If you’re trying to determine who the most conservative candidate is in the race for the seat currently held in Congress by Julia Letlow, the answer isn’t hard to find. All three major candidates, Blake Miguez, Rick Edmonds, and Mike Echols, serve in the same legislature. Their voting records are public and easy to examine.

Blake Miguez is clearly the conservative in this race. The votes don’t lie.

But I can save you some time because there is one vote that puts the spotlight on the good-old-boys who are selling themselves as conservatives. This vote was so egregious, so wasteful, and so emblematic of how business gets done in the swamps of Baton Rouge that it serves as a clear dividing line in this race.

It happened just three years ago in the final days of Louisiana’s 2023 legislative session. These were the nightmare post COVID days when John Bel Edwards was still in the governor’s mansion and Clay Shexnayder had previously been elected Speaker of the House by just enough good old boys and girls voting with all Democrats to hand him the gavel.

With Edwards holding the line-item veto pen and RINOs eager to please the Democrat governor, it was a time when absolute power corrupted absolutely.

There was a coordinated push to break the constitutionally mandated spending cap to unlock billions more of your hard-earned taxpayer dollars to fund pet projects and political favors on top of an already bloated $50+ billion budget. Busting the piggy bank required a two-thirds vote in both chambers, a safeguard meant to prevent exactly this kind of gluttonous spending.

After buying off the Democrats with what some bragged shortly after was a million dollars apiece for their districts, the die was cast. Only 19 Republican members took the courageous vote against that reckless spending and Blake Miguez was one of them as a founding member of the Louisiana Freedom Caucus. https://legis.la.gov/Legis/ViewDocument.aspx?d=1331210 [THE VOTE]

Where were Rick Edmonds and Mike Echols? They were all in 100% and voted to bust the spending cap. But that’s not even the whole story.

What they participated in during the aftermath was one of the lowest moments in the storied political history of Louisiana. I wrote about it at the time in an article here at The Hayride: Legislative Spending Orgy Leaves Chaos in its Wake. [ https://thehayride.com/2023/06/hair-legislative-spending-orgy-leaves-chaos-in-its-wake/ ]

In the single day between that wanton vote to override the spending limit and the final passage of four spending bills, amendments were inserted in a closed backroom conference not only to wildly spend your tax dollars, but to strip funding for roads and bridge repairs to punish those who opposed the spending orgy.

As described in testimony from the Senate Budget Analyst in the linked article, the volume of amendments was so overwhelming that Capitol staff required 11 days to sort them and determine their placement. Yet the House was given just 15 minutes from introduction to final vote in the waning minutes of the session.

That’s right. From the moment the first amended bill was introduced, the members’ first chance to see the amended bills, to final passage, they had just 15 minutes to read and vote. You can see it yourself in the video from the session here.

https://house.louisiana.gov/H_Video/VideoArchivePlayer?v=house/2023/jun/0608_23_Day37_2023RS_P2

Miguez and fellow Freedom Caucus members objected, raising points of order against the unfolding outrage. Shexnayder and his mini-me, Rep. Tanner Magee, ignored House rules and strong-armed the amended bills through without a single objection from RINOs or their Democrat cohorts.

As the Senate Budget Analyst testified in the Senate Finance Committee 11 days later: “Think of four bills that are within the expenditure limit, the number of amendments that were being added, the number of pages in those bills, the amendments within the amendments within those bills, 120, I think, for the supplemental bill, another 50 in floor amendments, 186 in HB2, and another 225 in Finance in HB2, and then there’s floor amendments, 50 in HB2 on floor amendments, mostly dealing with cash, then 187 in HB1, and then I think it was about another 60-70 on the floor.”

Does this sound like responsible, conservative government to you?  Apparently, it does to those who voted to facilitate this absurdity. Is this what you want to send to Congress?

Blake Miguez voted against it.

Connie Hair is the Louisiana State Director for the State Freedom Caucus Network and a veteran of national politics, media, and military service. She has worked on presidential and congressional campaigns, served in the U.S. Army Reserve, reported for Human Events on the Capitol Hill Press Corps, served as communications staff for a U.S. Senator and two U.S. Congressmen and spent twelve years as Chief of Staff to a Member of Congress.