Lies, half-truths, misinformation and bipartisan blunders from Louisiana politics in 2023
17th January 2024 · 0 Comments
By Wesley Muller
Contributing Writer
(lailluminator.com) — Louisiana politics featured a number of lies, half-truths, misinformation and blunders during 2023.
Some of last year’s questionable claims were continuations of deeply entrenched misinformation, lies and conspiracy theories that took root within far-right political circles nationwide when former President Donald Trump was in office, while others were unique to issues in our state last year and originated from the Louisiana Democratic Party.
The following list is not exhaustive but includes some of the more notable incidents, statements, actions and inactions that grabbed headlines in 2023.
Democratic delusions
One of the biggest headscratchers of last year was Louisiana Democratic Party chair Katie Bernhardt’s decision in January to air a television commercial statewide that seemed to position her as a potential candidate for governor, though without saying so explicitly.
Bernhardt told the Illuminator the motivation behind the TV ad was to draw attention to Democrats in general – and not to her own potential campaign.
“Rarely do we have an opportunity to have media backing,” Bernhardt said. “This is an opportunity to get people talking as far as candidates are concerned.”
What might have been a toe in the water to test Bernhardt’s electability ended up as an anchor around the party’s leg that many Democrats believe sank their chances of fielding a competitive candidate against eventual winner Jeff Landry.
Shortly after the ad aired, state Rep. C. Travis Johnson, D-Vidalia, stepped down as first vice chairman of the Louisiana Democratic Party because he had lost faith in Bernhardt.
“Because of dysfunction, lack of trust, consistent turmoil, and the possibility of me becoming chair, I resign effective immediately,” Johnson said in a statement.
Mugshot misstatement
State Rep. Bryan Fontenot, R-Thibodaux, sponsored a bill last year that would have effectively repealed most of a law that took effect in 2022. That law generally prohibits law enforcement from publishing or publicly releasing booking photos of people accused — but not yet convicted — of most non-violent offenses, though it allows law enforcement to still publish mugshots if they believe the suspect poses a threat to public safety.
During debate in a Senate Judiciary C Committee hearing in May, Fontenot falsely claimed the existing law prevents the public from being made aware of child molesters in their neighborhoods. When Sen. Gary Carter, D-New Orleans, asked Fontenot a series of questions, Fontenot became agitated and said the current law prevents parents from being able to see “who raped their child.”
Carter pointed out the inaccuracy of those claims, explaining how the law already contains exceptions for violent offenses and fugitives.
Fontenot’s bill underwent several amendments before a much milder version became law and left intact most of the 2022 law that prevents the release of mugshots of nonviolent suspects.
Undermining elections
The so-called “Big Lie” that Trump perpetuated about the 2020 presidential race outcome and myriad related falsehoods persist within the Republican Party and continue to plague state and local election officials nationwide.
Former Louisiana Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin, a Republican, gave a candid assessment of the situation in a farewell letter in April, explaining his decision to not seek reelection and calling out the outlandish conspiracy theories.
“I hope that Louisianans of all political persuasions will stand against the pervasive lies that have eroded trust in our elections by using conspiracies so far-fetched that they belong in a work of fiction,” Ardoin said. “The vast majority of Louisiana’s voters know that our elections are secure and accurate, and it is shameful and outright dangerous that a small minority of vocal individuals have chosen to denigrate the hard work of our election staff and spread unproven falsehoods.”
Despite Ardoin’s stance, new Secretary of State Nancy Landry, his former second-in-command, still claimed there were “very troubling allegations” of voting irregularities in swing states.
Likewise, loyal Trump supporter Gov. Jeff Landry has dodged questions on whether he believes Trump’s lies or thinks the former president interfered with the 2020 election.
Juvenile jumble
Gov. John Bel Edwards’ strategy for handling the state’s most troublesome incarcerated juveniles arguably created just as many problems as it sought to solve.
The administration sought to house them temporarily in a revamped facility at Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola that formerly housed death row inmates. That move led to a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of conditions, with lawyers for some teens claiming they were kept in isolation for extended periods and not provided required rehabilitative services.
Edwards preempted federal court action by relocating the youth to a facility in Jackson Parish, but there has been no indication from new Gov. Jeff Landry that teens couldn’t be sent back to Angola. It won’t happen for the time being because the same death row building is now temporarily housing women who had been incarcerated at the old Jetson Center for Youth in Baker.
They had to be moved from Jetson to hold three teen girls who were convicted as adults in the fatal carjacking of a 73-year-old New Orleans grandmother.
Who drew the maps?
This mystery still persists. During the Louisiana Legislature’s 2022 redistricting session, a handful of Republican lawmakers quietly hired an out-of-state law firm and outside consultants to help them draw political maps that ultimately became the subject of Voting Rights Act lawsuits over racial gerrymandering.
In early 2022, the lawmakers disclosed the name of one of the law firms but refused to answer questions about the other consultants who performed the work. More than a year later, it appeared Louisiana Republican Party chairman Louis Gurvich let slip the name of one of the consultants during the Republican State Central Committee Meeting in July.
Gurvich told his colleagues that Baton Rouge pollster John Couvillon of JMC Analytics “largely did the legislative redistricting” that took place in 2022. But in a written statement a couple of hours after Gurvich’s comments, Couvillon denied that he took part in the work.
Book bans
U.S. Sen. John Kennedy, R-Louisiana, is one of several GOP senators who’ve thrown fuel on the fire of falsehoods in a far-right effort to ban certain books from public libraries, claiming they are unsuitable for children.
At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in September, Kennedy read excerpts from two of the most challenged books in the nation. One of them included a description of a sexual act. What Kennedy neglected to say was that neither of those books are shelved in the children’s section at libraries.
Some conservatives have gone so far as to accuse librarians of using sexually explicit literature to “groom” children and claim book bans aren’t bans at all because the books can be purchased elsewhere.
Parental rights
Louisiana legislators passed an anti-LGBTQ+ bill last year that would have allowed teachers and school employees to refuse to use a student’s chosen name or pronouns that differ from the ones given to them at birth unless a student’s parent provides written permission.
Republicans who supported the measure, including its sponsor, Rep. Raymond Crews, R-Bossier City, couched it as a parental rights bill because it would essentially make sure students couldn’t come out as transgender without their parents’ permission.
The bill would have only protected the rights of parents of a certain ideology because a major provision in the bill said even if parents do provide permission, a teacher could override those parental rights if they disagree with the parents on religious or moral grounds.
At the same time, the bill would not allow teachers who hold a different religious or moral position to overrule parents who oppose their child’s LGBTQ+ sexuality and preferred pronouns.
“This is a culture war bill designed to impose one group’s values over the rest,” Rep. Joe Marino, I-Gretna, said during debate on the House floor. “This is not a parents’ rights bill unless the parents believe the same thing Rep. Crews does.”
Gov. John Bel Edwards vetoed the bill.
Gender-affirming care
State lawmakers, with the help of a handful of Democrats, successfully overrode the governor’s veto of a bill that prohibits minors from receiving gender-affirming medical care. The law went into effect last week.
During debate on the bill, some supporters invoked medical misinformation about gender-affirming care, claiming doctors were mutilating children with dangerous surgeries or that puberty blocking drugs were irreversibly harming children.
Gender-affirming procedures, such as top surgery, which adds or removes breast tissue, or bottom surgery, which constructs a vagina or penis, are generally not recommended for minors, according to Dr. Kathryn Lowe, a pediatrician who represents the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on LGBT health and wellness.
In rare cases, an older minor may be given top surgery after extensive counseling, although there is no evidence such procedures are available in Louisiana.
Treatments are individualized to the patient. Some young patients will be prescribed fully reversible puberty blockers, giving the patient time to consider their options. Later, a patient may be given hormone treatments to help them go through puberty in a way that allows their body to change in ways that align with their gender identity. These treatments are partially reversible.
The American Academy of Pediatrics and other major medical associations endorse such treatments, which are supported by a large body of research.
Anti-vax efforts
Many of the outlandish claims that peppered coronavirus debate a few years ago have subsided, but last year lawmakers sought to prohibit K-12 public and private schools from requiring COVID-19 vaccinations as a condition of enrollment.
The Legislature approved the bill from Rep. Kathy Edmonston, R-Baton Rouge, who falsely testified that COVID-19 is not a vaccine-preventable disease and that there were no Food and Drug Administration-approved vaccine doses available in Louisiana at the time.
Gov. Edwards rejected the bill, noting in his veto message that “perpetuating mistrust in vaccines that are safe, effective, and essential to public health is reckless and extremely dangerous.”
Edmonston also got a bill passed that would have required the state to send parents information about exempting their children from vaccine requirements. The governor vetoed that proposal as well, although it came just a few votes shy of being overridden.
Technically, Louisiana students are required to be inoculated for polio, measles, mumps and other ailments that have been eradicated or contained through mass vaccinations, but families can obtain an exemption.
Higgins hype
Since he was first elected to office in 2017, Republican Congressman Clay Higgins of Port Barre has spewed numerous lies and disinformation on a wide manner of topics, ranging from the 2020 presidential election to gun violence statistics.
An unquestioning Trump supporter, Higgins has repeated far-fetched conspiracy theories so often that some Louisiana Democrats refer to him as “Conspiracy Clay.”
Higgins’ outlandish claims aren’t just contained to social media. In one example, during a Feb. 8, 2023, committee hearing, he falsely accused Twitter employees of rigging the 2020 presidential election and even claimed they would soon be arrested, according to a Washington Post article.
Most recently, at a Nov. 15 committee hearing, Higgins accused the FBI of having “ghost buses” full of informants impersonating Trump supporters during the Jan. 6 insurrection. His evidence included a photo from inside the Union Station parking garage of several buses, which he noted were painted “completely white” as if that were an unusual color for such vehicles.
The photo shows the buses actually weren’t completely white but were emblazoned with company names, logos and other lettering consistent with common charter buses that any number of groups could have used to travel to the Capitol that day.
Like many other Republicans on the day of the insurrection, Higgins publicly condemned the violence as he and his colleagues hid from the mob of Trump supporters who attacked police and called for the execution of Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as they breached the Capitol.
“Violence and lawlessness are unacceptable. This must end now. This is not American,” Higgins tweeted on Jan. 6, 2021.
He later went on to defend the attackers after order was restored and now claims, without evidence, that federal authorities and “the left” orchestrated the revolt.
This article originally published in the January 15, 2024 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
