Yesterday, we took a look at the latest campaign finance “48-hour report” filed with the Louisiana State Board of Ethics for Gumbo PAC, the John Bel Edwards-affiliated attack dog outfit which has been responsible for the most vicious and patently false attacks in this year’s gubernatorial campaign.

And what we found probably won’t surprise anyone, but you ought to know it anyway.

A few weeks ago we had suggested to the campaigns of Ralph Abraham and Eddie Rispone, plus whatever third party groups are playing in the governor’s race on the Republican side, that following Saul Alinsky’s Rule 13 would be a good idea where Gumbo PAC is concerned. Specifically, to “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it.”

In this case, the target, we suggested, should be Morris Bart, the sleazy billboard lawyer whose punchable face appears everywhere Gordon McKernan’s doesn’t. Because Morris Bart is a major donor, and for an obvious reason – he’s siphoning off so much money in cheesy lawsuits from car wrecks that he’ll fight tooth and nail to preserve our dysfunctional status quo from anybody who might want to change it.

We know that Bart and other ambulance chasers like him have bankrolled Gumbo PAC ever since David Vitter promised tort reform four years ago. Nothing has changed, except this time they aren’t able to make a gubernatorial race about hookers.

But that sure hasn’t stopped the money flowing to Gumbo PAC. Here’s the latest report of contributions to Edwards’ attack dog outfit…

Gumbo PAC	JOHN JEFCOAT	PO Box 1172		Scott	LA	70583-1172	10/30/2019	$10,000.00
Gumbo PAC	SBI MANAGEMENT INC	56634 Bosworth St		Slidell	LA	70458-8625	10/30/2019	$3,000.00
Gumbo PAC	SIMMONS HANLY CONROY	1 Court St		Alton	IL	62002-6267	10/30/2019	$50,000.00
Gumbo PAC	SEGURA MEDICAL LLC	650 Millikens Bnd		Covington	LA	70433-4528	10/30/2019	$3,000.00
Gumbo PAC	NEW ORLEANS EAST MEDICAL REHAB	9810 Lake Forest Blvd		New Orleans	LA	70127-5425	10/30/2019	$3,000.00
Gumbo PAC	LOUISIANA CHIROPRATIC PAC	10636 Timberlake Dr		Baton Rouge	LA	70810-6614	10/30/2019	$20,000.00
Gumbo PAC	EASTBANK MEDICAL REHAB LLC	1100 Ncauseway Blvd		Metairie	LA	70001	10/30/2019	$3,000.00
Gumbo PAC	MARCO RODRIGUES	15384 Lake Crest View Dr		Baton Rouge	LA	70810-8439	10/30/2019	$3,000.00
Gumbo PAC	ROBERT D BOSTICK, III	406 Brockenbraugh Ct		Metairie	LA	70005-3324	10/30/2019	$2,500.00
Gumbo PAC	WESTBANK MEDICAL REHAB	851 Manhattan Blvd		Harvey	LA	70058-4609	10/30/2019	$3,000.00
Gumbo PAC	KATHERINE MASON	7476 Boyce Dr		Baton Rouge	LA	70809-1156	10/28/2019	$250.00
Gumbo PAC	CRAIG DAVIS	111 Mercury St		Lafayette	LA	70503-2243	10/28/2019	$2,500.00
Gumbo PAC	LEE MALLET	511 E Frontage Rd		Iowa	LA	70647-4056	10/29/2019	$50,000.00
Gumbo PAC	MORRIS BART	601 Poydras St	Fl 24	New Orleans	LA	70130-6029	10/29/2019	$250,000.00
Gumbo PAC	GARY BOUTWELL	904 Main St		Madisonville	LA	70447-9718	10/29/2019	$10,000.00
Gumbo PAC	TIM GRAY	1128 Constantinople St		New Orleans	LA	70115-2759	10/29/2019	$15,000.00

That’s right. Morris Bart just dropped a quarter of a million dollars into this outfit. We think that’s the largest individual contribution anyone has made to that organization this cycle.

Morris Bart is Gumbo PAC.

And by the way, Lee Mallet is the same guy who put up billboards all over Louisiana with clowns on them attacking Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon. The substance of Mallet’s problem with Donelon was essentially that he had bankrupted a company which owed the Louisiana Worker’s Compensation Corporation (LWCC), which is the quasi-public worker’s comp carrier of last resort, several hundred thousand dollars of worker’s comp premiums. And when Mallet applied for worker’s comp insurance to LWCC with another company, the carrier denied him until he’d made good on the money he owed them. He appealed that decision and Donelon was the arbiter for the appeal; Donelon backed LWCC. Mallet could have taken the case to court, but instead he spent several hundred thousand dollars attacking Donelon when he ran for re-election.

Lee Mallet was a major Bobby Jindal donor and Jindal put him on the LSU Board of Supervisors. Then Mallet was a major John Bel Edwards donor and Edwards reappointed him to that board.

In other words, Mallet is about as status quo a player as you can get in Louisiana politics – and for all the discussion about what a bad guy Lane Grigsby is, you can’t get a better example of somebody who uses money to corrupt this state’s politics than Mallet, and look where his money is going.

The rest of these guys are lawyers. John Jefcoat, Tim Gray and Gary Boutwell are plaintiff attorneys, and Simmons Hanly Conroy is a law firm doing mesothelioma cases. It’s the usual suspects, and they’re in this because they don’t want to see Louisiana enact any kind of tort reform that would alleviate our status as a judicial hellhole.

Not to mention the medical rehab and chiropractors on the list, who get their business from the Morris Barts of the world.

In other words, they’re the very definition of special interests. Edwards sure has a lot of gall accusing anybody else – especially Eddie Rispone, whose company does instrumentation and control installation in industrial facilities and doesn’t do government contracts – of being a “walking special interest.”