Republicans today are celebrating a triumph of their minority outreach efforts.
Party Switch Gives Louisiana First Black Republican Since Reconstruction
It takes a lot of courage for a black politician to rebuff the Democratic party, which has controlled upward of the 90 percent of the black vote in recent years. Louder applause, then, for Louisiana state senator Elbert Guillory, who switched parties on May 31, becoming the first black Republican in the Louisiana legislature since Reconstruction.
OK, but ACTUALLY:
Guillory was a registered Republican and was even serving on the Republican state central committee [in 2007] when he switched his party to Democrat and ran for office. Guillory says fundamental differences with the Bush administration drove him to switch, but it was also politically expedient for anyone running in the heavily Democratic district.
That
same source reports:
Guillory’s brief tenure as director of the Human Rights Department for the city of Seattle in the early 1980s. The Seattle Post Intelligencer reported that a little more than a year into the job, Guillory was suspended without pay and then resigned after he was charged with five counts of violating the city’s ethics code. An ethics probe found that Guillory had awarded a $9,999 contract (just below the $10,000 threshold requiring a contract be publicly bid) to his soon-to-be wife, signed off on payment for work on the contract that was never done, billed the city for two weeks of work while he was honeymooning in Tahiti (although he had no vacation time), and allowed an employee to bill the city for time spent driving Guillory’s car cross-country from his former residence in Baltimore, Md. The complaints were all filed with the ethics board, but a settlement was reached before an official hearing was held.
But wait, there is more:
In 2002, he was reprimanded by the Louisiana Attorney Disciplinary Board for notarizing a succession document for his client, former Opelousas Police Chief Larry Caillier, in which some of the signatures had apparently been forged and not witnessed by Guillory. Guillory then admitted to mistakenly relying on the word of his client that the signatures were valid.
And I've saved
the best for last:
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal says he has no problem with creationism being taught in the state’s public schools.
In an April interview with NBC News, Jindal noted that he signed a law in 2008 allowing teachers to bring their own materials into biology classes.
“We have what’s called the [Louisiana] Science Education Act that says that if a teacher wants to supplement those materials, if the school board is okay with that…they can supplement those materials,” Jindal said.
...
The Religious Right’s influence over Jindal and the state legislature is making it difficult to bring sound science education to the state. Early last month, the Education Committee of the Louisiana Senate voted 3-2 to table a measure to repeal the Science Act.
During the debate, one senator, Elbert Guillory (D-Opelousas), told a story about how he found relief from an unspecified ailment, apparently by visiting some type of voodoo practitioner. Guillory said that experience makes him reluctant to “lock the door on being able to view ideas from many places, concepts from many cultures.”
That should go down well.
Congratulations to the Republican Party. Your outreach efforts are working great. I am very, very afraid of the upcoming elections.
10:11 AM PT: Update:
Slate has video!
During this year’s state Senate hearing to repeal LSEA, Guillory explained that he wouldn’t want to keep the “science” behind an experience he had with a witch doctor—who “wore no shoes, was semi-clothed, used a lot of bones that he threw around”—out of a public school science classroom.
Update:
Wow, this guy is quite a catch.
Here's a nice piece catching him bragging about all the hard work he's been doing...introducing a bill written for him by ALEC.
Sen. Elbert Guillory: Arrogant and blatantly self-serving but delightfully tacky in promoting his ‘hard work’ sans ALEC