Now that we are past the election, I would like to share my thoughts on a few of the key races that we just cast our ballots for.  Overall, I think that Tuesday night was a good night for America and Louisiana.  But there were few negatives, and we should look at both as the dust settles.

General Observation:  Sitting here a week after the election, many states still have not finalized their results.  There are still many races that have not been declared, and that makes me grateful to live here.  Louisiana is at the bottom of a lot of lists, but we run our elections well.  We know on election night who has won almost every race, and that is not a small thing.

President:  Donald Trump was elected in what now appears to be a very convincing fashion.  As I write this, some news outlets have called Arizona and Nevada for Trump and some have not, but it appears that Trump will have 312 Electoral College votes to 226 for Kamala Harris.  Trump won several states that he lost in 2020 and won the popular vote as well.  The left can’t even use the tired old excuse that the electoral college is to blame and popular vote would have benefitted the Democrat.  This was a complete repudiation of the left’s toxicity and insanity over the past four years in my eyes.  But any hope that the left would take a hard look at their policies and come to grips with the fact that they are completely out of touch with mainstream America was smashed before the race was even called.  Instead, they are doubling down on calling more than half of the country racists, misogynists, fascists, garbage, and a few other horrible names.  Some of what I am seeing out there is truly shocking.  Be prepared for an ugly, nasty four years.

On another note, I am not one to say that four more years of Biden / Harris would destroy the country.  But I will say that another term of that type of leadership would certainly have caused a tremendous amount of damage.  It would have taken us a long time to dig ourselves out of that hole.  Hopefully we can get some policies in place that will grow the economy and allow income to catch up with the inflation that has hurt everyone so badly over the past four years.  I am truly grateful that Trump was elected, because we desperately need to change directions.  I also think that J.D. Vance is a superstar, and I look forward to him being at the top of the ballot in 2028.

U.S. Senate:  We win!!!  Nuff Said!  And Bill Cassidy is already trying to make nice with Trump.  Good luck with that one!

Congress:  Not much to see here.  All of these races (in Louisiana) pretty much went as expected.  I just hope the new congressional maps that the governor and legislature passed last January don’t cost Louisiana a Speaker of the House and a Majority Leader.  Right now, it looks like Republicans will (barely) hold the House, but that is far from a sure thing.  If Democrats take back the house, Mike Johnson likely goes back to the rank and file, and Steve Scalise would become the minority leader.  Losing that kind of clout would be devastating to the state.  It was interesting that Elbert Guillory won 8 of 10 parishes in the 5^th district, but still lost the race.  Baton Rouge killed his hopes.

Public Service Commissioner:  Cash is king.  J.P. Coussan had it and Julie Quinn did not.  So Coussan was able to run a TV commercial every half hour telling us that he was opposed to the Green New Deal even though he has voted for every piece of green new deal legislation that has ever come before him, and Quinn had no way to respond.  Now we have promoted a RINO, and he will collect more cash for his next step.  The good news is that he will at least be out of the Senate.  So, to all of you in Lafayette, please elect someone good this time.  No more RINO’s, please.  We already have more of those than we need.

Baton Rouge Mayor President:  Sid Edwards has a real chance here.  If you are in Baton Rouge, you need to go vote for Edwards on December 7.  Baton Rouge is in real trouble, and four more years of Sharon Weston Broome is going to be hard to come back from.  I would love to ask Paula Davis and Scott McKnight if they were satisfied with what they received for selling out their conservative values to Ted James.  But since neither of them has any conservative values, that would be a waste of time.  People of Baton Rouge, please don’t elect those two for anything else, ever again.

Baton Rouge Constable:  I know, nobody is really interested.  But I do have an observation on this one.  Denise Marcelle is a sitting state representative, and she ran for constable and lost.  First, it is weird for a state rep to run for constable.  Since Marcelle doesn’t seem to have any actual real life skills, maybe she just wanted to get a full time gig at the public trough.  However she lost fairly convincingly, so maybe we have hope for getting her out of the legislature in the next cycle.  I realize that she would just be replaced by another Democrat, but she is bad even for a Democrat.  She has that perfect mix of being both incompetent, unprofessional (just watch some of her committee meetings), and wrong on most issues.  I previously wrote about some of her antics here.

Maybe Ted James can run for her spot.  I hear he needs a job…

Taxes:  Baton Rouge loves them and Livingston Parish hates them.  And the only thing separating the two is the itty bitty Amite River (and a culture gap as wide as the Pacific Ocean).  Baton Rouge had seven taxes on the ballot and passed them all by comfortable margins, even the BREC tax after the BREC treasurer came out and basically said the money was not being handled right and there was no transparency or accountability.  Meanwhile, Livingston Parish voted down their Health Unit even though Parish President Randy Delatte pushed hard for it.  Of course, the argument can be made that he hurt his cause more than he helped it.  Remember the Planned Parenthood mess?  I wrote about that here.

There are still no answers about past expenditures of the health unit with Planned Parenthood, but it looks like we can safely say that the health unit in Livingston Parish will  not be supporting Planned Parenthood in 2025, since they won’t have any funding to spend.  You gotta love those people in the Free State of Livingston!  They have had their fill of taxes!