House Commerce Chair Daryl Deshotel is looking beyond the Legislature, eyeing a future run for the Public Service Commission if incumbent Mike Francis steps aside.
In a Q&A with LaPolitics, the Republican from Hessmer also discusses campaign finance, broadband regulation and why he believes lawmakers should target the misuse of artificial intelligence rather than the technology itself.
You considered a run for Congress this year. Is there another office you are thinking about pursuing?
House Commerce Chair Daryl Deshotel: I think I would like to run for the Public Service Commission. As long as Commissioner Mike Francis is running, I won’t run. I don’t know if he’s going to want to run again. The people they regulate are the biggest contributors to their campaigns. And I think that’s a conflict of interest. So if I run for PSC, it’ll be a mostly self-funded campaign.
You made waves in 2022 when you dropped $1 million of your own money into your campaign account. What were you planning then?
That was in preparation for a potential gubernatorial run at that time. I came really, really close. I ended up having a meeting with [then Attorney General Jeff Landry]. And we had a really good meeting. And we knew that it’d be tough for both of us kind of in the same area. And I figured he probably had a better chance at the time. And I liked his platform. So I supported him.
Are there particular issues you would like to tackle at the PSC?
I think broadband should be rolled up into the PSC, which they’re not right now. That’s kind of why it’s the wild, wild west; there’s nobody really regulating them. Eight or 10 years ago, there’s no way in hell I would ever say that. But what’s happening now is the government is subsidizing all of these companies. It’s no longer the free market. The government has created this new market. And since we created it, we have to regulate it.
There were discussions about AI-related legislation for your committee, though much of it was shelved. What do you expect to see in the future around that subject?
I definitely think you’re going to see more people try to regulate AI. I am in the camp of not regulating AI. I’m in the camp of, if you’re going to regulate something, you need to regulate the people that actually are misusing it. But as far as regulating the technology, I don’t think that’s the right thing to do. And I didn’t hear a lot of those bills this year, just because that’s just not the path that I wanted to take as the chairman.
Is there a specific area related to misuse of AI that you want to address?
I think we did a really good job this year [with legislation] centered around protecting our youth and our children. I was for all those bills. I think that’s what I’m talking about when we talk about a regulation. It’s not really the technology we’re regulating, but we’re regulating the use of it.
So you’re basically saying that a crime is a crime, and the tool that’s being used is less important than addressing the crime itself.
That’s exactly right.
— THEY SAID IT: “Perhaps there’s some degree of irony here that she’s busy trading stocks, not disclosing appropriately as she was required to by law and then voting for a law that clamps down on this behavior even more.” — LSU political science professor Robert Hogan on Congresswoman Julia Letlow buying Meta stocks after signing an NDA related to Meta’s data center project in Richland Parish, in Louisiana Illuminator
Jeremy Alford publishes LaPolitics Weekly, a newsletter on Louisiana politics, at LaPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter, or Facebook. He can be reached at JJA@LaPolitics.com.
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