This past weekend, I planned to enjoy spending time with my fiancée and her family outside of Louisiana. Unfortunately, Louisiana politics and its ramifications are unavoidable. So, I was trying to keep up with the results from last Saturday’s RSCC meeting and the LAGOP’s State Convention. After all, the RSCC was selecting a new Chairman for the LAGOP and the State Convention was selecting 26 of Louisiana’s 44 RNC delegates. So, I was curious to find out what the outcomes were from both the Convention and the party meeting.
Now, it’s been five days since last Saturday’s RSCC meeting and the LAGOP’s State Convention. So, you would think I could easily find information about either event. Unfortunately, that is not the case.
The LAGOP’s website and its social media accounts show absolutely nothing about the RSCC meeting or the State Convention. The LAGOP website’s press and newsletter page hasn’t made a new post in six months (that means October 2023). So, you won’t find any information there.
The LAGOP’s social accounts on Facebook and Twitter/X are a bit more active, but I still couldn’t find anything relevant here either.
So, it’s been five days since the LAGOP’s State Convention took place, but no one can find any information on Louisiana’s newly-selected RNC Delegates. The lack of transparency here is a bit concerning.
Fortunately, I was able to browse social media to find out exactly who the RSCC picked as the state party’s executive leadership. The LAGOP’s website still shows only the party’s previous executive committee, so at least social media allowed us to figure out who is apparently leading our state’s Republican party.
Now, one of the pieces of public information that I could find about the RSCC meeting came from The Advocate. It’s a sad day when a Louisiana Republican has look to to The Advocate to provide the inside scoop about the LAGOP, but here we are.
In this rare instance, The Advocate shed some light on the dynamics within the LAGOP:
“… Critics of Gurvich within the party were represented Saturday by Jude Savoie, a member of the state committee from Iberia Parish. He challenged Babcock in the chair race, calling for greater transparency in how the party spends its money.
But Babcock, who had been secretary for the past four years, also called for more transparency and won easily, helped by endorsements from Gurvich and from business owner Eddie Rispone, who ran for governor in 2019 and nearly defeated Gov. John Bel Edwards when he ran for reelection …
Asked in an interview whether Trump won the 2020 presidential election, as he claims, Babcock said he accepted that Joe Biden is president but believes that “irregularities” prevented Trump from winning.”
Where do we begin? The new Chairman of the LAGOP Derek Babcock giving a limp-wristed response about the 2020 presidential election is disappointing to say the least. A vast majority of Republican voters believe that the 2020 presidential election was rigged, yet a gap seems to exist between the LAGOP’s new leadership and the Republican voters of this state.
If Louisiana Republicans were looking for a change in leadership in the state party, then it doesn’t look as though we’ll be getting that change anytime soon. I don’t see how we can expect a departure from the “status quo”/insider-nature of Louisiana Republican politics unless we see some major change in party leadership.
Just look at the big changes that took place at the national level of the Republican party. Last month, the Republican National Committee (RNC) finally replaced the Establishment-leaning RNC chair Ronna McDaniel for more conservative leaders–such as new chairman Michael Whately and co-chair Lara Trump. The new national RNC leaders finally align with the conservative, “America First” voting base and are willing to tackle important issues–including ballot chasing in swing states and election integrity. In fact, the RNC is now screening its new hires to make sure that Establishment RINOs are not filling up the staffing roles in the organization.
The new RNC leadership starkly contrasts the old RNC chair Ronna McDaniel. After her resignation from the RNC, Ronna McDaniel immediately took a job at NBC News (shortly before getting axed by the network) and was going around telling Regime media outlets that the 2020 election was “fair and square.” Again, the Establishment GOP’s opinions on a variety of issues–including the 2020 election results–run counter to the vast majority of Republican voters.
I honestly never would have thought that I would see MAGA, “America First” leadership in the RNC, but the ouster of Ronna McDaniel last month changed the landscape of Republican politics at the national level.
Louisiana’s Republican party needed some fresh blood like the National RNC did. However, the results from this past weekend’s RSCC meeting doesn’t lend me to believe that will be the case in Louisiana. Now, it’s still too early to tell if the LAGOP’s new leadership plans to improve on its lack of voter outreach and grassroots prebuilding from the past. We could see some improvements coming soon, but we don’t really know at this current juncture.
As of last month the Louisiana Republican party still trails the Louisiana Democrat party by over 100k members. So, I would hope that the LAGOP plans to surpass the Democrats pretty soon if we want to implement closed primaries in the state sometime soon. Surpassing the Democrats in terms of registered voters could become a reasonable goal for the LAGOP within the next year or so. Just an idea.
While I may currently hold a fair dose of skepticism toward the LAGOP’s leadership for its lack of transparency and limited voter outreach, I still hold out hope that the new leaders of the Louisiana Republican party will make some positive changes with the 2024 election cycle rapidly approaching. Only time will tell.
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