A few people have sent HB 200 to me to take a gander at.  At first, I brushed it off as much ado about nothing.  But when people kept sending it to me, I took a closer look at it.  It quickly became clear that this is an attempt to use the powers of the legislature to punish one conservative for opposing Constitutional Amendment 2 in the March 29 election.

First, a little background:  Woody Jenkins is the chairman of the East Baton Rouge Republican Executive Committee and has been for years.  There is an RPEC in most parishes, and they serve as the head of the Republican party in that parish.  RPEC members are elected by the republican voters of their parish, and to my knowledge that is how it has always been done.  Once elected, an RPEC committee elects their own officers, drafts and implements their own rules, etc.  Jenkins has served as the chairman of the EBR RPEC for quite some time.

Enter Representative Dixon McMakin.

McMakin is a member of the freshman class that was elected in 2023 with much fanfare.  And I do believe that he has done a good job in his time in the legislature.  HB 200 is a horrible mistake though.  It truly comes across as petty and vindictive.  This bill stacks the EBR RPEC with legislators and other state elected officials who will not have to run for election to RPEC like the rest of the committee members.  They are automatically appointed based on their position.  One might ask if a busy legislator has time to also serve on their RPEC.  Never worry, McMakin took that into consideration.  Not only do they not have to be elected to RPEC, but they don’t even have to serve on the committee, attend meetings and events, etc.  They can simply appoint someone to serve as their representative.

You might ask why McMakin would go to all this trouble.  Why does he even care?  Has he ever run for RPEC before?  And while I would encourage you to ask him for yourself, you can be sure that whatever perfectly logical reason that he gives you will likely not be the real reason.  HB200 seems to be solely designed to take the RPEC away from Woody Jenkins, because he had the temerity to disagree with Constitutional Amendment 2, and now McMakin and friends want to punish him by taking away Jenkins position as chairman.  HB200 stacks the committee with McMakin and enough of his allies to then hold a vote and remove Jenkins as chairman and sideline him.

Whether or not you agree with Woody about his stance on CA2 (and I happen to disagree with him), Woody is entitled to his position and deserves some respect and consideration.  Woody was a strong conservative pioneer in the days when that simply did not exist in Louisiana.  Jenkins helped lay the bricks for conservatism in our state.  A lot of these legislators who are now out to get Jenkins would not even be in their positions without the work that Woody Jenkins did in the 1980’s and 90’s.

The glaring message in HB 200 is that it shows that the state legislature learned absolutely nothing from the crushing defeat that CA2 represented to them.  They have blamed George Soros, Woody Jenkins, and stupid Louisiana voters at various points in the aftermath of the election.  Those all may have contributed (except for the stupid Louisiana voters, you know, the same ones that elected these legislators?), but none of them was the cause of this defeat.  If our elected leaders want to know who is to blame for the loss of CA2, they simply need to look in the mirror.  They did it to themselves.  They thought that their constituents loved and adored them and would simply pass whatever they told them to without question.  But the voters do not trust them, and that is the legislature’s fault, not the voters.

I have spoken to and heard from quite a few conservatives who opposed CA2, and not a single person has told me that they voted against it because of Woody Jenkins.  Almost universally, they say that it didn’t pass the smell test.  Too much crammed into one amendment, too many vote-buys, too much everything.  Basically, I have heard again and again that this looked like old school legislation coming from the people that were supposed to be reformers, and that just didn’t sit well with people.  I have not heard from a single person who voted against it because of the liberal propaganda, nor have I spoken to a single person who seemed to stupid to understand it, as I have heard several legislators insinuate.  That is probably the most offensive suggestion of all from our politicians.  I know a lot of them, and they aren’t any smarter than the rest of us.

A conservative base will not trust a legislature that handed them the highest sales tax in the nation.

A conservative base will not trust a legislature that is only willing to make revenue neutral tax changes.

A conservative base will not trust a legislature that does not make a single cut to a budget that has almost doubled in ten years.

A conservative base will not trust a legislature that feels the need to litter their signature reform legislation with favors for every special interest group that can provide a few votes.

I could go on and on, but the people of this state elected these legislators to change the way government is done in Louisiana.  The longer that these legislators are in office, the more that they look like the very people that they replaced.  It is crystal clear that they still don’t get it.  They still think it is everyone’s fault but theirs and they just double-down on their actions, which alienates their voters even more.

Once he has gotten rid of Jenkins, I wonder if McMakin will be willing to do the hard work of keeping the RPEC active, effective and functioning?  Because running an RPEC correctly does involve a lot of work.  Or is his only concern to get rid of Jenkins, and if that mission also destroys the capital city RPEC, so be it?

If McMakin wants to take over the EBR RPEC, why doesn’t he run for RPEC like everyone else, and then he can run for chairman.

RPEC’s are private organizations, and have constitutional protections, so HB 200 is likely illegal anyway, and McMakin knows this.  Governor Mike Foster attempted to force changes on the Republican State Central Committee, and it was ruled illegal by the courts.  That case has been passed around the capital, and I am told that McMakin has read it and intends to charge forward with HB200 anyway.  Likely, McMakin plans to remove Jenkins before the case works it way through court, then he will have succeeded in his goal, albeit at the expense of a few hundred thousand taxpayer dollars in legal fees.

Representative McMakin should realize that he is in a hole, and this would be a good time for him to stop digging.