Grigsby’s PAC sets sights on BESE races

Cajun Industries founder and Chairman Lane Grigsby’s political action committee, Alliance for Better Classrooms, raised more than $250,000 between Sept. 13 and Oct. 11. His wife, Barbara Grigsby, threw in another $100,000 on Oct. 13, according to an article published Sunday in The Times-Picayune. Grigsby is using the money to back candidates he supports for the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, marking the first time he’s gotten involved “in a once-obscure set of races that now figure to help decide the future course of school reform in Louisiana,” the article says. Grigsby tells The Times-Picayune he’s focusing on the BESE races because most of the state’s problems—including the morning and afternoon interstate gridlock in Baton Rouge—can be traced to a broken public education system. “The reason we’ve got it is people want to work in Baton Rouge,” Grigsby says. “But people don’t want to live here because of the schools.” Read the full article here. You can visit Grigsby’s website at laplaintalk.com. A 2007 Business Report story about Grigsby’s political activity can be found here.