For a long while “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” has been putting off a profile of Elbert Guillory, a former member of the Louisiana State Senate, and today he will provide us with a subject for our 458th original profile. Guillory was originally a Republican, holding a seat in the Louisiana State House from 2004 through 2007, when he switched parties to become a Democrat, but only because he was in a Democratic district, and he hoped no one would notice his actual voting record was still quite conservative. Guillory then made the jump to the Louisiana State Senate in 2009, and in 2013, switched parties again to again become a Democrat. In the 2015 elections, Guillory gave up his seat in the Louisiana State Senate to make a run for Governor of Louisiana, finishing a distant fourth, with only about 8% of the vote.
Upon leaving the Democratic party, Guillory likes to work on behalf of Republicans to perpetuate the myth that Republican policies actually do better by African Americans, by declaring that he was “leaving the plantation”, and that “Democrats are the Party of Jim Crow”. This, of course, fails to recognize the fact that the Southern Democrats who favored Jim Crow left the Democratic Party over the passage of the Civil Rights Act and switched to the same Republican Party that Guillory finds himself in. Y’know, the one whose party platform advocates for strict Voter ID Laws that serve as a 21st Century Jim Crow.
However, you have to keep in mind with Elbert Guillory that his grasp on history isn’t based in reality. I mean, in May 2015, he actually argued in defense of a law on the books in Louisiana that allows teachers to promote Creationism or other unscientific theories as an alternative to teaching evolution by claiming there was a time when scientists thought the world was flat, and when religious people tried telling them it was round, it was the religious people who were burned at the stake for their heretical stance against science.
“There was a time, sir, when scientists thought that the world was flat. And if you get to the end of it, you’d fall off. There was another time when scientists thought that the sun revolved around the world. And they always thought to ensure that anyone who disagreed with their science was a heretic. People were burned for not believing that the world was flat. People were really badly treated.”
Unless Elbert Guillory was born on Bizarro World, I have no idea what his problem is. Maybe it’s just that he’s worried what the voodoo houngans might think. (No, I’m serious when that law for teaching Creationism popped up originally he argued in favor of it by referencing voodoo.)
But back to Elbert Guillory commenting on race… When you’re talking about political discourse in this country being at its most polarized point… Guillory sure does his part. Take his starring in a campaign ad in North Carolina in the 2014 elections to take shots at Sen. Kay Hagan in her bid for re-election where he said that Democrats were “limousine liberals who have become our new overseers”. Or how prior to the 2015 election in Louisiana, when he ran against Kip Holden, a Democrat running for lieutenant governor, running an ad where he just straight up looked in the camera and used the N-Word.
Guillory’s inflammatory racial rhetoric is far from his only controversial issue, as one of his biggest legislative efforts since taking office was to push hard for the legalization of “chicken boxing”, which he insists should not be cast aside because it’s a whole different, classy sport and unrelated cockfighting (the non-sport that’s actually animal abuse). And his passion for chicken boxing got Guillory noticed by Steven Colbert, who ran a segment on him in April of 2014. As recently as January of 2016, Guillory was still putting out videos to attack Democrats that were mired in conservative fantasy-land, including one about how, in Guillory’s warped mind, President Obama is tougher on American gun owners than he is ISIS (last I checked, Wayne LaPierre from the NRA wasn’t the target of a drone strike, so…)
His actual voting record sure makes him look conservative, regardless of if he was a Democrat or Republican at the time, with votes for TRAP laws to try to close down all the abortion clinics in Louisiana, voting to begin drug testing on welfare recipients (still always a failed conservative policy), voting to authorize handguns in churches, and his opposition to same sex marriage.
Now, Elbert Guillory might be a kook, but one thing he’s not is a quitter. And here in the 2016 elections, there’s a lot of shifting going on in Louisiana politics. For one thing, David Vitter is retiring from his U.S. Senate seat (mostly because he’s survived far longer than you’d expect a guy who got caught in the D.C. Madam Scandal and outed as having an infantile fetish would, but he’s got no chance of winning this time). And with that U.S. Senate seat available, Congressman John Fleming has decided to take a crack at getting into the upper chamber of Congress, and will not be running for his seat representing Louisiana’s 4th District in the U.S. House of Representatives. But guess who is? ELBERT GUILLORY. Just when you thought the United States Congress couldn’t get any more bats*** crazy, the GOP have found a way. Let’s just hope that voters in Louisiana’s 4th do their homework and realize they’ve got a certifiable moron on their hands, and don’t rally behind a boob like Guillory.
One Year Ago, March 17th, 2015: Clifton Johnson (NE)