As Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne transitions from statewide officeholder to the top budget bureaucrat under Gov.-elect John Bel Edwards—who will be sworn in on Monday—Jeremy Alford says it’s difficult to ignore how different a gig this is for Dardenne.
“In a Democrat blue tie, on the second to last day of 2015, Dardenne held his first press conference as the next commissioner of administration. His message—that the budget situation is ‘more dire than we thought it was’—was just as important as how it was delivered,” Alford writes in his latest column. “In elected office since the late 1980s—as a state senator he was a constant critic of the other Edwards, former Gov. Edwin—Dardenne must now answer directly to the new Edwards on the block following years of political autonomy.”
From the campus of LSU where the gubernatorial transition team is temporarily being housed, Alford notes the press conference saw Dardenne reading from a prepared statement.
“He’s used to being a one-man band and giving his speeches largely from memory,” he writes. “But now he’s part of a larger team, a lifelong Republican who lost his bid for governor in the primary as a Democrat sailed to victory. John Bel Edwards campaigned on bipartisanship and his appointment of Dardenne was seen as the first such peace offering.”
Dardenne perpetuated that theme in his first press conference, Alford says, by bookending the event with presidential quotes from Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt and Republican Ronald Reagan. “The only thing missing was a quotation from a nonaffiliated politician to represent the middle ground where Dardenne and Edwards will presumably be working from over the next four years,” Alford writes. “After two long terms of partisan politics driven by presidential ambitions, even platitudes about cohesiveness are nice to hear. But right now they’re only words, with the actions soon to follow.”
The real challenge for the Edwards administration, Alford says, will be getting the Republican-led Legislature behind its ideas for addressing a $750 million budget shortfall for the current fiscal year that concludes at the end of June. The next fiscal year that commences on July 1 faces a deeper hole of $1.9 billion.
“The two revenue shortages represent a separate set of challenges for the incoming administration,” Alford writes.
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.
