Over the past few years, I’ve written several articles about the establishment Republican (RINO) problem over here in Jefferson Parish. For instance, I published an article last October about how multiple Republican members of the Jefferson Parish School Board (JPSB) were pushing to waste our public tax dollars on unreliable electric school buses:

Currently, Republican politicians hold a 7-2 majority on the Jefferson Parish School Board. Unfortunately, this Republican supermajority does not mean much when it comes to fiscal responsibility. Multiple Republicans on the School Board are publicly supporting this measure to buy unreliable EV school buses.

School districts across the country have struggled with the unnecessary adoption of electric school buses. Why should Jefferson Parish throw money at a technology with obvious operational flaws when a more dependable, more affordable alternative exists in gasoline school buses? Any School Board member voting YES on future EV bus funding would be defying both common sense and the fiscal responsibility owed to taxpayers.

Fortunately, this measure failed in a November 2025 School Board meeting. One of the key figures on the Jefferson Parish School Board who challenged the local political establishment’s push for EV school buses last year was my School Board member, Mike Pedalino. Unlike many politicians in Jefferson Parish, Mike is an authentic grassroots conservative who was not drafted to run for office by the local political kingmakers there.

Mike defeated a well-funded establishment candidate four years ago in his first run for elected office. However, he is facing another establishment-backed opponent in his reelection campaign this November after consistently representing the interests of local families and taxpayers for the past four years.

After doing some research, I discovered some interesting facts about Mike’s establishment-backed Republican opponent Al Galindo. Notably, the Jefferson Parish Chamber of Commerce PAC endorsed Al Galindo in a press release last week for the upcoming November election for District 6 of the Jefferson Parish School Board.

What the Jefferson Parish Chamber of Commerce PAC didn’t mention in its endorsement press release is that Galindo previously served on the PAC’s Board of Directors (per an archived website link from April 2025) less than a year before he publicly announced his run for the Jefferson Parish School Board (February 2026). You would think that Jefferson Parish voters deserve to know that one of the major PACs in Jefferson Parish politics endorsed a former member of its own Board of Directors.

What’s more comical is that the Jefferson Parish Chamber of Commerce PAC claims to have a “thorough and objective” process for selecting its candidate endorsements. Nothing says objective like selecting a former member of the PAC’s Board of Directors.

Local politics in Jefferson Parish is often an establishment-driven endeavor as shown in the endorsement processes for the Jefferson Parish Chamber of Commerce PAC, the Jefferson Parish RPEC, and other similar groups in the parish. The playbook is fairly simple. These establishment/”status-quo” PACs and political/business groups draft their establishment-aligned candidates to run for office, endorse them, and then raise substantial campaign war chests for their candidates. This process makes running for local office in Jefferson Parish and other parts of South Louisiana a difficult task for political outsiders and grassroots candidates.

Jefferson Parish does not currently have many grassroots-backed elected officials. So, grassroots conservatives in the parish must prioritize supporting the few independent voices we have in elected office locally—like Mike Pedalino on the Jefferson Parish School Board.

The local political establishment is gunning for Mike Pedalino’s spot on the School Board because he stands for the people and families of Jefferson Parish over corporate interests—as was demonstrated by his stand against electric school buses last year.

To close out this article, Mike Pedalino shared his thoughts with me about the Jefferson Parish Chamber of Commerce PAC’s endorsement of his opponent Al Galindo:

“I’m sure my opponent felt right at home during the interview being it was in front of his former nominating Chamber PAC peers. It’s kind of like a six year old child on Christmas Eve who knows for sure that not only Santa Claus is coming, but what present will be there. No element of Surprise what’s so ever. That cake was totally baked since the spring.”