Shooting from the Hip, Aiming for the Head
by Jeremy Alford - Gambit Weekly (excerpt)

By Despite the Legislature's varied incarnations over the years — from "Young Turks" wanting reform (1968) to "Roemeristas" wanting reform (1988) to the Jindalites of today wanting reform — Louisiana lawmakers have consistently approached their sessions with an air that's both cavalier and competitive, righteous and raunchy, even curiously intelligent yet sometimes completely clueless. State government seems to demand a dose of duality (if not hypocrisy) to keep the wheels turning.

As for the new Legislature, it has once more been redundant in all the familiar places. The stripes may be different, but the beast remains the same.

Maybe it's a living testament to the House That Huey Built, with its storied hallways and larger-than-life characters, that Louisiana loves politics-as-theater. Whatever the reason, from the opening gavel to final adjournment, Louisiana lawmakers morph into stand-up comics, old-country philosophers and sometimes even vengeful practitioners of politics. It makes for good drama and certainly helps lubricate the otherwise dry procession of policy debate.

The King of Comedy — When House members bickered during a debate over a set of bills killed by the Senate, Rep. Ernest Wooten, a Republican from Belle Chasse, just couldn't help himself. The former sheriff of Plaquemines Parish, with his country drawl and cowboy swagger, grabbed the microphone from his desk and expressed bewilderment over the treatment House bills were receiving in the Senate, especially after a dozen former House members had moved to the Upper Chamber during the last election cycle. "I didn't realize you could get so dumb so fast," Wooten said.

Off to a Good Start — As long as it didn't affect the outcome of a legislative vote, House members have long been allowed to change their votes after the fact. House Speaker Jim Tucker, a Terrytown Republican, says the practice had come under fire from the media and the public, which is why a rule change was needed to limit vote changes to the same day votes are cast, not weeks later.

Some lawmakers grumbled that their seatmates often vote with their machines when they're out of the chamber, and that sometimes a "wrong" vote is cast. In short, corrections sometimes need to be made, a point both proponents and opponents agreed on. Then Rep. Pat Connick, a freshman Republican from Marrero, made a confession that hopefully doesn't foreshadow the rest of his years in office. "I was actually a victim of that on my very first vote here," he says. "Because, actually, I missed my first vote here."