Despite Gov. Bobby Jindal’s first appointment of a minority member to the Board of Regents this week, legislators and Regents members say the attempted damage control has not stemmed a roiling controversy that threatens to undermine the administration’s goal of restructuring higher education. Jindal appointed Dr. Albert Sam, a Baton Rouge vascular surgeon, who replaces board veteran Roland Toups, whom the governor asked to step down this week. Legislators and board members viewed the replacement as a heavy-handed move to remedy the problem he created through his previous appointments of nine whites, all campaign contributors. The lawsuit challenging the board’s non-diverse composition continues on appeal, as attorney Cleo Fields has notified the board that he wants to depose all its members, according to Regents spokeswoman Meg Casper. A similar attempt was quashed in the district court hearing last month, when District Judge Tim Kelley ruled that the board’s makeup did not violate the constitution.
— After a well-received maiden address in Waukee, Iowa, former Gov. Buddy Roemer will take his presidential exploratory campaign to South Carolina for a speaking engagement next week, after meetings in Washington with some senators and “some guys advising me.” Operating with six volunteers and no paid staff, his campaign has leased the unused fourth floor of his bank building for 120 days and has installed phone lines.
They said it: “We are no longer living under a moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico, but we are struggling to live under a permitorium.” —U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, in The Times-Picayune
(John Maginnis publishes LaPolitics Weekly, a newsletter on Louisiana politics, at LaPolitics.com.)
