State House Speaker Jim Tucker announces he will run for Secretary of State

15th August 2011   ·   0 Comments

By Christopher Tidmore
Contributing Writer

No sooner did State House Speaker Jim Tucker enter the race for Secretary of State — and just hours prior to Rep. Walker Hines’ decision to drop out – did their primary opponent decry his fellow Republicans for voting for the legislative pay raise three years ago.

Interim Sec. State and former State Rep. Tom Schedler directly referenced the controversial 2008 legislative pay raise that Tucker helped to champion through the House before Jindal ultimately killed it with the threat of a veto.

“Elections are about choices,” said Schedler. “The voters will be faced with what I believe is an easy choice. Since taking office, I have saved taxpayers money, made it easier for small businesses to get up and running and proposed legislation that reduces the number of special elections to save time and money. On the other hand, it seems that this latest move by Rep. Tucker will be his plan for getting the pay raise he always wanted. As the architect of the legislative pay raise fiasco, Speaker Tucker tried to double his salary.”

The interim Secretary’s stated implication was that Tucker having failed to increase his roughly $46,000 legislative salary, now sought a position that would pay nearly $120,000. The Speaker immediately responded that the issue was a “red herring. … At the end of the day we made a mistake to make it effective” in the same term with legislators who enacted it.

And, the Algiers Representative continued, the Legislature under his leadership proposed, and the public passed, a constitutional amendment that bars any pay raise lawmakers approve for themselves from taking effect until after the next election. Having adopted Mr. Madison’s 27th amendment in the Louisiana Constitution, Tucker argued that his legislature was a far better steward of the public purse than Schedler.

Speaking at the Press Club of Baton Rouge on Tuesday, the Speaker pledged “to ensure the integrity” of the state election process and restore some of the budget cuts that have forced incumbent Secretary of State Tom Schedler to “cut hours of operation” and some personnel at the state’s regional museums.

Effectively, Tucker pre-empted Schedler’s barb with veritable charges of mismanagement at the Louisiana State Department. The interim Secretary has been under fire from the Obama Justice Department of late as the NAACP and ACORN are all suing the state of Louisiana for lacking vigor in getting welfare recipients on the voter rolls.

NAACP’s Project Vote and local attorney Ronald Wilson claim they have accumulated “substantial evidence” that demonstrates Louisi­ana has failed to meet its obligations under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).

“For example, the most recent report to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) reveals that Louisiana public assistance agencies collected only 8,688 voter registration applications in 2007-2008,” Wilson wrote. “This represents an 88 percent decline since 1995-1996, when Louisiana reported 74,636 registrations from public assistance offices.”

Schedler, a defendant in the cases, has retorted that the Pelican State ranks fourth in the nation in voter registration among its adult residents. Louisiana has taken a “proactive approach” toward voter registration, which has yielded tangible dividends, he argued, adding that two of the three states ranking above Louisiana allow voter registration on Election Day.

The charges of mismanagement with a racial twinge may be an attempt by Tucker to rehabilitate his once sterling image with the Black community now that there are signs that Caroline Fayard might reconsider her announced bid for Secretary of State. If no Democrat runs, Tucker hopes to be the beneficiary of the normally Demo-leaning African-Ameri­can electorate.

It is not as strange a strategy as it might now appear in the wake of the SUNO/UNO merger debacle. Not so very long ago, Jim Tucker was the favorite Republican of most Black Caucus members. Hailing from Algiers, he had close connections to the city and its delegation, often arguing for New Orleans over his more suburban-focused GOP caucus.

The relationships he built across party and racial lines bore fruit when he stood for Speaker. Four years ago, Republicans, even after Jindal’s election, still did not constitute a majority in the State House. Tucker became the first GOP Speaker since Reconstruction by wooing several high-profile Black Democrats into choosing him, over their party’s standard-bearer, for the Speaker’s Chair. He even made one of his closest allies in that fight, Karen Carter Peterson, the Speaker Pro Tem prior to her elevation to the State Senate two years later to show his appreciation. Several other Black legislators won committee chairmanships in the GOP dominated chamber.

The first strain in the relationship came with the aforementioned payraise vote a few months later. What Schedler does not mention is that Tucker brokered a deal. In exchange for the payraise, the Black Caucus members would not oppose the bill of one of their members, Rep. Austin Badon’s measure, to authorize a limited school voucher experiment in New Orleans.

While scholarships for poor children in failing schools to attend private or parochial schools is very popular in poll after poll of the African-American electorate, it was a very difficult vote for most Black Caucus members — facing angry teacher’s unions who had most likely supported their elections.

Tucker midwifed a compromise with the Jindal Administration that would have the governor sign a payraise if the Black Caucus effectively stayed silent on the voucher bill.

It worked at first. The voucher bill passed, as did the pay hike. However, public opposition to the large pay increase caused Jindal to renege on his word, and veto the measure.

Tucker, as the negotiator, gained some blame; though, most of the Nola members of the Caucus reportedly recognized that the Governor turned, not the Speaker.

Tucker managed to redeem himself somewhat earlier this year, by opposing a GOP-led redistricting plan that would have sacrificed two white Democratic districts in New Orleans in order to draw two Jefferson Parish GOP House seats into Uptown. While he did not back an additional Black-majority seat in North Louisiana, Tucker was viewed for a few minutes as a fair broker, opposing his own caucus and thereby forcing Johnny LaBruzzo of Bucktown and Nick Larousso of Lakeview into an all GOP slugfest.

That goodwill died quickly when Tucker was charged to manage the administration’s bill to merge Southern University at New Orleans and the University of New Orleans. The Speaker, a UNO grad who had initially suggested that UNO and SUNO should simply not duplicate graduate programs and merge back office staffing, found himself in the most racially charged debate in memory.

Tucker actually had the votes to pass the measure, until a Jindal Administration official Paul Rainwater criticized the white Democrats willing to support the merger over their opposition to the governor’s budget — one day be­fore the merger vote. The Speaker lost his margin of victory, and simply compromised on negotiating the merger of back office staff — something not dissimilar from his original idea — all be it moving UNO into the University of Louisiana system as well.

Ever since the fight, Tucker has attempted to repair his relationship with the Black Caucus. It seemed that Black support would be unlikely, until three events happened. First, Monica Pierre, spokesperson for likely Demo­cratic candidate for Secretary of State Caroline Fayard, refused to confirm whether her client was running for Secretary, or would opt for another statewide office. It began to seem like Fayard would take a pass on the Sec. State contest, eliminating any major Democratic contender.

Second, Tucker’s other New Orleans opponent Democrat-turned-Republican Walker Hines dropped out on Thursday with the words, “After four years serving in the Louisiana House of Representatives and after much reflection, discussion, and prayer, I have decided that I will not be seeking any public office this year.”

Third, of course, was the interim Secretary’s ruckus with the Obama Justice Department and the NAACP. In fact, far from backing away, Schedler has recently bragged of the conflict with the Tea Party Right. Tucker may look good in comparison to the Black Community—should Fayard not opt to run.

This article was originally published in the August 15, 2011 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper