A couple of things have happened in the past week as Jeff Landry’s transition team has gotten itself rolling that indicate this is a four-year Christmas come early for conservatives.

Yesterday’s news on Landry’s budget team was one of the two. From a press release yesterday…

Today, Governor-elect Jeff Landry announced that Taylor Barras will be the Commissioner of Administration and Patrick Goldsmith will be the Deputy Commissioner of Administration.

“It is through the Commissioner of Administration and his office that efficiencies, savings, and streamlining of state government can happen. This is where protecting the taxpayer starts. Both Taylor and Patrick have extensive backgrounds in public service and finance, and I am confident these two men will work to ensure our State is fiscally responsible and responsive to our citizens,” said Governor-elect Jeff Landry.

“I am honored to serve Louisiana as the Commissioner of Administration. With my extensive background in finance, I am confident we can deliver a budget to the people of Louisiana that is both thoughtful and responsible with the taxpayer’s money,” said Taylor Barras. 

“After working 27 years for the legislative branch and 3 for local government, I am honored for the opportunity that Governor elect Jeff Landry has given me to work in his administration.  I will bring the same objectivity, transparency, and innovation to the executive branch that I brought to the legislature and Ascension Parish.  I will focus on making the administrative operations more efficient and effective so the great state of Louisiana can be a better place,” said Patrick Goldsmith. 

Hayride readers of long standing will remember Barras’ time as House Speaker when, with a small majority to work with, he engaged in a four-year running battle with John Bel Edwards over the state budget. That isn’t to say Barras was able to win that battle; a House Speaker, especially one with a razor-thin legislative majority and a hostile state senate in the bag for the governor, faces quite long odds when it comes to holding the line against spending and tax increases. But nobody has poured more effort into that fight among elected politicians than Taylor Barras.

He was a very good Speaker who faced down potential coups d’etat Edwards was attempting to engineer all four of those years, all because he did what he could to rein in the growth of Louisiana’s government.

And now, Barras is going to be the Commissioner of Administration, the man with whom that budget originates before it goes to the House.

And Goldsmith, as the No. 2 man in the Division of Administration, will be the detail-man under Barras whose efforts at scrubbing the budget could produce a windfall for Louisiana taxpayers. There is a mountain of waste in the $50 billion annual spending bacchanal Louisiana’s government unleashes on its citizens, and he has the background as a legislative auditor, head of the House fiscal office and chief financial officer in Ascension Parish to make that happen.

Putting Barras and Goldsmith in place atop the Division of Administration, and then having Cameron Henry, who was the House Appropriations chair when Barras was Speaker, as the new Senate president means that the beginning and end of the budget process will be controlled by people predisposed to reining in spending. There’s a good indication that Brett Geymann, known as the top fiscal hawk in the Louisiana legislature, will emerge as the chair of the House Appropriations Committee if his bid for Speaker doesn’t bear fruit; if that becomes the case the whole budget process will be in the hands of people serious about shrinking government.

Which will not make the status quo crowd or the Left very happy.

And this is of a piece with something else that makes them apoplectic.

The transition team has a committee dedicated to dealing with the problem of New Orleans, and Landry stocked that committee with a whole lot of people who are from New Orleans but don’t exactly ply their political trades there. And the city’s ruling class, the people most responsible for the deplorable condition the city is in at present, are absolutely furious that they’re being left out of the transition team’s deliberations on how to address potential fixes in the Landry administration.

From yesterday…

Today, governor-elect Jeff Landry’s transition committee on New Orleans meets for the first time, in Lafayette — but is the committee just a political middle finger to the Crescent City?

“It seems like a big flip-off,” said WWL TV political commentator Clancy DuBos. “It looks like he wants to change things from the outside.”

DuBos says the committee that Landry put together includes very few elected leaders from New Orleans, and none from New Orleans City Hall or New Orleans law enforcement.

“This committee is somehow going to address the problems of the city and I’m not sure how you do that without engaging anyone who has authority in the city,” said DuBos. “He has to engage the folks who the citizens of New Orleans have elected to solve the problems of the city.”

DuBos says otherwise, it looks like Landry is at best grandstanding, or at worst, plotting a political takeover like Huey Long attempted nearly 100 years ago.

DuBos isn’t alone in his whining…

Gov.-elect Landry's committee on "New Orleans" won't include reps from criminal justice, environmental, LGBTQ and music communities. @RoyceDuplessis is the only elected Black member and he made clear in a statement he is participating to ensure ….https://t.co/b5xJbaxekR

— john r stanton (@dcbigjohn) November 6, 2023

Gov.-elect Jeff Landry’s committee to advise him on the “New Orleans Problem” is taking shape & surprise! It doesn’t include @mayorcantrell or @JPMorrell the 2 highest ranking elected local officials in the city. There is technically a Dem – Austin Badonhttps://t.co/b5xJbaxekR

— john r stanton (@dcbigjohn) November 3, 2023

Jeff Landry got 10 percent of the vote in Orleans Parish. He got 51.6 percent of the vote statewide. In the other parishes of the New Orleans area, the ones whose residents have been negatively impacted by the crime, economic degradation and other symptoms of collapse in the city, he did considerably better:

• Jefferson: 40 percent
• St. Charles: 50 percent
• St. John: 29 percent
• St. Bernard: 52 percent
• St. Tammany: 48 percent
• Plaquemines: 54 percent

So if you’re Jeff Landry, who do you think you’re going to look to for leadership in attempting to revive the New Orleans area?

LaToya Cantrell and J.P. Morrell? Why?

They’ve held themselves out as his political enemies, and Landry can’t be very impressed with what he’s seen of how well they’re capable of governing. Everything the political class in New Orleans has touched has gotten worse in the last decade (at least). In fact, the failure of urban Democrats to maintain our cities as anything other than dysfunctional shooting galleries hostile in the extreme to the middle-class voters who elected Landry in the primary (and who have supplied him with a massive supermajority in both houses of the legislature in support of his agenda) is the direct cause of Landry’s victory.

He has a mandate to swipe away as much power as possible from the New Orleans political ruling class. It’s what the people of Louisiana clearly want.

So when he puts a committee together of people who are critics of that ruling class – folks like Rick Farrell, who bankrolled the effort to recall Cantrell earlier this year – nobody should be surprised.

And if the Clancy DuBoses of the world see that as a middle finger in their faces, then they’re probably right. It is. And a well-deserved one, too.

As Barack Obama said, elections have consequences. This transition team’s efforts so far look like an exposition of that.

And it’s all quite enjoyable, because the John Stantons and Clancy DuBoses screeching about their lack of power in a Landry administration are the same people who vigorously dismissed the concerns of Landry voters as their friends raped and pillaged middle class Louisianans for the last eight years under John Bel Edwards.

This is their comeuppance. We see zero evidence they can handle it. And we take great entertainment from that.

As should you if you’re not in their camp.