Logo for the launch of a website devoted to tracking problematic appointees of Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (JBE) on December 8, 2015, about a month before Edwards was inaugurated as Louisiana Governor.
As everyone is no doubt aware by now, yet another appointee of Gov. John Bel Edwards (or hire made by his appointees), has ended in disaster. This time it’s Bridgette Hull, Executive Secretary of the Louisiana State Board of Private Security Examiners. It’s yet another useless Board/Commission with nine members, all of whom are appointed by the Governor. It was only a year ago when Hull’s predecessor, Fabian Blanche, III, was ousted due to a complaint of sexual misconduct.
Sound Off Louisiana founder Robert Burns launched the website because of his steadfast belief that Gov. Edwards had made way too many “deals with the Devil” to conceivably live up to his much-touted “West Point Honor Code.”
Burns maintained the site through Edwards’ re-election but discontinued maintaining it after the two Republican rivals to Edwards in the 2019 Governor’s election opted to give Edwards a complete and total pass on pinpointing all of his negative appointments. Instead, they largely believed they could just cling to then-President Donald Trump and ride his coattails to victory even though Louisiana has an extensive past history of voting very differently on a state-level election than it does on electing its Representatives and Senators to go to Washington.
Edwards, who clearly had a far more astute crew of political operatives and advisors, meanwhile, kept both Republicans on the defensive by strategically exploiting even minor (which should have been irrelevant) matters in their pasts, such as U. S. Rep. Ralph Abraham not donating as much money (his salary) to charity as he may have touted. Edwards had to laugh almost uncontrollably when he saw how easy it was to put the two of them on the defensive so effortlessly while neither of those candidates had the slightest clue how to place Edwards on the defensive. That was the case notwithstanding Rispone’s hiring of two twenty-something, snot-nosed, arrogant, and immature relative rookies to literally run his $15 million campaign straight into the ground.
In Burns’ opinion, there was no bigger blown opportunity by Rispone and Abraham than them both completely and totally ignoring Edwards’ hiring NOT ONCE BUT TWICE of convicted domestic abuser Stephen Holliday.
At any rate, when WBRZ Investigative Reporter Chris Nakamoto posed a question to Edwards at a news conference yesterday (entailing yet another disastrous appointment), Marketa Walters, Edwards didn’t have much of a response to counter Nakamoto’s quoting of State Sen. Patrick McMath’s concern that Edwards’ status as a “lame duck” will preclude any substantial improvement at the agency Walters heads, DCFS, from transpiring before his term is up.
Likewise, there would seem to be little point to even leaving JBE fraud up anymore. Everyone knows that Edwards’ entire seven-year tenure as Governor thus far has been replete with one disastrous appointment after another.
Sadly, we at Sound Off Louisiana are simply not encouraged that things will improve much at all (and potentially may even get worse) once Edwards is gone given the crop of potential candidates we’ve heard who will seek to replace him. It’s a pretty sad group. There are a few names we know of that may change that, but so far, there’s no indication any of them have any intention to seek the office.
The one rumor (and it may be more than just a rumor, but we’re very reluctant to classify it as anything but that at this stage of the game) that would change everything is that Attorney General Jeff Landry has no intention of running for Governor but is instead serving as a “placeholder” to keep the field narrow through January, at which time U. S. Senator John Kennedy, fresh off an authoritative re-election effort, would announce that he is running for Governor and that, upon his winning the Governor’s Mansion, would then appoint Landry to serve out the remaining five years of his six-year term.
Even though we view such talk as total rumor (though we’ve heard it from several sources, one of whom we view as historically very credible), we will admit that our eyebrows were raised when Bill Stiles, Landry’s long-time right-hand man, drew no opposition at all in his quest for an OPEN seat on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Those who told us about Landry’s true plans just reiterated to us upon that development that it constituted further evidence of Landry’s intentions and even said that Landry discouraged any opposition to Stiles’ candidacy (though Stiles nevertheless went through the motions and set up an election website).
One thing we do know for sure because Landry made no secret of it. Once he and former U. S. Representative Boustany both realized somebody had to go due to re-districting from 2010, Landry wanted to sit tight and wait for 2014 and run for U. S. Senate, but his advisors told him the smarter move was to challenge Boustany.
That guidance didn’t end well for Landry and, being blunt, we’re not convinced Landry can win a statewide race when he faces well-organized competition. The fact that he has won two statewide races demonstrates little to us because, in instance number one, Caldwell was too cocky to agree to debate Landry and, in instance number two, Landry had no real opposition whatsoever.
If the rumor is true, however, Landry could simply seek re-election for Attorney General (where the competition would be extremely light by comparison to Governor) and then be appointed to the U. S. Senate by Kennedy, thus not needing to win a statewide campaign to become a U. S. Senator. Landry would have the job he has coveted for a long time and, after serving five years, the old adage of it being difficult to defeat an incumbent would kick in.
As we said, we still officially classify such talk as “rumor,” but if it does materialize, folk can say they heard it first on Sound Off Louisiana.
No matter the case, if anyone wants to take a final peek at Edwards’ disastrous appointments from his first term in office, feel free to click here because, after September 30, 2022, the JBEfraud website will vanish!
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What a loss to the world 🙄
How will the world survive without this fantastic site?