So many bridges have been burned at the Louisiana Capitol over the past 16 months that it sometimes feels like there aren’t any left, says Jeremy Alford.
“You can sense it inside the building’s public cafeteria in the mornings and at the various cocktails parties in the evenings,” Alford writes in his latest column. “The good-times, same-team vibe that used to define the Louisiana Legislature is being supplanted by bitter, partisan politics.”
You’ve probably heard or read about this line of thinking at one time or another since the current term commenced. But, Alford says, you may not know that other Capitol players are stuck inside this uncomfortable storyline as well.
“The staff attorneys, secretaries and economists that do the heavy lifting in Baton Rouge are being dragged into conflicts between the House and Senate and, more frequently, into dustups between Republicans and Democrats,” he writes. “They’ve gone from being neutral participants to political pawns in a game that very few of them want to play.”
If there was enough money to make it happen overnight, Alford says, the Legislature would likely be tempted to create separate staffs—one for each party, like other states have already done.
“Given the landscape, it’s not an outlandish notion,” he writes.
And then there’s the Capitol’s lobbying corps.
“Last year saw an angry lawmaker publicly hurling accusations at a longtime lobbyist during a committee meeting, prompting headlines of improprieties that remain unfounded,” he notes. “You can add that incident to the many reasons why special interests, to some degree, care less about which bills are being introduced and more about which lawmakers are going to carry them. To hear longtime influencers tell it, legislators who are willing to compromise in earnest are slowly becoming an extinct breed.”
The distrust even extends to reporters, voters and citizens as well, Alford says.
Jeremy Alford publishes LaPolitics Weekly, a newsletter on Louisiana politics, at LaPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter, or on Facebook. He can be reached at JJA@LaPolitics.com.
