LACAG: Connick Must Go; Kerner Is An Easy Choice In Senate District 8
Connick represents what is wrong with the Louisiana legislature, and why ordinary Louisiana citizens feel voiceless and forgotten.
What follows is only a representative sample of Connick’s actual votes in the legislature, what he has done, not what he may be telling his voters he has done. As in the case of most politicians who often say one thing to those who elected them while promoting a different agenda in the legislature, there is a massive difference.
After passing comfortably out of the full House in the 2023 regular legislative session, Representative Gabe Firment’s legislation prohibiting ghastly “transgender” genital mutilation and chemical castration procedures on minors (HB 648) was killed in the Senate Health and Welfare Committee due to the deciding vote of infamous RINO Chairman Fred Mills. Mills is termed out, and will not have to face the voters again, which explains his vote.
At that moment if looked like the legislation was dead, and Louisiana would remain the only Southern state that would allow this barbaric practice. It looked like our majority Republican legislature had, once again, betrayed the citizens who elected them, and that nothing could be done about it.
But Louisianans were not having it. Not this time. Not this bill. Not these Louisiana parents and concerned citizens. People from across the state began relentlessly bombarding their senators with demands for an up and down vote in the Senate, whatever procedural wranglings that may require. Thousands of emails and calls later, the Senate got the message. A successful motion was made on the Senate floor to recommit the Bill to the Senate Judiciary Committee for another vote, and a different result.
The motion to recommit was arguably the most important vote on any issue in our state’s history, certainly the most important piece of social legislation. If the motion had failed, Firment’s bill would have died- or rather remained dead- right then and there, and Louisiana would right now be a sanctuary state for the physical desecration of the bodies of innocent minor children.
Senator Patrick Connick did not want Firment’s bill to pass and hoped that the motion to recommit would fail. But he also knew that an outright “no” vote would cause citizens from Jefferson and Plaquemines parish to drive him out of the legislature on a pine rail. So, Connick hedged his bets and simply did not appear for the vote at all, surely hoping that enough of his colleagues would follow his lead and hide out somewhere during the vote.
Fortunately, this was a bridge too far even for other committed senate RINOs. The legislation was just too important. Connick was the only Republican Senator self-assured enough to believe he could avoid this vote and survive the aftermath.
Apart from Mills, Connick was the only Republican Senator who did not vote in favor of the motion to recommit.
Connick clearly had more important things to do than register his support in a critical record vote to salvage the most consequential social legislation in Louisiana history. Shame on him. This act alone should cause voters serious hesitation about voting to re-elect him.
But this is far from all. There is not enough room in this space to cover all the times when Connick’s votes have betrayed the interests of the voters who elected him, who trusted him to look out for them, to keep faith with them. But some are so egregious that they bear particular mention.
Connick was one of only two legislators, and the only Republican, to vote against legislation to prohibit registered sex offenders from owning or operating childhood learning centers in Louisiana. (HB 557).
Connick was the only Republican in the Senate to be absent for critical legislation to prohibit the Chinese government, and other sworn enemies of the United States, from acquiring agricultural property in the interior of our State. Connick’s absence contributed to the Senate’s failure to override the Governor’s veto by three votes in the Senate. (HB 125).
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When both the state and federal governments, and virtually every agency of each, were pressuring employers to require the experimental covid shot, Connick voted against legislation to protect employers from lawsuits and discrimination for refusing to mandate it on their employees. (HB 103). Connick also voted against requiring public notice of vaccine exemption rights, and voted against prohibiting, once and for all, mandating the experimental covid shot on public and private school students in Louisiana. (HB 399, HB 182).
In what one legislator described as a money grab for big box pharmacies, Connick voted to allow pharmacists to administer any vaccine to Louisiana children from age 7 and older without a doctor’s prescription, and with no requirement that the pharmacy be aware of the child’s documented medical history. (HB 471)
Connick twice voted against, and worked to kill, legislation to join multiple other states in allowing law abiding Louisiana citizens to conceal carry. Connick stood against the Second Amendment right of Louisiana citizens to keep and bear arms without unconstitutional government conditions or restrictions. (SB 118, HB 37).
Connick voted to exceed the cap on taxpayer spending approved by Louisiana citizens. At a time of unprecedented waste of taxpayer money by state government, Connick disregarded the will of hard-working Louisiana taxpayers by voting to allow the spending of many billions more. (SCR 3).
Connick has voted to raise taxes on Louisiana citizens, including the massive sales tax increase in 2018, and others. (HB 10, SB 225, SB 227).
And, it must always be remembered, Connick did absolutely nothing to assist conservative legislators in challenging the Governor’s draconian covid lockdowns in 2020 that caused immeasurable suffering to citizens across the state, from failed businesses to increased suicides to protracted separation of families from their elderly loved ones. When leadership was desperately needed to relieve the suffering of or our people, and to get Louisiana moving again, Connick surrendered to the Governor and whatever special interest groups to which he is beholden.
Louisiana citizens, and specifically Jefferson and Plaquemines Parish voters, have a golden opportunity on October 14 to take a major step in returning our legislature to the people. The contrast between Connick and his challenger, Timothy Kerner, Jr., could not be any more stark. Kerner is broadly respected as the Mayor of Lafitte, La and has been described as a real man of the people and a problem solver, somebody who understands the frustrations of the ordinary citizen and the enormity of the challenges our legislature faces in rebuilding their trust. Kerner has launched an effective campaign to take Connick out, and his campaign is resonating broadly. It is worth tuning into Kerner’s recent interview on The State of Freedom Podcast. It is impressive. Podcast | The State of Freedom (freedomstate.us)
People are ready for a change, and Kerner represents that change in Senate District 8. His victory cannot come soon enough.
J. Christopher Alexander
Louisiana Citizen Advocacy Group
www.lacag.org
