‘Too stupid to work together’: Republican iconoclast rips ‘lazy’ Legislature for killing Supreme Court bill
21st February 2022 · 0 Comments
By Piper Hutchinson, Lura Stabiler and Alex Tirado
Contributing Writers
(LSU Manship School News Service) — The only Republican bill that would have increased minority representation through redistricting reached its death on the House floor, prompting its author to give his fellow lawmakers a tongue-lashing.
Rep. Barry Ivey, R-Central, authored a Supreme Court map that would have created a second majority-Black district on the state’s seven-member court. The bill made it out of committee on a bipartisan vote but was involuntarily tabled on the House floor last Wednesday, much to the chagrin of its author.
“We’ll just continue to get by here in Louisiana, because we are too stupid to work together,” Ivey said in a no-holds-barred condemnation.
Rep. Mark Wright, R-Covington, moved to table the bill after asking whether it would be better to consider Supreme Court maps during the regular session in March.
Every House Democrat present voted in opposition to tabling the bill, but the motion passed 53-43.
A handful of Republicans, including Rep. Tanner Magee, R-Houma and the second ranking legislator in the House, and Rep. John Stefanski, R-Crowley, chair of the House committee that oversees redistricting, also voted against tabling the bill.
Over the last 2 ½ weeks, Republicans, who hold roughly two-thirds of the seats in the Legislature, have advanced bills to adjust the maps of the state’s six congressional districts, its 105 House districts and its 39 Senate districts without adding any more majority-minority ones.
The next questions are whether Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, will veto any of the bills and if civil-rights groups will follow through on threats to seek court orders that would enable Blacks to gain greater representation.
Republican leaders also have passed bills that maintain the status quo in the racial breakdowns for members of the Public Service Commission and the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. They also had pushed a Supreme Court bill that would leave the current district boundaries largely intact, though after the fight with Ivey, it looks like there will not be a new map for the court.
Ivey is known to be an independent thinker. In a committee hearing last week, Ivey said, “I kind of march to the beat of my own drum.”
Several years ago, Ivey was dubbed by some lawmakers as “Mr. Transparency” for his tendency to say what he thinks.
And that is exactly what he did during an eight-minute speech following the vote to table the bill, during which he pledged not to bring any more legislation in the regular session.
“The apathy throughout the state is evident in each of you when you fail to act, when you can, when you should,” Ivey said. “I’ve bit my tongue over the last nine years, and I’m not going to do it anymore.”
“I tell people this institution is the laziest group of people I’ve ever worked with because it’s true, because we’ve got problems everywhere and we don’t want to solve them,” Ivey said.
Rep. Lance Harris, R-Alexandria, took offense at Ivey’s comments.
“This is a lesson we all need to learn about,” Harris said. “Life does not give you what you want. It gives you what you deserve.”
That comment from Harris led to immediate uproar from the floor that caused House Speaker Rep. Clay Schexnayder, R-Gonzales, to step in to calm the chamber down. Several members of the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus objected to Harris’ sentiment.
“I take offense to that because you say it’s what I deserve,” Rep. Kenny Cox, D-Natchitoches, said.
Rep. Denise Marcelle, D-Baton Rouge, defended Ivey and thanked him for his comments.
“Here’s the deal: if you’re in power and you want to keep power, and somebody calls that out, that’s not an issue. That’s just what it is,” Marcelle said. “I do believe this process is tainted.”
Magee thought the maps for the state Supreme Court could be revisited during the regular session, which starts March 14. But he added, “I’m not sure if it will get anywhere.”
Supreme Court maps are a unique beast in the redistricting session. Unlike legislative maps, the Legislature is not required to redraw them. The Supreme Court districts were last reconfigured in 1997, using data from the 1990 census, after a federal court compelled the state to create a majority-minority district in New Orleans.
The special session was expected to end Friday with final votes to be held on several other maps after members of the House and Senate met in closed-door negotiations to iron on smaller differences in the bills that would leave just one of the six congressional districts as majority-minority.
Both the House and the Senate versions tweaked existing boundaries, leaving two congressional districts in North Louisiana.
There has been much speculation about whether Gov. Edwards will veto some of the maps. Edwards has said that he was not overly concerned about little change in the Public Service Commission or Board of Elementary and Secondary Education districts. But he has said he thinks it would be fair if two of the state’s congressional districts were majority Black.
Republicans might have enough votes to override any vetoes by Edwards, and even if he were to sign off on the maps, they are likely to end up in court.
The NAACP Legal Defense Fund has warned that if the Legislature declined to increase minority representation, it would likely be in violation of Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act, which prohibits voting practices or procedures on the basis of race.
The group has argued that if the Legislature could draw more minority districts and declined to, it is in peril of losing lawsuits and being forced to redraw district lines.
Sixteen congressional maps were filed by Black lawmakers, each showing a different way to add a second majority Black district. Civil rights groups are likely to say those bills showed that the Legislature had the ability to add more minority representation.
This article originally published in the February 21, 2022 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
