GOP Majority Impact (Landrieu, Leach, No Comment!)
by WILL SENTELL - Advocate (excerpt)

The switch happened on Feb. 19 when Republican Jonathan Perry, of Abbeville, edged Democrat Nathan Granger to fill a state Senate vacancy. Perry’s win means state Republicans now have a 20-19 edge in the Louisiana Senate, the first such advantage in modern times. The Louisiana House turned majority Republican in December, mostly through a series of party defections that ended a majority Democrats had enjoyed since Reconstruction as well. “Obviously it is historic,” state GOP Chairman Roger Villere said of the Senate changeover. “It shows where the state is leaning,” Villere added.

In 1976, Democrats held a 38-1 advantage in the Senate. In 2000, Democrats filled 26 of the Senate’s 39 seats. Republicans now hold every statewide office, six of seven congressional seats and one of two U.S. Senate posts. “So this outright majority in the state Senate is sort of the latest big line that we have crossed in a positive way,” said U.S. Sen. David Vitter, R-La. and a former state House member himself. Vitter also bristled at the notion that gaining a GOP majority in the state Senate is a mostly symbolic victory. “I think it is a major, historic trend and breakthrough,” he said. “To call it symbolic is way undershooting the mark.”

A spokesman for U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., did not respond to e-mail requests for comment. State Democratic Party Chairman Buddy Leach, through a spokesman, also did not respond to an e-mail request for comment.