Is The State Librarian Kerfuffle A Problem For Billy Nungesser?

The temptation is to view this as a molehill rather than a mountain, but we’re going to get dustings of these things all year long – and we’ve already seen them. Maybe this will stick to Nungesser, maybe it won’t.

The scandal would seem to be what underlies this little imbroglio, rather than the imbroglio itself.

If you don’t know what we’re talking about here, it’s this

A worker says Louisiana’s Lieutenant Governor is the reason she was kicked out of her workplace and hasn’t been allowed to return. For the first time, Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser has publicly called those claims flat-out lies.

“Everybody in my office was as shocked as I was,” said Nungesser. “I have never done anything that’s not been above board.”

State Librarian Rebecca Hamilton is taking Nungesser to court for putting her on leave. She retained attorney Gregory Miller who says Nungesser never had the authority to “march” Hamilton out of her office. Nungesser agrees that he does not have that authority.

He says Hamilton was sent home by her own human resources department after multiple employees made complaints about her workplace behavior.

“First off, I considered Rebecca a friend,” said Nungesser. “I never had a problem with her. When HR gets complaints, it is not right for the lieutenant governor or any other official to interfere.”

Miller called those claims of inappropriate behavior in the workplace “trumped up.”

Hamilton says Nungesser is trying to get even because she reported his “questionable” contracts to state and federal authorities.

Nungesser said he was never made aware of Hamilton’s complaints.

“I don’t know what I could’ve done that she could’ve reported me for,” said Nungesser.

He explained the last time he was investigated by the feds was during his campaign four years ago. He says someone told the FBI he was buying minority votes in the New Orleans area. He was unable to speak about the outcome of that investigation.

“People can make complaints and the FBI has to investigate,” he added.

Now up for re-election, Nungesser says he thinks this all is politically motivated.

“We know there are some people in this election that are not nice,” he said.

Does this matter? Probably not, unless the corrupt contracts Hamilton references are a real thing – meaning that the underlying scandal is important whereas Hamilton’s firing isn’t.

You might remember from a while ago there was a personnel scandal of sorts surrounding Jeff Landry’s Office of the Attorney General, in which a division head was accused of sexual harassment essentially because he and one or two male employees would discuss which females in the office were more attractive and which ones were not. There was a little more to it than that, but not a whole lot as it turned out, but somehow this was a problem for Landry even though he disciplined the division head.

Nungesser would mount a similar defense, in that this is an HR issue he doesn’t have anything to do with as Lt. Governor. And like Landry, that would be a pretty good defense barring whatever evidence might surface giving the lie to his statements.

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But if Hamilton has the goods on Nungesser essentially stealing state money for himself or his cronies through crooked contracts, that’s a different story.

And we have no judgment to offer on that subject, other than if Nungesser’s supposed announcement tomorrow regarding the governor’s race is that he is going to run, we can say we’re pretty likely to find out.

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