Prominent pro-business political activist Lane Grigsby makes hard push for Louisiana Constitutional Convention; says Revenue Secretary Nelson’s plan for Special Tax Rewrite Session alone is “an inappropriate way to run a business.”

Republican pro-business political activist Lane Grigsby prepares to respond to a question by Sound Off Louisiana founder Robert Burns at the Baton Rouge Press Club (BRPC) meeting of Monday, July 15, 2024.

Last week, prominent Republican pro-business political activist Lane Grigsby put on a full-court press trying to make a Special Session next month as a precursor for a Louisiana Constitutional Convention a reality.

Grigsby was the guest speaker at the BRPC meeting of Monday, July 15, 2024, and we were present to cover his presentation.  Irrespective of whether one agrees or disagrees with Grigsby’s efforts, his passion is evident; furthermore, he does not shy away from providing clear, succinct, and direct answers to tough questions.  Additionally, he has a very strong sense of humor and demonstrates a unique ability to be quite quick-witted.

At this time, let us present an eight (8) minute highlight of Grigsby touting the widespread support he states exists for a Convention along with several of the more tough questions he fielded from the mainstream media.  Thereafter, we’ll provide the two (2) questions Sound Off Louisiana founder Robert Burns posed of him.  Here’s that eight-minute highlight video:

 7/15/24:  Eight-minute video of highlights of Grigsby’s presentation.

As is evident in the above video, Grigsby makes brief reference to Louisiana Revenue Secretary Richard Nelson’s simultaneous push for a Special Session to overhaul Louisiana’s tax policies.  Since there obviously can’t be two Special Sessions in August, Burns asked Grigsby if he would be supportive of a Special Session by Nelson as sort of a “fallback” even though it is obviously not the scenario Grigsby is actively pushing for.  Let’s take a look at his response:

 7/15/24:  Grigsby responds to Burns’ question of whether he would support Nelson’s push for a Special Session on tax overhaul if one for a Constitutional Convention fails to materialize.

Finally, followers of this blog are keenly aware of our position that Gov. Landry lost a tremendous amount of trust of Louisiana voters when he pushed so hard to cut off access to public records.  Burns therefore asked Grigsby if he felt Landry’s strong push in that regard may have cast a dark cloud over Grigsby’s efforts and whether Grigsby agreed or disagreed with Landry’s strong push to, “choke off access to public records.”  Here’s Grigsby’s response:

 7/15/24:  Grigsby responds to Burns’ question on whether Landry’s efforts to “choke off” access to public records and whether it may have caused an unintended-consequences effect of creating distrust entailing Grigsby’s initiative.

We believe that anybody who follows this blog knows just how strongly founder Robert Burns advocates for free enterprise with as little government interference in the ability to conduct business operations as possible.  The tail end of Grigsby’s commentary perhaps demonstrates both his humor, humility, and his quick-witted ability to escape from an admittedly tough question.

We would like to point out, however, that contrary to Grigsby’s attempt to portray Landry’s efforts as strictly a counter attack against “the liberals,” there was an absolute flood of opposition to Sen. Heather Cloud’s SB-482 by conservatives.  Since, in the eight-minute highlight video outlined at the outset of this feature, Grigsby had a few harsh words for the Louisiana Senate, Burns, as evidenced by the above video, decided to respond to Grigsby’s inquiry of Burns of, “Did it pass?” with, “Well, no, but we have the Louisiana Senate to thank for that I guess.”  Anybody has to truly admire Grigsby’s humble comeback to Burns’ response.

At any rate, conservatives, in general, are going to be less trustful of government operations than liberals and, while we hate to break this news to Gov. Landry, that fact does not miraculously get changed mere seconds after he is sworn into office as Governor.

To further illustrate our point on the strong blowback Landry got on his attempts to deny the public access to public records throughout Louisiana State Government, Lieutenant Governor Billy Nungesser had a representative testify in favor of Cloud’s bill at Senate Committee.  Nungesser was also a recent guest speaker at the BRPC, so Burns availed himself of the opportunity to let Nungesser explain why he supported the bill.  Let’s take a few seconds to watch Nungesser’s response:

6/3/24:  Lt. Gov. Nungesser responds to Burns’ question entailing why he supported Sen. Heather Cloud’s bill to curtail the public’s access to public records.

Here’s something we have to wonder:  Senator Heather Cloud ran for Louisiana Senate (and won in a massive landslide) primarily because she was fed up with the outrageously-high insurance rates that she and her family have to pay for their small trucking operation.  Now, Landry certainly didn’t hesitate to use Cloud to run his bill (and make no mistake, it was Landry’s bill) for him.

How does Landry say, “Thank you?”  Well, by vetoing HB-423, a tort reform bill which likely would have a hugely-beneficial impact upon Cloud’s insurance premiums.  We can’t speak for Cloud, but what we can say is that, if we were in her shoes, we’d be fuming mad at Landry and, trust us, there is an avalanche of conservative pro-business folk who in fact are angry at Landry over his willingness to place trial lawyer interests over their own.

As if Landry hadn’t already inflicted enough pain to pro-business folk in Louisiana with his veto of HB-423, he insisted on pouring massive salt on the wound by appointing arguably the most-noteworthy trial lawyer of all, John Carmouche, to the LSU Board of Supervisors.  That would be the same John Carmouche who led the charge in raising $6 million for GUMBO PAC for the defeat of David Vitter (largely because of his support of tort reform) by freeing up funds for Edwards’ direct campaign coffers to run prostitutes over patriots television attack ads!

Landry also angered Louisiana Sen. Alan Seabaugh over his veto of HB-423 (Seabaugh’s law partner authored the bill).  In fact, Seabaugh took to the Moon Griffon show recently to absolutely lambast Landry over not only that measure but also the redistricting issue.  Seabaugh contends that the Legislature should not have redrawn any map and simply let U. S. Federal Judge Shelly Dick draw her own map, which would have then been challenged and overturned by the U. S. Supreme Court, thus leaving the Districts intact for the upcoming election.

Also, there was a recent newspaper article that indicated that, when then-candidate Jeff Landry and Congressman Garret Graves met for a meal in Livonia at which Landry sought Graves’ support and likely endorsement, Graves was reportedly taken aback at Landry’s near total fixation with social conservative causes, with Graves contending infrastructure and financial matters were the far bigger concerns for Louisiana voters.  That’s exactly what we explained in our feature on Landry’s hypothetical email to the Members of the Louisiana State Board of Cosmetology.

Seabaugh’s frustration with Landry and Graves’ early-on reservations are precisely why we were so unenthusiastic about Landry’s potential to be an effective Governor of Louisiana, and why we gave him a totally back-handed endorsement.  Sadly, he is proving to be precisely what we expected him to be when it comes to non-social initiatives in Louisiana.  Further, trying to combat Louisiana’s massive problem on governmental corruption seems to rank dead last on Landry’s priority list, and his picks for leadership positions at Louisiana State Police demonstrate that fact in very authoritative fashion in our strong (and we believe very well-informed) opinion.

We’re certainly not prepared to state that Landry has gone through all of his political capital in only one Regular Legislative Session, but we are prepared to state that he certainly blew through a significant amount of it!  Further, in our opinion, he can expect serious competition if he hangs around Louisiana until 2027 and runs for reelection and doesn’t accept a Trump Cabinet position should Trump prevail this November.  Who knows?  Perhaps that “serious competition” just may be Graves himself now that Landry has ensured Graves has got time on the sidelines to relax and gear up for just such a challenge if he’s so inclined!

CLICK HERE for Grigsby’s presentation in its entirety.