While you were gathering with family and friends and celebrating the holidays last month, Jeremy Alford says a new political party was very quietly being established in Louisiana.
“It hopes to one day compete with the Republican and Democratic parties, which may be a bit of windmill-tilting, but for now it’s being touted as part of a new ‘independent-minded’ movement in the Bayou State,” Alford writes in his latest column.
The paperwork for the Louisiana Independent Party was received by the Secretary of State’s Office on Dec. 22. Alford says the required documents were filed by party chairman Pat Bergeron, who’s best known as a GOP consultant and operative, and party treasurer Bill Bryan, an election attorney who was the Louisiana press secretary for the 1996 Clinton/Gore presidential campaign.
“It was a stand-up-and-take-notice move, both of these men shedding their mainline party labels to create the state Independent Party. (As of late last week, Bryan had already made the switch and Bergeron was preparing to do the same.),” he writes. “And it’s no joke—the Independent Party is now a recognized party in Louisiana, according to secretary of state spokeswoman Meg Casper.”
Alford says it’s easy to understand why Bryan and Bergeron chose to create the new party in Louisiana, as many voters have become weary of the partisan struggles in Baton Rouge and Washington.
“If Republicans and Democrats aren’t fighting each other, then they’re warring from within their own ranks. But as much as voters complain about this trend, which has fully taken hold in Louisiana, the sentiment rarely if ever shows up in election results,” he writes. “Voter registration statistics do show a slow trickle of folks pulling away from major party affiliations as the ‘other’ category grows. Last year was an outlier, though, with the Republican Party outpacing ‘other party’ registrations for the first time in recent memory, due in large part to voters wanting to participate in Louisiana’s closed presidential primary.”
With the official creation of a new party, Alford says, the Democratic Party is the biggest loser when you look at the numbers.
“From Jan. 1, 2007, to the start of this year, Dems lost 191,000 voters. Republicans picked up about 201,000 new voters during the same timeframe and ‘other party’ registrations were trailing right behind, with an increase of 156,000,” he writes.
Jeremy Alford publishes LaPolitics Weekly, a newsletter on Louisiana politics, atLaPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter, or on Facebook. He can be reached at JJA@LaPolitics.com.
