How to get more people to run for office in Louisiana

How many of those “unopposed” elections were ones where lawyers went full Chicago and got people DQed from running?


There were quite a few of those this cycle.

I can’t afford to quit my job to be a state senator. That’s the boat most people are in.

Most can’t afford to run for office.

You figure you’re required to be in session from April-June, sometimes longer every year. Unless you own a business or come from money, this isn’t feasible for most.

A legislator not seeking reelection proposed legislation this past session to make these offices more attractive, increasing pay to around $60k/ year. It was voted down (wonder why).

I also think people shy away from running because of the system that’s in place. If you’re not already in, it’s hard to get in. And then once you’re in, good luck getting anything accomplished without making backroom deals & all the sleaziness that goes with LA politics. Look at Richard Nelson, dude had a great vision and ideas and nobody gave him the time of day. Look at the chick that just resigned from EBR school board, she got in and realized she stood no chance.

The whole state just needs to be blown up & start over.

quote:

---

I can’t afford to quit my job to be a state senator. That’s the boat most people are in.

---

And yet, any attempt to raise salaries for legislators is completely attacked.

quote:

---

So, ban contributions in a corporate name.

---

The only thing you can do is control the actual, official campaign. If me and several friends want to chip in and buy a billboard promoting someone because we like their 2nd Amendment stance, how do you control that? We're not part of their campaign, they didn't ask us to do it, we're just single issue voters and we want people like them elected. You want laws that prohibit that?

There’s several issues that need to be addressed to allow more people the opportunity to run for office:

1. Elections are expensive. It costs $300k to run a successful campaign for a district judgeship. That’s almost as much as that job will pay over the course of the term. That means people have to fund raise to win and are reliant upon pleasing their donors. Social media ad buys, tv/radio commercials, mailers, billboards, and yard signs are all expensive, and often prove decisive in winning or losing. Making winning a potential election significantly less expensive would make running for office much easier for regular people.

2. Most adults are barred from running for public office or would have to go on unpaid leave from their jobs in order to run. Convicted felons cannot run for office. People who work for the government (including teachers, bureaucrats, and even the guy who mows the grass in the ditch) cannot run for office without either resigning from their jobs or taking an unpaid leave of absence between the time of qualifying and the election. Qualifying is usually in July for general elections in October with a runoff in November. That means all of those people would have to give up their primary income for 3-4 months just to RUN for office. That’s not just the legislature or governor, but ANY elected office, including unpaid positions or part time positions. If they win, they have to resign entirely, as they cannot hold both an elected position (say city councilman) and a public job (public school teacher).

3. A ton of elected jobs don’t pay full-time wages, but require full-time attention for large stretches of time. Legislators get less than $20k/year to be in the legislature, which most of the year is a part-time job. However, from April through June (and often July), it’s a full time job with extensive hours. It’s virtually impossible to have a job and be a legislator during the legislative session. This means one has to have a lot of flexibility in their career in order to allow to take off several months every year to go to Baton Rouge and still have a job that pays a living wage to return to after the session. As a result, most members of the legislature are either retired, attorneys, or own their own businesses (often real estate, insurance, or a doctor’s clinic) because they have the flexibility to have their job and leave it for months at a time.

4. The full time elected jobs that pay enough for one to live on are very difficult to win. You can live as an assessor, sheriff, mayor, parish president, ag, lt gov, psc, judge, da, etc, but to do so, you’ve got to win. In a small parish, elections might be easier because so many people know one-another, but as you get into larger parishes and towns, the more people you need to convince gets high enough that those jobs become prohibitively expensive to obtain. In order to get there, you would have needed to establish yourself in stepping stone positions (like parish council or legislator) that don’t pay enough to be a full time job.

5. Campaigns are brutal on your social life and dangerous to your safety due to entrenched political power. It is an unwritten rule that there are some incumbents you simply don’t run against because people in those positions have the power to f$&k you and your family’s lives unilaterally without consequences. As a result, sheriffs, DA’s, judges, and assessors tend to always get re-elected unopposed. What happens when people do run against them? Their houses suddenly get reassessed to double their taxes, they get audited, the HOA starts fining them for frivolous things, law suits against their businesses (and family’s businesses) start popping up, sexual assault claims appear out of nowhere, family members get arrested on trumped up charges, people die in mysterious single car accidents, etc. This shite is real. The corruption is real. The murders of political opponents and their families is REAL. Even running against less powerful incombents means every potential wrong doing someone has ever done in their life will come out. Outright lies will be spread, rumors will circulate. Either one will win or they’ll lose, and likely completely lose their social standing in the process.

We have to lower these “costs” of running for office or up the potential “rewards” in order to attract better candidates.

quote:

---

Again it would be a start. No, I don't think you can ban what you describe.

---

And how is that not suppressing political speech? Or do you just not care that it does that?

Like everything else, it's a much more long term issue than it seems.

Increasingly poorly educated electorate understanding less and less about our state and the function and relationship between local/state/federal governments leads to them parroting whatever medium they consume, rather than understanding ideas and drawing their own conclusions. This is a game Jeff Landry has played perfectly.

Because cable news is the only news they consume, they're under the assumption that those problems are our problems, and that leads to an apathy to change things by those who understand government, and the educated either leave or don't run for things to avoid having to pander to a lowest common denominator.

And Billy Nungesser didn't run for governor because he didn't want to drag his family through this shxt political environment. Not too many Republicans I could get behind but he coulda maybe been one of them.