If Charles Boustany wasn’t a congressman, you might think he was a bouncer. Or maybe a greeter. Just standing there, with his arms crossed and his smile practiced. A total pro.
It was more or less in this fashion that he hovered around the entrance to the room every day a Senate committee on redistricting met during the first week of the Legislature’s special session. Boustany, a Lafayette Republican, didn’t want to waste those days doing constituent work, especially when state lawmakers were meeting in the State Capitol to decide which one of Louisiana’s seven congressional districts to eliminate.
Politically speaking, it seemed beneath a U.S. congressman to plead with state legislators when, at any other given moment in the Eastern time zone, he would be competing with other members of Congress for federal money. It’s a reversal of fortunes wrapped inside a game of high-stakes politics and—make no mistake—only those with a taste for the jugular can succeed.
So there’s Boustany, on Day Three of the special session, now inside the Senate committee room. Other members of Louisiana’s delegation trickled into the room: Congressmen Rodney Alexander of Quitman, Bill Cassidy of Baton Rouge, Jim Fleming of Shreveport—and a staff member in the place of Steve Scalise of Metairie.
Even Congressman Cedric Richmond of New Orleans, the only Democrat and sole black member of the delegation, made an appearance. He kept his distance from the pack, but openly opposed everything his peers supported during debate.
The committee meeting was heated, and Chairman Bob Kostelka, a Monroe Republican, lost his control more than once. A former judge, Kostelka snapped and barked at his Senate colleagues. He called Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, a New Orleans Democrat, “little lady,” as if to put her in her place. The scene was epic, and it prompted one veteran lawmaker to lament, “I don’t know if the judge is going to last through this.”
The committee meeting made one thing clear: Freshman Congressman Jeff Landry, a New Iberia Republican, is the odd man out. Landry cooked for a group of legislators the night before the session convened, but no amount of gumbo or sauce piquante can overcome his lack of seniority.
“It’s important that we have a say in this process, but we don’t need to dictate to [state lawmakers] what we think is in our best interest,” Landry said during a brief phone interview while his colleagues were at the Capitol.
Landry likely will face Boustany in 2012, which makes the redistricting process a turf battle between the two Republicans. Landry wasn’t there on this day, when Kostelka—without properly posting the item on the committee’s agenda—decided to take up his own congressional redistricting plan, which favors Boustany. Democrats vehemently complained, but Kostelka argued it was coincidental.
“Because the congressmen were present, I wanted to give them an opportunity to speak,” he said.
And that was just Day Three.
Things were even crazier on Day Five. In the hallway outside Kostelka’s committee room, Boustany and Richmond huddled with a staff member. Richmond especially seemed at a loss for words, which was out of the ordinary for such a boisterous politician.
“Don’t be shy,” the staff member said with a laugh. “Everyone is saying what they want here anyway.”
That apparently was enough to get the ball rolling. “I wouldn’t mind going down river into St. James because I’m going to become a big port person,” Richmond said. “I’m going to focus on the ports.”
A few days earlier, Richmond was keeping his distance, but now he was keeping tight spaces with Boustany. At one point, Richmond passed a remark about former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Boustany shook his head and interjected, “Right. You told me about that at the Chinese restaurant.”
Ah, the Chinese restaurant.
In mid-January, delegation members met privately at a Chinese restaurant in Washington, D.C., and agreed to a set of guiding principles for redistricting that included two north Louisiana congressional districts that would protect Alexander and Fleming. Maps showing as much were distributed at the meeting by Kostelka, who at the time was relying on the talent of political science professors from the University of Louisiana at Monroe for the demography work.
The same map pitted Boustany against Landry, but favored Boustany by dividing Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes. That proposed division was a major point of contention early in the session and proved to be among the last compromises brokered.
Back in the hallway on Day Five of the session, Richmond and Boustany had the attention of Kostelka. They spoke in hushed tones. It was another tense day, and Senate Bill 2, Kostelka’s congressional redistricting plan, was on the agenda. The room was filled with people, some of whom drove hundreds of miles to be in attendance.
“OK. Fine,” Kostelka said to the pair. “We’ll just make the changes later.”
Word traveled quickly that Kostelka’s congressional plan was in danger because of his heavy-handedness earlier in the week. A similar plan was substituted as the choice of the ruling class.
Meanwhile, on the House side, negotiations began to advance a measure that would keep Terrebonne and Lafourche together. By the time the special session ends on April 13, there will be a move to mesh the two plans in a compromise, but who can say what the final plan will look like?
It’s interesting to note that two of the major behind-the-scenes players were freshmen. While veteran legislators performed the heavy lifting, Sen. Neil Riser, a Columbia Republican, and Rep. Erich Ponti, a Baton Rouge Republican, shuffled from one side of the State Capitol to the other, offering compromises through their own maps and plans, which had enough of what everyone liked and a healthy dose of what folks didn’t. Riser’s plan advanced on the Senate side, but the result of Ponti’s efforts was not known at press time.
Given all of the egos involved, one lawmaker familiar with the ongoing negotiations suggests that neither Alexander nor Boustany is running the show. Whether that arrangement holds until April 13 is a different matter.
Some fissures now are showing. Boustany, reacting from constituent backlash, has backed away from supporting the north-south districts for Alexander and Fleming. Additionally, Landry has been making more appearances at the Capitol.
In the committee room, people realized that the congressional plans were not going to be taken up on Day Five. Seemingly out of nowhere, former state Sen. Sammy Nunez of Chalmette could be seen slowly working the room. Nunez, now 81, stirred up quite a bit of controversy in his day by handing out campaign donations on the Senate floor from the owner of Louisiana’s first riverboat casino.
Sen. Francis Thompson, a Delhi Democrat who is among the few sitting lawmakers who served with Nunez, wrapped his arm around Nunez in a half-hug and squeezed, holding the former Senate president tight so that only whispering was needed. It was old school, for sure, and a reminder that things always will be whispered in politics.
Outside the room, Alexander, the dean of the congressional delegation and the man who led the pivotal mid-January meeting in D.C., winked and nodded at people passing in the hallway. He seemed pleased with the way things were going at the moment, which is the most you can hope for sometimes in politics.
That had to make some folks rather nervous about the near future.
