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Mayor Potemkinand Representative Shameless

POLITICIANS OF ALL STRIPES LOVE TO TAKE

CREDIT when good things happen, regardless of whether they played a significant role in making those things transpire. In fact, when it comes to taking undeserved bows, there is no partisan divide. Two recent developments in the Louisiana Legislature prove my point.

In the first instance, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell disingenuously took credit for a Senate committee vote advancing House Bill 652, which gives the City Council oversight of the Sewerage and Water Board’s long-troubled billing system — just weeks after she blasted the measure as a “direct attack” on the board’s leadership. Herroner is president of the S&WB.

In another display of shameless hypocrisy, Republican state Rep. Alan Seabaugh of Shreveport cast himself as the voice of reason for helping sideline fellow GOP Rep. Danny McCormick’s HB 813, which would have subjected women who get abortions to murder charges — after voting “absolutely” for the bill in committee the week before.

Cantrell and Seabaugh may not see eye to eye philosophically, but when it comes to intellectual dishonesty, they’re two peas in a pod.

No one from the Cantrell administration commented on HB 652 when the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee met to discuss it. That didn’t stop Cantrell from taking a victory lap when the committee amended and then advanced the bill. She then had the audacity to try to fundraise off her Potemkin victory in the same email blast announcing her team’s great “win-win.”

One might wonder if Cantrell knows that the amendments allow creation of a seven-member “working group” to review proposed changes to S&WB billing practices. Cantrell will name only two members of the group; the council will name the other five. Not even Grigory Potemkin would call that a “victory.”

Not to be outdone, Seabaugh recently accepted laurels from the press and hugs from his colleagues after posing as a moderating influence when he helped orchestrate the demise of McCormick’s draconian HB 813. The measure brought national opprobrium upon Louisiana when the House Civil Law and Procedure Committee advanced the measure to the floor. Seabaugh was among the seven Republican men who voted to advance the bill — only to falsely say days later that he didn’t realize it was patently unconstitutional.

He then pretended to take the high road in helping sideline the bill — all without having to record a vote “against” an anti-abortion bill. That’s what really mattered.

That Seabaugh lied when he denied knowing of HB 813’s constitutional defects is easily proved. The record of the committee hearing plainly shows that chairman Joe Marino, NP-Gretna and, like Seabaugh, a lawyer, pointedly identified specific provisions in McCormick’s bill that would never pass constitutional muster.

Unlike Seabaugh, Marino had the guts and the integrity to vote against HB 813, which was so offensive that even after its demise it still cost New Orleans the lucrative 2023 annual meeting of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Mayor Potemkin and Representative Shameless — two peas in a pod.

PHOTO BY CHRIS GR ANGER / THE TIME S-PICAYUNE New Orleans Mayor LaToyaCantrell.