When lawmakers were scrambling to negotiate a budget deal in the final days of the 2013 legislative session, the House leadership took the unusual step of appointing six members from its side—instead of the customary three—to the conference committee of representatives and senators that would hammer out the details of the state’s $25 billion spending plan. That way, the so-called fiscal hawks would be assured a strong voice in whatever compromise emerged.
Rather than appointing six senators to the committee from the upper chamber, however, Senate President John Alario handled the negotiations himself—in his office—with a handful of his most trusted committee chairmen, who met individually with the six House members to discuss the various areas of the budget with which they were most familiar.
In the end, a compromise emerged that satisfied, marginally, at least, all the factions in the Legislature.
“He came in with his whole team so he could match the wits of the House with his own expertise,” says political columnist John Maginnis. “I just thought it was very deft the way he handled it … deft but not confrontational.”
The story is vintage Alario, a classic example of the MO of one of the most powerful and effective legislators in a Legislature that has had no shortage of colorful, strong-willed and politically astute members over the decades.
With 41 years under his belt, Alario is one of the longest-serving state lawmakers in Louisiana history. He is one of the only state legislators in the country to have been a Speaker of the House and a Senate president. And he’s been a big-time breadwinner for his suburban New Orleans district of Westwego; so much so, in fact, there is a joke at the Capitol that if his district gets one more project, the West Bank is going to fall off into the Mississippi River.
Perhaps most striking, however, is that Alario—a Republican and close ally of Gov. Bobby Jindal—was for years the Democratic Speaker of the House under Gov. Edwin Edwards.
How can the man who proved critical in the passage of the controversial 1992 New Orleans casino bill now be the darling of the Louisiana Association of Business & Industry?
How can one of the closest legislative allies of Edwards—who went to federal prison for his role in a gambling corruption scheme—now spearhead legislation for an administration that has tried fervently to erase Louisiana’s image as a hotbed of political corruption?
How has Alario managed to work with five governors, from one end of the political spectrum to the other, and yet been able to transcend the political squabbles or scandals that have tarnished their tenures, if not ruined their reputations?
“You have to understand: John works with whomever is governor to get the best he can for the state,” says longtime lobbyist Jo Wood. “Men and women, Republicans and Democrats, House and Senate, know he is going to listen. He isn’t going to run roughshod over them. That is what has kept him in power.”
Alario’s superior knack for numbers hasn’t hurt, either. Besides being a people person, he’s an accountant by trade, with an understanding of how budgets work. As a result, he has a comfort level with issues that elude many of his colleagues.
“He has been working with the state budget since before I was born,” says 35-year-old Rep. Walt Leger III, D-New Orleans. “He has an institutional knowledge and a tremendous command of the budget.”
In fact, Alario was serving in the House for several years before Leger was born. He is a native of Westwego and graduate of West Jefferson High School and Southeastern Louisiana University. He was elected to the House in 1972, just six years after first hanging out his shingle as an accountant. He had always had an interest in running for political office and was a natural from his earliest days.
“I remember when he first got up here, I took him to lunch and he told me then that he would be Speaker of the House one day,” Wood says. “I laughed at the time, but sure enough, he was.”
Alario’s ascent was swift and steady over the next decade, during which time he worked his way up the committee ladder and befriended his colleagues, one legislator at a time. Those who know him say he built relationships by making friends and supporting the right people on the right deals—then calling in the favors when he needed them.
“He goes back to the old school when legislators came in through the ’70s and ’80s,” says C.B. Forgotston, a former lobbyist and longtime legislative watcher. “He made sure that he befriended legislators individually. When it came time to elect a Speaker, it was almost automatic.”
Alario served as Speaker during Edwards’ third term, from 1984 to 1988, and again during his fourth, from 1992 to 1996. Even when he wasn’t Speaker, though, Alario managed to play a guiding role in legislative matters, serving, for instance, as chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee during Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s administration.
“He kept a suite of offices with a staff,” Forgotston says. “And the House approved it—and the state paid for it.”
Few others could have gotten away with it. But colleagues say Alario has a deeply entrenched power that comes in part from his intelligence, in part from his experience. Knowledge is power, or so the saying goes, and Alario is all-knowing when it comes to the Louisiana Legislature.
“The secret to his success is his knowledge of the process,” says Secretary of State Tom Schedler, a former state senator from Slidell who served with Alario. “He has a knowledge of the process to the nth degree.”
Alario is also inherently likable. He lets people have their say, does not micromanage or steamroll over them. He also makes a point of keeping political squabbles from becoming personal.
“To me, the mark of a great person down here is someone who, if you get in a fight with them on the floor, has forgotten it by the time you walk out of the building,” says video poker lobbyist Alton Ashy. “That’s John Alario.”
Alario has been involved in plenty of fights, too. None, perhaps, was more memorable than the near-lynching that ensued following the 1992 vote legalizing the land-based casino in New Orleans.
The controversial measure had already failed once and was up for reconsideration in the waning days of the session. Alario knew it would be a tight vote and had gotten word that Republican gambling opponents were planning to pull a fast one, voting “yea” for the bill—in order to fool those on the fence into thinking their votes were not needed—then switching to “nay” in the seconds before the Speaker closed the machine.
So Alario engaged in some gamesmanship of his own. He sped up the cadence of his speech, reciting the rote call for lawmakers to “vote their machines” so much more quickly than usual that the legislators were caught off guard and didn’t have time to switch their votes.
“They were playing a game, and wherever there is an offense you put on a defense,” says Alario. “It wasn’t like we stuffed the ballot box in any kind of way. We just beat them at their own game.”
He is also quick-witted and uses his keen sense of humor to diffuse controversy, time and again. With gavel in hand, Alario has induced guffaws with jokes and one-liners that his colleagues still laugh about years later.
“I remember this legislator from Lafayette one day screaming and yelling on the House floor that he wanted to know the formula for the budget,” says Francis Heitmeier, a retired legislator from Algiers who served with Alario in the House and the Senate. “So Alario says, ‘Get a pen, get a piece of paper, and write this down: It takes a chicken and a half a day and a half to lay an egg and a half. How long does it take a carpenter to build a tin shed?’ And it brought down the House. The guy was actually trying to write it down, and he was kinda embarrassed, but John did it with class.”
As a result of his success within the Legislature, Alario has been able to win projects for his district, which has kept his constituents happy over the years. In return, they have continued to re-elect him, which helps him maintain and increase his relationships and power.
“He takes care of his people at home,” says Wood. “He takes care of his people up here.”
Over the years, Alario has brought more than $1 billion worth of construction projects to New Orleans’ West Bank, including: the widening of the Huey P. Long Bridge; Bayou Segnette State Park; the Alario Center, a conference and sports center named for his late father, John Alario Sr.; and the TPC golf course, which hosts the Zurich Classic of New Orleans. Among the countless other projects for which he can take credit are the deal to help keep the Saints in New Orleans and the 2007 renovation of the Superdome.
“I always thought professional sports made New Orleans a big-league city,” he says. “Those are very important not only for the economic benefit but for the national image of the state and city.”
The largesse Alario has been able to deliver to his district, and to the New Orleans area in general, helps explain why almost no one blinked when he decided, after being term-limited out of the House, to run for the Senate—as a Republican. Alario says he supports term limits in the abstract and also voted to implement them in Louisiana. He says when his term in the House expired, he did not intend to run for office again.
But in 2006 his wife, Ree, died, changing his outlook and the plans he had had for his retirement years. “Had my wife survived cancer, I don’t think I would have run again,” Alario says.
Once Alario made the decision to run, switching parties was all but inevitable. During the 1990s, his Yellow Dog Democratic district of mostly working- and middle-class voters had defected in droves to the GOP. Alario, like many of his colleagues, followed suit in order to get elected.
The decision was purely pragmatic, and Alario says his political philosophy is the same as it has always been. “I’m not a burning conservative,” he says. “I’m more of a middle-of-the-road kind of guy.”
Still, his party switch took some by surprise, including Edwards, who says while Alario may have switched parties, he hasn’t changed his philosophy or attitude.
“His philosophy is about a concern for people,” Edwards says. “It’s a willingness to help people and to cooperate with whatever administration is in power.”
The administration currently in power is that of Gov. Bobby Jindal, who recognized after his first term of only moderately successful dealings with the Legislature that he needed an insider on his team to get things done. He gave Alario the nod for Senate president, a move many believe was both smart and long overdue.
“Probably one of the best moves Jindal has made,” notes political radio talk-show host Jim Engster. “But the more interesting twist is not that Alario hooked up with Jindal but that Jindal hooked up with Alario. It shows that Jindal is maybe a little more pliable than we thought.”
Even the most ardent conservatives have come around and now count themselves in Alario’s camp. Sen. Barrow Peacock, a Republican from Shreveport, was one of the few who voted against Alario for Senate president because of a promise he’d made with a conservative opponent during a heated campaign debate.
Rather than holding Peacock’s action against him, however, Alario went out of his way to befriend the junior senator. Two years later, Peacock is one of his staunchest supporters and closest allies.
“I took him to dinner, got to know him, made him part of the conversation,” Alario says. “I have always found it’s best to make a friend of your enemy.”
Adds Peacock: “I have a lot of respect for him. I think the way he has conducted himself as president is fantastic.”
When his second term is up in 2015, Alario will be eligible to run one more time before he is, again, term-limited out of office. At this point, he’s planning to run again and, presumably, again seek the post of Senate president. Granted, Jindal will no longer be in office and there is no guarantee the next governor will want Alario to remain in the Senate’s top leadership post.
But chances are the next governor will—especially if he or she hopes to accomplish anything with the Legislature.
“He can work with whomever his boss is,” says Schedler. “Republicans, Democrats—every governor has recognized his talent and ability to work with people. He is the guy you want on your team.”
