State Rep Mandie Landry Avoids Comment on "Big Money Special Interests" In Her Own Party
It's an outcome we expected
State Representative Mandie Landry is pushing a citizens’ ballot initiative with her introduction of HB 165, a proposal that would move our state away from a representative style of government and more toward a California-style direct democracy; we oppose this idea.
In her effort to justify this proposal, Landry has complained that “Special interests and their big money already run this state” and she wrote that “The people of this state should have more power to make their own change.”
She continued: “Half of all states have a ballot initiative process/similar. If Louisiana voters want one, they should have one. If they agree, next year the Louisiana legislature will decide on a process & threshold. Any interest on the spectrum would have equal opportunity to put something on the ballot.”
She went on… “For what it’s worth, it’s the far right special interests that have been harassing Louisiana for decades. The far right national groups often test out their extreme ideas in the Louisiana legislature through local organizations. These are generally the groups that ‘score’ votes.”
Fair enough… so we posed a challenge to Ms. Landry:
You surely agree that spending $2MM on a single PSC district race is evidence of too much money and power by a special interest? That's more than 10x the historically usual spending, and nearly all of it was from out of state. Too much influence? Surely you agree, yes?
Our reference, of course, is the Public Service Commission chair occupied by Davante Lewis, Democrat. And she’s not made a peep!
You see, Mandie Landry is, through and through, a Democrat before she’s a Louisianian, before she’s a caring citizen. She’s a partisan operative whose first priority is advancing her party agenda. Her proposal is a work-around to avoid the legislative process, which she considers captive to the “far right.”
As long as the “Big Money Special Interest” is HER Big Money Special Interest, she has no trouble with it.
Out of state money can pour into our elections… she doesn’t truly care. But if she designates the influence as “Far Right,” well…
We all know the tune she’s whistling, don’t we.
Meanwhile, this is what $2 million buys you these days:
“It’s kinda of applauding.”
We couldn’t have said it better ourselves, Mr. Lewis.
We studied the Big Money Special Interests that targeted the PSC race here:
