LOUISIANA’S KENNEDY IN THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE?

Monday, September 28^th, 2026

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

LOUISIANA’S KENNEDY IN THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE?

The next election for president is two years away, but there are candidates in both parties who are positioning themselves for a possible run. A new candidate on the list, and a guy from Louisiana, is current U.S. Senator John Kennedy , who is 74. When asked about his interest in the nation’s top office, Kennedy did not shy away from a retort.  He promptly responded with the title of a 1984 country hit by the Judd family: “Why not me?”

If you haven’t followed the Senator’s recent activities, he’s visited the early primary states of both Iowa and South Carolina to raise money for other Republicans.  His book about Washington’s dysfunction was on the New York Times best-selling list for several months. And he has a campaign fund approaching $20 million. Kennedy was quoted in a recent interview of saying: “if I get tired of this place (the Senate), and/or if a bunch of goobers run for president, then I reserve the right to run.” I’m not sure what he meant by being a goober, but I’m sure he will tell us with his sense of humor.

Kennedy is one of the number of Louisiana politicos who has considered a run for national office.  The only Louisianan who was ever elected president was Zachary Taylor back in 1849. Huey Long was considered to be a serious candidate running against President Franklin Roosevelt in 1936. His plans were derailed when he was assassinated at the Louisiana State Capitol.

Gov. John McKeithen made a run for national office in 1968. He was rumored to be a front runner to join Vice President Hubert Humphrey on the Democratic ticket. At the last minute, Humphrey passed on McKeithen and picked Senator Edmund Muskie from Maine.

In more recent times, Gov. Buddy Roemer ran a respectable race in the 2012 Republican primary, but refused any contribution over one hundred dollars and was not able to keep up with the more well-funded candidates. And who can forget Bobby Jindal’s quixotic presidential race in 2016 when he quickly crashed and burned after ignoring the home folks back in the Bayou State?

In 1978, Gov. Edwin Edwards was at the height of his popularity. He had been easily re-elected to a second term two years earlier. With the price of natural gas and oil continuing to rise, the coffers of the state treasury were filled, and Governor Edwards faced little controversy. Candidates for office in the 1978 and 1979 elections eagerly sought his endorsement.  

As his second term was winding down, he was obviously looking for new challenges. The Governor and I made a joint appearance in north Louisiana early in 1978, then flew back to Baton Rouge together on the state plane. I was reading a book my father had given me, Marathon, The Pursuit of the Presidency 1972-1976, by Jules Witcover.

The book presented an account of the 1976 presidential election and went into great detail as to how Jimmy Carter rose from being a little-known Southern governor to getting elected President of the United States. The Governor noticed the book, and I gave him a brief description of the author's explanation showing Carter's effort in putting together a Georgia campaign team that was able to capture the Democratic nomination. 

About a week later, I was at my home in Ferriday when the phone rang one evening just before midnight. It was the Governor. "Do you still have that book about Carter getting elected President?" Edwards asked. "Why?" I said. "Are you planning on doing the same thing and challenging him?" Edwards laughed and told me he was interested in some bedtime reading. "If Jimmy Carter could pull it off, I would think that I certainly could," he said. Thirty minutes later, a state trooper arrived at my home to pick up the book.

.The Governor's wife, Elaine, publicly supported Carter’s opponent, Gerald Ford, for President in 1976. President Carter's popularity was at a low ebb in 1979 as Edwin Edwards considered his future plans. Possible presidential ambitions seemed to be under consideration by the Governor. 

The following month, news reports circulated that the Governor's wife Elaine had accepted a $10,000 gift from South Korean businessman Tongsun Park. The bad publicity derailed any talk of a run by Edwards for higher office.

About three weeks later, the book came back to me in the mail. It had been my intention for the Governor to keep it. There was no note attached, and he never mentioned the book or the presidency to me again.

So does Senator John Kennedy have a serious chance of getting the republican nomination? Right now, the race is wide open and anyone’s guess.

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the nation and on websites worldwide.  You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownla.com.

 

 

 

LOUISIANA AND FLORIDA- A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE ON OIL!

Monday, September 21^st, 2026

Baton  Rouge, Louisiana

 

LOUISIANA AND FLORIDA-

A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE ON OIL!

 

 The price of a gallon of gas is off the charts across America.  Even here in Louisiana, the price of gasoline is approaching four dollars a gallon. As you can imagine, there justifiably is lots of complaining. So what to  do? An obvious place to begin in order to lower the price? More domestic production.  More drilling off our coast. Heads began shaking, or I received blank stares. “Drill off our coast? Have all that pollution and major oil spills?  No way!”  I’ve heard these sentiments repeatedly.

 

Marine researcher Humberto Fontova did a major study of oil production and its environmental effects on Louisiana coastal waters and here is what he found.  For fear of oil spills, the U.S. Federal government and various states ban drilling in thousands of square miles off the U.S. Coast. These areas, primarily on the Outer Continental Shelf, hold an estimated 115 billion barrels of oil and 633 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. This leaves America‘s energy needs increasingly at the mercy of foreign autocrats, despots and maniacs.

 

Of the roughly 3,700 offshore oil production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, some 3,200 lie off the Louisiana coast. Yet Louisiana produces one-third of America‘s commercial fisheries and no major oil spill has ever soiled its coast.

On the other hand, Florida, which zealously prohibits offshore oil drilling, had its gorgeous “Emerald Coast” panhandle beaches soiled by an ugly oil spill in 1976. This spill, as almost all oil spills, resulted from the transportation of oil,  not from the extraction of oil. But forget cheaper oil and less pollution for a second. All fishermen and scuba divers out there should plead with their states to open up offshore oil drilling posthaste because of the t fabulous fishing and the explosion of marine life that accompanies the erection of offshore oil platforms.

 

The original plan, mandated by federal environmental “experts” back in the late ’40s, was to remove the big, ugly, polluting, environmentally hazardous contraptions as soon as they stopped producing. Fine, said the oil companies.

About 15 years ago some wells played out off Louisiana and the oil companies tried to comply. Their ears are still ringing from the clamor fishermen put up. Turns out those platforms are going nowhere, and by popular demand of those with a bigger stake in the marine environment than any “environmentalist.”

Every “environmental” superstition against these structures was turned on its head. Marine life had exploded around these huge artificial reefs: A study by LSU’s Sea Grant college showed that 85 percent of Louisiana fishing trips involve fishing around these platforms. The same study showed that there’s 50 times more marine life around  rigs and pipelines in any given year.

The Flower Garden coral reefs lie off the Louisiana-Texas border. Unlike any of the Florida Keys reefs, they’re surrounded by dozens of offshore oil platforms.

These wells have been pumping away for the past 50 years. Yet according to G.P. Schmahl, a Federal biologist who worked for decades in both places, “The Flower Gardens are much healthier, more pristine off the Louisiana coast than anything in the Florida Keys. It was a surprise to me,” he admits. “And I think it’s a surprise to most people.”

“A key measure of the health of a reef is the amount of area taken up by coral,” according to a report by Steve Gittings, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s science coordinator for marine sanctuaries. “Louisiana‘s Flower Garden boasts nearly 50 percent coral cover. In the Florida Keys it can run as little as 5 percent.”

Most of the red snapper you eat in Florida restaurants are caught around Louisiana‘s oil platforms. We see the Florida-registered boats tied up to them constantly. Sometimes us locals can barely squeeze in.

 

So here is the bottom line. We can see the price of gasoline continue to rise, and realistically reach five dollars a gallon or more  And we can stand by as the amount of fishing along the Gulf continues to diminish.  Or the nation can follow Louisiana‘s lead, reduce the price of gasoline, continue an abundance of quality fishing, and dramatically reduce our oil dependence from countries of questionable allegiance. Congress needs o step in.

 

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the nation and on websites worldwide.  You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownla.com.

 

 

 

A LACK OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE IN LOUISIANA!

Monday, September 14^th, 2026

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

 

A  LACK OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE IN LOUISIANA!

A good part of the nation was mesmerized recently over the six-week long Lindsey Clancy murder trial. You will recall that Clancy faced charges for the 2023 deaths of her three children. Her defense argued she suffered from severe postpartum psychosis. The prosecution argued she acted with criminal intent. 

The jury had reached an 11–1 consensus, but could not convince the holdout juror.  Her defense attorneys and numerous supporters called for the holdout juror to be kicked off the jury. The judge, for good reasoning, refused, saying it would be judicially improper and even unconstitutional not to call for a 12-person jury to convict. That’s how the law is determined and enforced in states all over America. WELL, EXCEPT ONE!  And I’m sure you can guess the one outlier state that often operates in the dark ages. That’s us folks, right here in Louisiana.

One of the most outrageous examples of judicial misconduct here in the Bayou State took place in the casino trial of former Governor Edwin Edwards.  The now notorious member of the Edwards jury, juror number 68, was removed for apparently, according to the Times Picayune, being particularly attentive throughout the trial and taking copious notes. From his questions, it seemed that juror 68 was leaning towards acquittal of the governor.

The judge in the case, one Frank Polozola, seemed harshly against Edwards and the other defendants throughout the trial. But no one thought the judge would go as far as removing a juror in the case. The reaction of the Edwards attorney was outlined in detail in Leo Honeycutt’s award-winning biography of Edwin Edwards.

“Red with anger himself, Edwards Attorney Jim Cole jumped from his chair, yelling at Judge Polozola. With the extraordinary actions of a federal judge who had unethically taken the case out of rotation, showing bias that everyone in the community saw, for that Judge to then chop a juror favorable to the defense and reduce the jury below the mandated by the United States Constitution, Cole had lost all respect for this federal judge. Edwards knew Polozola was engineering the verdict.”

Criticism of Polozola’s decision rang out across the legal community. LSU law professor Stewart Green said, "This is a bombshell. It is highly unusual. The jury is really supposed to be his own independent body.”  Former U.S. Attorney Harry Rosenthal said Polozola was on thin ice. “The danger is that the message sent to the other members of the jury is not subtle.” Lawbook Professor Lawrence Smith called Polozola’s actions “unprecedented. I’ve never heard of this before.”

Judges are supposed to be neutral. Like referees, they are supposed to interpret the law and do it fairly. After Edwards was convicted, the federal guidelines recommended a sentence of five years in prison. Polozola gave Edwards 10 years. Former Louisiana Governor Dave Treen, a Republican who was defeated in his re-election efforts by Edwards, had this to say about Polozola’s sentence. “Judge Polozola doubled Edwards sentence purely out of vindictiveness. He didn’t like him. That’s not a good reason to double someone’s sentence and I believe, a misuse of power. The trial was certainly dubious.”

So the judge in the Massachusetts trial of Lindsey Clancy got it right. The jury could not reach a consensus. It should take 12 jurors to convict unless there are some extremely detrimental reasons, like health problems of one of the jurors or a juror who seems completely out of control. None of this existed in the Edwards trial. Like Governor Treen said, the judge just didn’t like him. And that’s a poor commentary on unjust verdicts that are found too often in Louisiana,

William Faulkner summed it up well. “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Louisiana’s terrible history of criminal injustice is still with us today.

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the nation and on websites worldwide.  You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownla.com.

 

 

 

 

 

VOTING IN PERSON CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE!

Monday, September 7^th, 2026

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

 

Will elections ever be the same? From coast to coast, there is a great deal of controversy over mail-in ballots as well as absentee voting.  According to some projections, as many as 50% of voters will cast mail-in ballots.  And these ballots take a long time to count. A number of states don’t even begin ballot counting until election day. The ballots have to be verified, including signature comparisons. It could be weeks before final results are known in a number of states.

And the ballot counting process gets worse. Tardy ballots can be counted up to eight days after the election in North Carolina and five other states. And get this!  A state judge in Michigan has recently ruled that mail in ballots there must be counted if they arrive by mail as much as fourteen days after election day.  Even ballots without postmarks have to be counted.  Early voting in Louisiana begins on November 2nd and runs for two weeks. But the ballots are not tabulated until election day.

 

There is a disturbing trend in a number of states to rewriting the election rules, causing havoc for elections officials to conduct orderly and fair ballot counting. Whatever happened to just going to the polls on election day and casting your ballot?  The President is calling for major changes that limit absentee voting by mail.  He still declares that mail voting fraud cost him the 2020 Presidential election.

Remember in earlier times how we gathered up our families and drove to our local school or public building to vote? There were blown up copies of the ballot on an outside wall to look over all the choices.  Many of us would take our kids or grandkids into the polling location, legal in most states, to show them just how democracy works.

Let me share with you how difficult it used to be for me to vote in Louisiana when I served as Secretary of State, a job that included being the state’s chief elections officer.  My hometown was Ferriday, Louisiana, which is about a 2-hour drive from the state capital in Baton Rouge.  The law at that time did not allow for absentee voting if the voter was in the state on Election Day.  But my job required that my office be open and that I be present to oversee the elections that were scheduled throughout the state. What was a conflicted public servant to do?

Each election day, I would rise at 3:30 am and head from my home in Baton Rouge to Ferriday.  My first stop was the local donut shop in Ferriday to pick up several boxes of hot donuts for the polling commissioners who were all old friends.  Then it was off to my polling location (ward 1, precinct 1) and I was waiting at the door at 6:00 am when the polls opened.  A quick visit, the casting of my vote, then hightailing it back to the state capitol to oversee the Election Day activities.  Now that, I think you will agree, is a major effort to cast a vote.

As a former election official, I certainly understand that some people, due to health concerns or having to travel out of the state, cannot vote in person on Election Day. But those who do venture out to the polls to cast a vote in this consequential election will be doing elections officials, the system and themselves a big favor by voting in person if it’s at all possible.  Such an effort would go a long way to reduce the potential chaos that could keep the outcome uncertain for weeks after Election Day.

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the nation and on websites worldwide.  You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownla.com.