…and we can’t wait. You can still buy a ticket to the event, and if you’d like to, then click here.

The event will be held from 6-9 p.m. at the Pioneer Club in Lake Charles (located at 127W Broad Street), next Wednesday, September 12. Cocktail hour begins at 6:00, with dinner and the program commencing at 7.

Our roster of speakers contains a trio of people who could conceivably 18 months from now be Louisiana’s governor, Senate president and Speaker of the House. That’s one heck of a hat trick, no?

We’re not predicting that ISC Constructors CEO Eddie Rispone, who announced he was forming an exploratory committee for a gubernatorial run last month, is going to be Louisiana’s next governor. It’s far too early for that. But what we can say is Rispone so far is the first Republican to the post, and anyone who knows him knows Eddie is a formidable personage in Louisiana, both on the industrial construction scene and in the political realm. He’s taken on tough conservative causes, like school choice and the fight for the St. George incorporation, and as he’s shown he isn’t beaten easily. This will be the first, or at least among the first, of Rispone’s public speaking engagements as a potential gubernatorial candidate, and it’s going to happen right there in Lake Charles.

State senator Sharon Hewitt, who has made a name for herself as perhaps Louisiana’s most prominent up-and-coming conservative senator and whose name is being thrown around for possibilities perhaps even loftier than to succeed John Alario in running the Senate, will also be speaking. Hewitt hails from Slidell at present, but as she tells us she’s actually a Lake Charles girl – she was part of the first four-year graduating class at Barbe High School as it turns out.

And state representative Blake Miguez is, like Hewitt, a conservative rising star. Miguez, from Erath in Vermilion Parish a little east of Lake Charles, has emerged as one of the most outspoken opponents not just to Gov. John Bel Edwards’ tax-raising orgy at the state capitol but also as a defender of our Second Amendment rights. He was one of the stars of the Louisiana Bond Commission’s move to block a pair of anti-gun Wall Street banks from financing state bonds, in a response to Citigroup and Bank of America’s post-Parkland virtue-signaling discrimination against gun buyers, sellers and manufacturers. That isn’t a surprise; Miguez has been a champion sharpshooter long before he ever entered the political realm, and his efforts are going to be key to the conservative movement’s attempts to bring Louisiana a House of Representatives more dedicated to smaller government and economic prosperity in next year’s elections. Miguez’ name has been thrown around a bit as a potential successor to Taylor Barras as House Speaker.

So with a lineup like that, of course folks are interested. That means if you’re in southwest Louisiana and you’ve got next Wednesday evening free, you’d better make plans to join us at the Pioneer Club for the Hayride’s Lake Charles tour stop. Click here to reserve your tickets!