well, as he has potential top-end talent, if he’s recovered from his injury and on the same page as Brees. Austin Carr has been fine as the slot receiver. All in all, though, the team was over-reliant on Thomas for the first three weeks, and it’ll take Meredith, Smith, and Carr improving and better integrating into the offense to keep it balanced. TIGHT ENDS On the one hand, this group hasn’t particularly stood out, although Ben Watson has been a fairly reliable if infrequently targeted pass catcher. Josh Hill has played nearly as many snaps as Watson; he hasn’t been much of a weapon, but he has produced when called upon (8 catches on 8 targets, a couple of big plays and a touchdown). Dan Arnold was a sort of surprise as the third tight end, and hasn’t been very active, so this is What can improve going forward: Best-case scenario: Arnold develops into the guy many fans told themselves Josh Hill was going to become after the Saints traded Jimmy Graham. For this year, though, he probably won’t make a large impact, and Hill and Watson are who they are at this point. As long as Watson makes it through the season, this group will be okay. It won’t be a game-changing unit, but with all the other weapons the Saints have on offense, it doesn’t have to be. OFFENSIVE LINE As long as this unit stays healthy, it’s one of the best in the league. This year the biggest issue has been with Andrus Peat, who missed some time earlier this year (and seems set to miss the Ravens game), but none of the other players have missed a snap. Josh LeRibeus has filled in admirably enough when Peat missed time, though the line is at its best when Peat is playing. (Perhaps not coincidentally, the running game has struggled the most running behind left tackle or in the tackle/guard B gap, ranking 28th in the league there according to Football Outsiders’ Adjusted Line Yards stat, while ranking fourth overall.) All in all, though, the line is getting the job done. What can improve going forward: Keep the line healthy, and develop young backups like Cameron Tom and Will Clapp as potential long-term pieces. DEFENSIVE LINE The Saints rank as the #1 run-stopping team in the league according to Football Outsiders. The pass rush has been less sturdy, but is showing signs of improvement. Sheldon Rankins has been turning into the player the team hoped they were drafting in 2016; Marcus Davenport has been playing increased snaps every week and looking better and better. Hopefully after the bye, he’ll have a bigger role, and by the time the playoffs role around, he can be a real disruptive force on the line. What can improve going forward: Davenport’s development seems right on schedule, so he needs to get increased playing time. I still think Trey Hendrickson has talent; he was a healthy scratch even before he missed some games due to illness, and I’d like to see him work back into the rotation and develop further. The team has actually been terrific against the run– first according to DVOA– so the real issue for the defensive line is to put together a consistent enough pass rush that the coverage doesn’t have to hold longer than it’s capable of. LINEBACKERS For the second year in a row, the Saints tried to make a splash in the offseason to fix the position. Last year, it was signing free agents A.J. Klein and Manti Te’o and drafting Alex Anzalone; this year, it was signing Demario Davis to a big free-agent deal. Davis has taken over at middle linebacker and played well, being a great run-stopper, the team’s most reliable coverage linebacker, and a pretty good blitzer too. And that’s good, because the rest of the crew hasn’t quite been up to snuff. Probably most disappointing is Anzalone, not because he’s played particularly poorly but because he’s been largely consigned to the bench after he was expected to be a starter this season. What can improve going forward: Pass coverage on running backs (29th in the league by FO). It might be time to give more snaps to Alex Anzalone or even Vince Biegel, signed from Green Bay’s practice squad. While the performance of the unit hasn’t been bad enough for serious concern, any weak spots in the defense will be exploited when it comes time to play the best teams in the league. SECONDARY Well, with as strong as the pass coverage finished the season and as young as the talent involved was, the expectations were that this unit would grow further and become one of the strengths of the team. Instead… the first few weeks were fairly disastrous. Tampa Bay (and Ryan freaking Fitzpatrick!) torched the team at every level in week 1 to the tune of 48 points. (To be fair, in a fashion, seven of those points were scored by Tampa’s defense.) Week 2 was a little better, in part because of Tyrod Taylor’s struggles, but the secondary still gave up a game-tying fourth-down bomb to Antonio Callaway. In week three, an attempt to swap P.J. Williams for Ken Crawley at CB2 resulted in 27 minutes or so of Calvin Ridley completely and thoroughly torching Williams until Crawley was reinserted. Weeks four and five were a little better, but the team still ranks last in the league, by substantial margins, at covering a team’s #1 and #2 wide receivers. (According to Football Outsiders, the 31st-best team in the league at covering #2 receivers, Minnesota, has a DVOA of 34.4%, meaning an average #2 receiver would be expected to perform 34.4% better than average against Minnesota. New Orleans’ rating against WR2s? 92.2%. That said, the Saints have actually been very good against other receivers beyond the top two, ranking third in the league there (-39.6%). Patrick Robinson (now on IR but with hopes he can return this season), P.J. Williams, and Justin Hardee have done well covering slot receivers and deeper on the depth chart. What can improve going forward: A lot, frankly. Lattimore has improved since his early struggles, keeping Odell Beckham contained in a week 4 win over the Giants, but Sterling Shepard had a big game. The team simply has to figure out how to stop the deep pass and stop team’s second receivers. Marcus Williams has the talent to cover the deep areas; Ken Crawley isn’t a shutdown corner, but is good enough to do his job if he gets proper health. Kurt Coleman has been disappointing; hopefully he turns it on in the second half of the season. The talent is there; the coaching needs to put it in the best position to win. The defense in general could stand to force more turnovers, and interceptions would be a great start to that. SPECIAL TEAMS Wil Lutz is the most consistent kicker the Saints have had in a while. Combined with steady hand Thomas Morstead, the Saints have some fairly reliable if not ground-breaking special teams. With Ted Ginn and Tommylee Lewis both on IR, more return duties will fall to Taysom Hill and Alvin Kamara– in the latter’s case, particularly in high-leverage situations. Also, Hill threw a pretty sweet pass on a fake punt to convert the first down. What can improve going forward: Realistically, the unit is pretty good. I suppose an occasional return touchdown would be nice. OVERALL OUTLOOK The biggest weakness the team has exhibited this year is in pass coverage, which is a weakness that could sink the team if they don’t get it back together to the level they played in 2017. Though the early weeks this season were shaky, I’m optimistic things will get better, because of the talent involved. If the pass rush continues to develop, and Marshon Lattimore and Marcus Williams play up to their talent, the pass defense should get to the point where they can at least stave off opposing passing offenses enough for the offense to win games. With most of the other expected NFC contenders struggling this year, New Orleans has a real chance for a Super Bowl berth– especially if they can beat the Los Angeles Rams, their biggest competition for the #1 seed, in their week 9 matchup. (Beating the Vikings and Eagles would help a lot, too.)

Commentary | There is a reason Landry and Ardoin oppose a proposal to waive bus fares on Election Day.

By
Lamar White, Jr.
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Nearly every week during the past three years, state Attorney General Jeff Landry has charged taxpayers for the commute from his home in New Iberia to his office in downtown Baton Rouge, in direct violation of the state’s guidelines on travel expenses and mileage reimbursements. We first reported on Landry’s misuse of taxpayer-funded travel in December of 2017.

Yet earlier this week, Landry implied he may take legal action against the Lafayette City-Parish government if it approved and implemented a proposal by Councilman Bruce Conque to waive fees for public transportation on Election Day (which, technically, spans over two days, Nov. 6th and Dec. 8th), claiming the plan amounted an unconstitutionally gratuitous donation.

All told, the initiative would have cost only $2,800. 

As a result of Landry’s ultimatum, Conque pulled the proposed resolution from the council agenda, and the issue, at least for now, appears to be dead.

But even before Landry had chimed in, interim Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin also publicly opposed the proposal.

I’ll unpack exactly why Landry and Ardoin were so blatantly wrong about the law, but first, it’s important to understand why they are both motivated to oppose an initiative that could make it marginally easier for Louisiana citizens to exercise their right to vote. 

Ardoin is currently in a tight battle for election against a crowded field, after being elevated to the position following the disgraceful departure of his former boss Sec. Tom Schedler.

Schedler resigned from office in the wake of a sexual harassment scandal involving a staffer. The terms of the mediation agreement require that no one involved in the dispute be allowed to communicate details with the media. But sources close to the Secretary of State’s office assert it is inconceivable that Ardoin, Schedler’s chief deputy, was not aware of the workplace harassment, which eventually cost taxpayers nearly $150,000. They allege Ardoin, once elevated to the position, demoted a different high-level female employee who he perceived to be disloyal. That employee immediately resigned, according to several people familiar with the matter.     

Both Landry and Ardoin are far-right, conservative Republicans. Earlier this year, they were instrumental in convincing the state bond commission to prohibit two major banks from working as underwriters on a $600 million infrastructure investment package because the banks had enacted policies against financing the sales of guns to individuals under the age of 21 and stricter internal regulations on vendors who sell semi-automatic weapons. Financial experts believe the prohibition against the two banks will likely cost Louisiana millions of dollars in missed opportunity and guarantees the state will be at a competitive disadvantage. 

As a candidate for Secretary of State, Ardoin has attempted to convince voters he has been in office for a long time; in actuality, he took over, in a temporary capacity, on May 9th of this year. In his debut campaign commercial, he presents himself as if he is an attorney with a lengthy record of success in the courtroom, at one point boasting that “when the Obama Justice Department sued Louisiana, I fought them and won.” The claim is brazenly and almost laughably inaccurate. Ardoin is not a lawyer and had previously worked as a lobbyist for the nursing home industry.

Kyle Ardoin’s debut commercial suggests the interim Secretary of State has won a series of legal battles. He is not a lawyer and has never represented the state in a courtroom.


Landry, however, is a lawyer. As the head of the Louisiana Department of Justice, he has spent the bulk of his three years in office collaborating on national, divisive litigation with disgraced Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is currently facing multiple felony indictments, and former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, who resigned in a torrent of controversy over claims that he had grossly abused his office.

****     

The proposal in Lafayette was modeled after similar, successful, and completely legal initiatives in other states. It did not call for any change in bus routes; no one would be, literally, driven directly to their polling place. Moreover, the city-parish government had already done the same thing before: Waiving fees for bus riders on both Black Friday and, strangely enough, on Cyber Monday, the day shoppers are supposed to stay home and buy online. 

Almost immediately after Councilman Conque proposed the resolution to waive bus fares on Election Day, Michael Lunsford, a notorious online troll and local conservative operative who lives outside of Lafayette Parish but is the self-anointed leader of a Lafayette anti-tax organization, proclaimed his opposition. Lunsford was perhaps best known in the area for his quixotic but successful campaign against a relatively banal millage renewal that funded local libraries, yet he struggled to find a legitimate legal argument to justify his position about waiving bus fares on Election Day. For years, he had been an anti-tax crusader, an agenda that appeals to almost no one who actually relies every day on public transportation.  

At least initially, he asserted the plan would be unfair to people who live outside of the transit system’s coverage area, as if that somehow was discriminatory. Then, he refined his argument slightly, contending that such a program amounted to government-sanctioned electioneering. If more people who lived in urban areas were given an opportunity to vote, that’d somehow  be unfair to people who live out in the country.   

He eventually got ahold of the Lexis Nexis cover page of a 1996 Attorney General’s opinion from Richard Ieyoub concerning the Orleans Parish School Board providing their school buses on Election Day, a scheme that was unconstitutional and entirely different than the one proposed in Lafayette.

When Jeff Landry entered the fray, he mentioned the advisory opinion as if it was persuasive authority on the subject, even while admitting the facts weren’t the same at all. 

There is nothing illegal or unconstitutional about the proposal by Councilman Conque, and even though he pulled the resolution, other officials in Louisiana should consider identical proposals with the understanding that this is a court battle worth having. 

Article VII, Section 14 of the Louisiana State Constitution is at the center of Landry’s analysis, and it’s a part of state law that is likely familiar to any attorney who has ever worked for a state or local government agency. In plain language, the law prohibits the government from simply giving away something, and primarily, that means property– land, buildings, vehicles, supplies, and materials. The government cannot loan it or pledge it or donate it without a commensurate and fair return. There are exceptions, of course. Nonprofit organizations and neighborhood groups can typically use public facilities at no cost under a Cooperative Endeavor Agreement, for example, and there’s no issue when one city government decides to provide a surplus police cruiser to another city government.

Landry, however, is broadly interpreting Article VII, Section 14 in a way most attorneys would find unreasonable, and in order to do so, he is ignoring a key provision. Subsection (B)(1) plainly states, “Nothing in this Section shall prevent… the use of public funds for programs of social welfare for the aid and support of the needy.” 

The pivotal issue in the 1996 opinion about school buses in Orleans Parish was the literal donation of property to another entity. The proposal in Lafayette Parish had nothing to do with providing property to anyone; it merely sought to temporarily waive a fare for service on a particular day.

The government does this routinely as a way of encouraging certain activities. For example, prior to the kickoff of hunting season, you used to be able to buy guns and ammunition, tax-free, until the state legislature accidentally discharged the holiday in a drafting error. School supplies are tax-free before the beginning of the new school year. There’s also a hurricane supplies weekend in Louisiana. These exemptions don’t necessarily affect state sales taxes, but they do affect local taxes.

And if encouraging people to buy guns, school supplies, and disaster prep equipment can be justified, then why not encouraging people to vote? State law already provides for it, under La. R.S. 18:1462(A):

The Legislature of Louisiana recognizes that the right to vote is a right that is essential to the effective operation of a democratic government.  Due to a past, longstanding history of election problems, such as multiple voting, votes being recorded for persons who did not vote, votes being recorded for deceased persons, voting by non-residents, vote buying, and voter intimidation, the legislature finds that the state has a compelling interest in securing a person’s right to vote in an environment which is free from intimidation, harassment, confusion, obstruction, and undue influence. (emphasis added). 

How could anyone be opposed to a simple initiative that would cost a negligible amount of money in order to advance the ability for citizens to exercise their fundamental right to vote?

“The intent is to increase voter turnout and the taxpayers are picking up the tab,” Michael Lunsford asserted on Facebook, as if that was a bad thing. Troublingly, Lunsford also told the media that his opinion had been shaped by a private conversation he allegedly had with an official at the Louisiana Secretary of State’s office, who bizarrely told him that efforts to increase voter turnout were illegal “electioneering.”

Jeff Landry went even further. “It opens the system up for fraud,” he said, without offering a scintilla of evidence. 

Let’s dispense of the formalities and call the opposition from Ardoin, Landry, and Lunsford what it truly is: A flimsy excuse to justify any effort that would make it easier for minorities and poor people to vote. We’ve seen this play out all across the country in recent years, with Republican attorneys general and secretaries of state purging people from voter registration databases, enacting burdensome and often expensive identification requirements, and shuttering polling places in urban precincts.

Since 2012, the Secretary of State has overseen the closure of at least 103 different polling locations, predominately in urban and majority-minority precincts. The net effect and the intention, albeit unstated, is to suppress African American participation.

According to a report published in June by the United States Commission on Civil Rights, there is ample evidence that these closures in Louisiana have disproportionately affected African Americans.

“(The data) indicates that there are fewer polling locations per voter in a geographical area (in Louisiana) if that area has more black residents,” the report reveals. “This in turn implies that black residents face longer travel distances to reach a polling location.” 

As a specific example, the report references the testimony of Kyle Ardoin, who, at the time, was serving as Schedler’s assistant. Ardoin had been asked about the closure of a specific poll location in New Orleans and told that because of the closure, residents had to walk a mile and a half to vote. Ardoin asserted that the story was fictional. No one had to walk that far in that particular neighborhood. Then, however, he was forced to admit to what his office had discovered.

“But we did find another instance similar (in New Orleans),” he said. “(A) precinct was moved two miles because the entity either didn’t want the polling location there anymore or the local governing authority felt like it was serving people best in that new location.” 

The report’s authors weren’t persuaded by Ardoin’s attempt to blame the local government for the polling location’s closure; these decisions are ultimately made by the Secretary of State, the job Ardoin hopes that voters- well, some voters– will elect him to occupy for the next term.   

 
    

Part 2: The All-Time Brees-Era Offense

By
Nath Pizzolatto
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(If you missed part one of our Drew Brees tribute, click here.) [dropcap]W[/dropcap]ho are the best players to surround Drew Brees in his time with the Saints? I’ve tried to put together a first- and second-team at every other position on the offense based on the player’s production and impact on the team in the Brees/Payton years, from 2006 to now. (Thanks to nola.com for their Brees article providing a handy reference for some of these statistics.) Workhorse Back First team: Mark Ingram Second team: Pierre Thomas The two longest-tenured running backs in the Brees era, each with eight seasons played for the Saints (and counting). Thomas was more frequently used as a receiver than Ingram, but Ingram was the rushing bellcow, with 1199 career carries to Thomas’ 818; Ingram passed Thomas in total yards from scrimmage last season. Satellite Back First team: Darren Sproles Second team: Alvin Kamara Kamara will eventually pass Sproles for this position (and maybe even become the new lead workhorse), but Sproles was the most productive on a per-touch basis of the backs who were used in a receiving role. Kamara has, in 21 career games, already hit 2,204 yards from scrimmage, and his incredible running ability and dynamic big-play capability gives him a strong chance to end up #1 when it’s all said and done overall. You’ll notice I excluded one very prominent name; I’ll get to him later. Wide Receiver First team: Marques Colston, Michael Thomas Second Team: Devery Henderson, Brandin Cooks Colston, of course, needs no introduction. At this point, Thomas doesn’t either, although his career totals are less than Henderson’s. I think it’s safe to say which one is better and has had the bigger impact, though,as Thomas is in the conversation for best wide receiver in the league. Henderson was a consistent second wide receiver for many years; Cooks had two 1000-yard seasons in his three years with the Saints before he was traded. Slot Receiver First Team: Lance Moore Second Team: Reggie Bush Bush would be used more as a lead back in Miami and Detroit after he left New Orleans, but the Saints threw to him so much, it felt appropriate to list him here. (It also seemed like a crime to leave one of Bush, Sproles, or Kamara off the team, so I cheated a little.) He was highly productive as a receiving back, but Moore’s eight years with the team and two 1,000-yard seasons give him an edge in total productivity. (Willie Snead also had a 1,000-yard season in the slot; Austin Carr looks to replicate the trend of undrafted free agents filling that role for New Orleans.) Tight End First Team: Jimmy Graham Second Team: Jeremy Shockey Graham is one of the best receivers Brees ever had and at his peak was one of the best receiving tight ends in history, so this is no surprise. Shockey gets the nod over Ben Watson; Watson had the best single season of the two, but Shockey was more consistently and overall productive, plus he was on the Super Bowl team. Left Tackle First Team: Jermon Bushrod Second Team: Jammal Brown Honestly, it feels weird to pick Jammal Brown over Terron Armstead. But despite what my gut tells me there, even though Armstead has had a longer tenure with the team, he’s still only started 51 games at left tackle to Brown’s 45, and Brown has two Pro Bowl and one All-Pro appearance between ’06-’08.  I think Armstead has Pro Bowl talent, but his injury inconsistency has kept him from getting a bid and keeps him from getting the second-team spot here. Even though Brown’s ACL tear caused him to miss an entire season, in the four years he was the expected starter, he started 45 games to Armstead’s 44 in 2014-17, plus the awards accolades suggest his peak was higher. (If Armstead remains the left tackle for a few more seasons, he’ll probably pass Brown.) Bushrod gets the first-team nod with the most games started (62) and two Pro Bowl appearances; he moved into the lineup when Brown tore his ACL, and didn’t leave until his contract expired and Chicago inked him to a big free-agent deal. Left Guard First Team: Carl Nicks Second Team: Andrus Peat Nicks was a legitimate All-Pro at the position for New Orleans, and it’s only because the team couldn’t come to an agreement with Drew Brees in time that they were unable to retain Nicks past his rookie deal. It’s one of the real shameful what-ifs in NFL history; Nicks signed a giant free-agent deal with Tampa Bay, then suffered not only a toe injury but a MRSA infection that essentially ended his career. (Multiple NFL teams suffered MRSA outbreaks in their locker rooms around this time, a rather galling indictment of the care NFL teams invest in their billion-dollar enterprises.) If the Saints had been able to use the franchise tag on Nicks, he might still be with the team today (or at least having recently wrapped up a long tenure of playing at a high level). After some time where Peat was moved around the line to find his best spot, he’s settled in comfortably at left guard and been a solid, productive player there. (Ben Grubbs was the only other candidate of significant tenure, and his signing by the Saints has generally been considered a disappointment.) Center First Team: Max Unger Second Team: Jonathan Goodwin Center is another position the Saints have gotten solid production from over the years despite rotating a number of players. Unger is the best of those players, a former All-Pro player who hasn’t received any Pro Bowl accolades since joining the Saints, though his performance is certainly worthy of them. Of the other players to man the pivot, Goodwin was the longest-tenured, signing with the team in 2006 and taking over the starting job in 2008 after two years of Jeff Faine, then starting from ’08-’10 and coming back for one last year as the starting center in 2014. (Brian de la Puente, a 2008 undrafted free agent, took over from 2011-13, after 2011 free-agent signing Olin Kreutz retired unexpectedly after starting four games.) Right Guard First Team: Jahri Evans Second Team: Larry Warford Jahri Evans is arguably a Hall of Fame lineman, with six Pro Bowl and four All-Pro appearances in his eleven years manning right guard for the Saints. The team let him go after the 2016 season and signed Larry Warford, who made the Pro Bowl in his first year for the Saints. There literally isn’t another option for this position. Right Tackle First Team: Zach Strief Second Team: Jon Stinchcomb Ryan Ramczyk hasn’t played enough to earn this distinction yet– especially considering how much of his playing time in 2017 came at left tackle– but he’s got the talent to jump to the top of this list if he develops as expected and stays at right tackle. Stinchcomb and Strief both played at an above-average level– Stinchcomb has a Pro Bowl appearance, while Strief doesn’t– but ultimately I chose Strief because he spent years as the team’s swing tackle before taking over at right tackle when Stinchcomb retired, spending his entire twelve-year career with the Saints. SPECIAL DISPENSATION: Thomas Morstead. A punter isn’t an offensive player, but Morstead is the only player aside from Brees remaining from the Super Bowl team, and thus the second-longest tenured Saint. (And his onside kick in Super Bowl 44 remains the gold standard for onside kicks.) Next up: A review of the team before Baltimore’s game and some looks at how they can improve.

Part 1: The Ballad of Drew Brees

By
Nath Pizzolatto
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And now for a brief tribute to the NFL’s all-time leading passer… [dropcap]D[/dropcap]rew Christopher Brees was born January 15, 1979 in Austin, Texas. After a distinguished passing career at Westlake High School, he accepted a scholarship offer from Purdue, starting for three years from 1998-2000. The San Diego Chargers drafted him in 2001 with the 32nd overall pick. Brees sat on the bench his first year before taking over in 2002, having a fine if not spectacular season. But the important part of the story, for our purposes, begins here. After Brees, rather than taking the expected improvements, had a poor third season with the Chargers, they opted to draft Eli Manning at the top of the draft (eventually trading him to the Giants for Philip Rivers), seemingly setting the course for Brees ot go back to the bench and leave San Diego. And then Brees had a Pro Bowl season in 2004, and one nearly as good in 2005, and Rivers didn’t get a single start ahead of him. It looked like Bres had reestablished himself and would either get an enormous new contract from the Chargers or would break the bank in free agency. And then, in a meaningless week 17 game, Brees was hit while he was on the ground and tore his labrum. Suddenly the prize of the free-agent class had questions as to whether he would ever play again. 2005 was a disastrous year for the city of New Orleans and the Saints as well. Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in what should have been unfathomable ways in 21st-century America. (Thirteen years hence, others have said what needs to be said about the city far better than I can, so I’ll stick with talking about the impact on the Saints.) The Saints themselves were displaced, having to play their home games in a combination of LSU’s Tiger Stadium and San Antonio’s Alamodome, which was not only a harsh disadvantage for the team but also demoralizing for fans, as it revived the notion that Tom Benson might still be interested in moving the team to San Antonio. The Saints went 3-13 in 2005, landing the #2 pick in the draft. After the season, they fired coach Jim Haslett, opting for a fresh start. Benson (under some pressure from Commissioner Paul Tagliabue) kept the team in New Orleans. The team, and the city, needed to rebuild. And it it took the perfect aligning of the stars for it to happen. To bring a number of second choices and plan Bs together to New Orleans:
  • The Chargers already chose Rivers over Brees; it then happened again in free agency, with the Miami Dolphins’ team doctors deciding the chance of Brees recovering properly from his shoulder injury was too low to take the risk, and trading for Daunte Culpe
  • The Saints, then, weren’t Brees’ first choice, either; at the time, the Dolphins, with Nick Saban as head coach, coming of a 9-7 season, and not having been displaced from their hometown amidst uncertainty about their future, were considered the better situation for a quarterback. The Saints and Brees struck a deal almost immediately after the Dolphins’ trade for Culpepper was announced.
  • Speaking of that uncertainty, it’s still unclear that New Orleans was Tom Benson’s first choice for the team, or if he’d have preferred to move to San Antonio. It’s long been believed Tagliabue’s pressure was the major factor in keeping the team in New Orleans.
Brees signed a six-year, $60 million contract with the Saints, and had this to say:
I just felt that energy in New Orleans. From the very beginning there was a genuine feeling that they wanted me there. They believe I can come back from this shoulder injury and lead them to a championship. They were as confident as I am, and that meant a lot.
Brees immediately delivered the best season in Saints history in 2006, winning the team’s first-ever first-round bye, and their second-ever playoff game (the first being in 2000 under Jim Haslett), bringing them to their first NFC Championship game. They lost to the Bears, but it was clear that the Saints would be a contender for as long as Brees and Payton stayed together. The team slid back the next year, finishing 7-9, while continuing to build. In 2008, the team performed substantially better, but a number of close losses and a difficult division left them at 8-8 and in last place in the South. Then in 2009, it all came together. An opportunistic defense started generating huge plays. The offense was a steady and unstoppable machine. The Saints took their play along with a bit of luck to cruise to a 13-0 start; they would lose their last three games, but preserved their top seed in the NFC, to remain at home for the playoffs. Famously, with time running out in regulation in the NFC Championship Game, with the game tied and the Minnesota Vikings in field-goal range, Brett Favre inexplicably threw an across-the-field ball that was intercepted and sent the game to overtime. The Saints never gave up possession again, even converting a critical fourth down on the drive that sealed the game with a field goal. Despite being five-point underdogs to the Indianapolis Colts in the Super Bowl, and despite falling behind 10-0, New Orleans staged a comeback in the second half, kicked off (literally) by Thomas Morstead’s surprise onside kick, which led to a go-ahead Drew Brees touchdown pass to Pierre Thomas. The Colts regained the lead, but then Brees found Jeremy Shockey for the go-ahead TD in the fourth quarter, and Lance Moore in the end zone on the two-point conversion, a famously close play that was ruled incomplete and needed a replay challenge to count. And then, as the Colts drove to try to tie the game, Tracy Porter jumped Reggie Wayne’s route on a third-down pass, having been tipped off to the Colts’ bread-and-butter third-down play rom film study, and ran it in for a score that would complete the 31-17 final. Brees and the Saints had that confidence and belief in each other established nearly four years ago rewarded. New Orleans had its first world championship. The team has not gotten back to those heights yet, despite some excellent teams– 2011, 2013, and 2017 most notably– that were all Super Bowl contenders but all lost in the divisional round of the playoffs. (The 2010 team, more ignominiously, lost an opening playoff game to the 7-9 Seattle Seahawks, in the playoffs by virtue of winning an incredibly weak NFC West.) Even when Brees has languished on mediocre teams brought down by poor defense– 2012 and 2016 are the most notable in this regard– he has continued to perform to astonishing heights. He has led the NFL in passing seven times. He has five of the nine 5,000-yard passing seasons in NFL history; no one else has more than one. His 5,476 yards in 2011 set a new NFL record until Peyton Manning broke the mark by one yard. He’s broken the single-season completion percentage record three times and holds the all-time record. After the level of the 2017 team’s performance, and the addition of some more key pieces through the draft, the team is looking to once again contend for a Super Bowl, and just may be able to send Brees off with at least one more ring when he eventually retires. Hopefully that day doesn’t come too soon. Click here for part two of the tribute to Drew Brees: The all-time Brees-era Saints offense.

Hart-Atwater: The Louisiana Connection

By
Peter Athas
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Political consultant Raymond Strother talks about campaign commercials in an interview on C-SPAN. Nov. 5, 1984.

In the run-up to the 1988 election, the Democratic nomination was Gary Hart’s to lose. He ran an excellent campaign as the runner-up to Walter Mondale in 1984; picking the previous cycle’s runner-up looked like a wise choice. It had worked for the GOP with 1976 runner-up Ronald Reagan as their 1980 nominee.

This time, though, things did not go as planned.

The Hart dreadnought sank in a sea of scandal in 1987. There had long been rumors that Hart had zipper issues and a troubled marriage. Hart’s close friendship with legendary Hollywood hound Warren Beatty helped fuel the gossip.

The world was different then: private lives were considered off-limits unless they affected a politician’s job performance, and even then, the old boys club kept each other’s secrets. That began to change with the pursuit of Gary Hart’s sex life.

Hart’s chances to be president unraveled in the summer of 1987 with this National Enquirer cover story:

The front-page of The National Enquirer, June 2, 1987 

In case you’re wondering why I’m on about Gary Hart 31 years after his campaign imploded, the Atlantic‘s James Fallows has published a piece with a provocative title: “Was Gary Hart Set Up?“

Fallows recently had an extended conversation with Hart’s 1984 media advisor, Raymond Strother, about what happened that day.

Here’s where the Louisiana connection kicks in: Strother, an LSU graduate, made his bones in Louisiana politics working for the late Gus Weill. (James Carville worked for Strother for a time). Another Louisianian, Billy Broadhurst, was there when Gary Hart had his fateful meeting with Donna Rice.

Here’s the gist of Fallows’ piece: Ray Strother told him that infamous GOP hatchet man and one-time RNC Chairman, Lee Atwater, who along with Roger Ailes ran the 1988 Bush campaign, had confessed to Strother that he was behind the Hart set up:

But later, during what Atwater realized would be the final weeks of his life, Atwater phoned Strother to discuss one more detail of that campaign.

Atwater had the strength to talk for only five minutes. “It wasn’t a ‘conversation,’ ” Strother said when I spoke with him recently. “There weren’t any pleasantries. It was like he was working down a checklist, and he had something he had to tell me before he died.”

What he wanted to say, according to Strother, was that the episode that had triggered Hart’s withdrawal from the race, which became known as the Monkey Business affair, had been not bad luck but a trap.

But was the plotline of Hart’s self-destruction too perfect? Too convenient? Might the nascent Bush campaign, with Atwater as its manager, have been looking for a way to help a potentially strong opponent leave the field?

“I thought there was something fishy about the whole thing from the very beginning,” Strother recalled. “Lee told me that he had set up the whole Monkey Business deal. ‘I did it!’ he told me. ‘I fixed Hart.’ After he called me that time, I thought, My God! It’s true!”

I must admit that my bullshit detector went off when I read this piece. When he was dying of cancer, Lee Atwater directly apologized to several people he felt he’d harmed including 1988 Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis, who was the victim of the racist Willie Horton ad:

Friends said Mr. Atwater spent his final months searching for spiritual peace. The man renowned for the politics of attack turned to apologies, including one to Michael S. Dukakis, the Massachusetts Governor who was the 1988 Democratic Presidential nominee.

Mr. Dukakis was the target of a campaign advertisement about Willie Horton, a black convicted murderer who escaped from the Massachusetts prison system while on a weekend furlough and raped a white woman and stabbed her husband. The advertisement became a central focus of the 1988 campaign.

“In 1988, fighting Dukakis, I said that I ‘would strip the bark off the little bastard’ and ‘make Willie Horton his running mate,’ ” Mr. Atwater said in the Life article.

“I am sorry for both statements: the first for its naked cruelty, the second because it makes me sound racist, which I am not.”

Mr. Dukakis called the death a tragedy. “We obviously were on opposite sides of a tough and negative campaign, but at least he had the courage to apologize,” Mr. Dukakis said. “That says a lot for the man. My heart goes out to his family.”

If Atwater was “searching for spiritual peace,” why did he apologize to Strother and not Hart directly? The implication is that the apology came because they were both political handlers.

But Gary Hart got his start in national politics as George McGovern’s 1972 campaign manager. Their general election campaign was a mess, but their primary campaign was a masterpiece that has been emulated by Democratic insurgents ever since including Hart himself. If Atwater felt collegial with Strother, why not Hart? He was the real victim, after all.

Lee Atwater was a political slimeball who honed his craft working for right-wing Southern pols: dirty tricks and attack ads were his forte. He was quite capable of setting up a honey trap and springing it on Gary Hart, but the story implies that it was Louisiana lawyer and political fixer Billy Broadhurst who helped set him up.

Attorney and Crowley native Billy Broadhurst was a top advisor to former Gov. Edwin Edwards. Broadhurst died unexpectedly on May 21, 2017. 

Fallows mischaracterizes Broadhurst: 

Hart knew that Strother had been friends with Billy Broadhurst, the man who had taken Hart on the fateful Monkey Business cruise. According to Strother and others involved with the Hart campaign, Broadhurst was from that familiar political category, the campaign groupie and aspiring insider. Broadhurst kept trying to ingratiate himself with Hart, and kept being rebuffed. He was also a high-living, high-spending fixer and lobbyist with frequent money problems.

Broadhurst may have been an arriviste in national politics, BUT he was a heavy-hitter in the Gret Stet of Louisiana. Far from being a “campaign groupie,” Broadhurst was one of four-term Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards’ closest associates as well as an informal and influential adviser to many other Louisiana politicians. Broadhurst was a fixer in the finest sense of the term as this passage from a 1987 Vanity Fair article by Gail Sheehy illustrates:

But let us not forget that the man who chartered the party boat for Hart was William Broadhurst, a friend and political intimate. Billed as “Mr. Fix It” for Edwin Edwards, the notorious Louisiana governor who beat a corruption charge, Broadhurst seems to specialize in getting close to politicians who are out of control. (The article was written 14 years before Edwards was convicted of racketeering.)

“Billy B.” arranged planes for the governor’s gambling trips and enjoyed his jokes about Edwards’s well-publicized womanizing. In the midst of the Hart—Monkey Business flap, a state senator asked the governor what he thought of his boy Broadhurst. A vintage Edwards comment came back: “Oh, Billy B., he was more careful when he was pimping for me.”

Another thing that bothers me is the notion that Hart kept rebuffing Broadhurst. If so, why did Hart accept his invitation to Bimini? Why did he refer to him as Mr. Deep Pockets? Here’s how a 1987 Washington Post article described their relationship:

It was around this time that fellow Louisianan and political consultant Raymond Strother introduced Broadhurst to Hart. The two hit it off instantly. Broadhurst became an active Hart fundraiser, bringing in about $40,000 at three events.

Soon, Broadhurst was flying around the country with Hart on various campaign swings. Last year, the Harts were the Broadhursts’ guests at the Super Bowl.

“Gary Hart was very smart,” says Bode. (Ken Bode was an NBC political correspondent and Broadhurst friend.) “They liked each other — and Broadhurst was key to the Edwards financial network. He was Gary Hart’s hole card for Louisiana.”

Broadhurst hoped for a high appointment in the never-to-be Hart administration perhaps even Attorney General. Why would he blow up his dreams by helping to set up Hart? It makes no sense.

It’s an open secret in Louisiana political circles that Strother remained pissed at Broadhurst over the Hart mess. One theory of the Strother revelation is that he wanted vengeance on Broadhurst for what might be called the Bimini bummer. But Broadhurst died in 2017, so why the revelation? Why now?

None of this makes any sense.

Raymond Strother turned 78 on October 18th. I’m not a mind reader. I’m having a hard time understanding his motivation for floating this unverified and unverifiable story now. He’s apparently been gravely ill. He believes that the nation suffered a major blow when Hart’s chances for the presidency sank like an unmoored yacht in a hurricane. One possible motive is guilt over having introduced Billy Broadhurst to Gary Hart, which led to the crazy chain of events that ended Hart’s political career.

As to the Atlantic article, James Fallows (a writer and editor I admire) is guilty of having accepted Strother’s word at face value. I don’t expect Fallows to be an expert in the arcana of Gret Stet politics. But he could have consulted with Mr. Google to learn that Broadhurst was no mere “political groupie” but so wired in to Louisiana politics that Hart considered him his “Louisiana hole card.”

Ray Strother’s motivation remains a mystery to me: my Ouija board and crystal ball came up empty. It’s a great pity that this interesting and accomplished man will be best remembered for this incident. His memoir Falling Up: How A Redneck Helped Invent Political Consulting is one of the best books about politics I’ve ever read. He’s a great storyteller and a witty and lucid writer. Here’s how he described the Hart-Broadhurst relationship therein:

The relationship between Hart and Broadhurst flourished. I don’t think the controlled, rigid Hart had ever met a man with Billy Broadhurst’s bayou joie vivre. He made Hart laugh, and nothing Hart could do would be beyond the Louisiana moral boundaries that Billy considered normal. Not that I blame Bill for Hart’s downfall. I don’t, any more than I blame myself. I still consider the whole thing just bad luck and maybe even political mischief.

Lee Atwater died in 1991.

Ray Strother’s memoirs were published by LSU Press in 2003.

If the “Atwater confessed to me” story were true, that would have been the perfect time to tell the truth about the Bimini bummer. It would have sold books and been the topic of conversation just as it is today.

Once again, we’re confronted with the central mystery: why now?

Here’s my hunch: Strother seems to have romanticized and sanitized his memories of Gary Hart. Why? The Current Occupant of the White House is a vulgar, venal idiot whereas Hart is a brilliant man who made a stupid mistake and paid for it dearly.

It was the nation’s loss too: If Hart had beaten Poppy Bush, his son’s reign of error may have never occurred. It’s one of American history’s more tantalizing what ifs.

In the end, I believe Raymond Strother in 2003, not 2018.

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