Posted on 11/07/2003 8:35:44 AM PST by Theodore R.
Blanco says her résumé beats Jindal's
By CHRIS FRINK cfrink@theadvocate.com Capitol news bureau
Lt. Governor Kathleen Blanco has generally avoided controversy during her 20-year political career, which was highlighted by her work with the tourism industry. Lt. Gov. Kathleen Blanco regularly compares her experience in office to the experience Bobby Jindal does -- or does not -- have. Out campaigning, Blanco likes to say that Jindal held a series of short-term political appointments and never left a position better off than how he found it.
By contrast, Blanco says she's earned every position she's held. She's been elected to the Legislature, the Public Service Commission and as lieutenant governor twice. She does not say that she twice left positions herself to take other offices.
In public appearances and in ads, Blanco touts a large increase in the state's tourism industry during her two terms as lieutenant governor. But she says little about her accomplishments in her other two elected positions other than to point out she held them.
Jindal also seldom discusses Blanco's record, so it has not become as big an issue during the campaign as Jindal's record has.
During her 20-year career as an elected official, Blanco generally avoided controversy.
For instance, last year she refused to comment on a proposed pay raise for her and other statewide elected officials. The others said whether they opposed or desired the raise.
The races she's run
Blanco was first elected to the Legislature in 1983. She won a tough re-election fight for her House seat in 1987 then, a year later ran successfully for the Public Service Commission.
Blanco won re-election to a revamped PSC district in 1994 without opposition. Less than a year later, she left the PSC after running a successful campaign for lieutenant governor.
She toyed with running for governor in 1991 and actually jumped into the race for a while in 1995.
Blanco said recently that she sees no contradiction in criticizing Jindal for leaving his jobs running the department of Health and Hospitals and the University of Louisiana system early.
"I felt like I had done the bulk of my work," she said.
The five-member PSC was a step up from the 105-member House, she said.
"I saw a greater opportunity to be one of five as opposed to 105. It would touch more people's lives in a more positive way," she said.
After serving six years on the commission and winning re-election without opposition, Blanco saw another opportunity when then-Lt. Gov. Melinda Schwegmann ran for governor in 1995.
"I just really wanted to be lieutenant governor. I knew what I could do there," she said.
On the PSC, Blanco was a regulator and tired of "getting after people," she said. "I felt it was time to move on."
Now, after eight years as lieutenant governor, "I feel like I've realized my capacity," she said.
Blanco decided to give up what would have been a sure third term to try to move up once again.
"How many times have I heard that I could be lieutenant governor for life?" she said.
Legislative record
During the governor's race, Blanco has not made much of her work as a lawmaker. When she was asked at a recent forum to list her biggest accomplishment in the Legislature, she ignored the question.
Asked recently to list specific things she is proud of during her five-year House career, she cited these highlights:
Setting aside payments from federal offshore oil leases -- called 8g money -- for education. Other lawmakers thought education had enough money, she said.
Passing a bill to "give teachers dignity" by allowing them two personal days off a year they could take without giving school administrators an explanation. Blanco is a former teacher.
Working on the first regulation of day-care centers. "That was a big fight," she said. Legislators compromised by setting up two levels of regulation.
Instituted licensing for drug-abuse counselors. Before that legislation, there was no required training or credentials for those counselors.
Worked with other legislators on economic-development bills that started improving tourism. "That's when the Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism was created," she said. Utility regulation
When Blanco arrived at the PSC, she said, she found an "old-fashioned place."
She was the first woman commissioner and later became the first chairwoman.
The commission met in a cramped basement room, used folding tables and didn't even have microphones.
"She was instrumental in changing to more open meetings," said Lawrence "Tubby" St. Blanc, the PSC's executive secretary. "She pushed hard to get a larger and more formal meeting room."
St. Blanc served as Blanco's staff aide in her early years on the commission and later was hired as the top staff member while Blanco was PSC chairwoman.
Blanco created a task force that revamped the commission's policies and procedures.
In a series of ads near the end of the primary campaign for governor, third-place candidate Attorney General Richard Ieyoub claimed Blanco voted for a series of rate hikes for utility, phone and water company customers.
"That was wrong and misleading," St. Blanc said.
Some of the rate hikes Ieyoub cited never happened, and some were twisted out of context, St. Blanc said.
For instance, Ieyoub cited a Blanco vote for a $37 million hike for Gulf States Utilities. The commission did approve a $37 million rate hike, but only after compromising with the utility after a court ordered a $50 million hike, St. Blanc said.
Blanco also pushed through a discounted rate from the phone companies that allowed public schools and libraries to make telecommunication and Internet connections, he said.
Blanco said that was one of the high points of her tenure on the commission.
"We were the first state in the nation to have all our schools and libraries interconnected," she said. "I only got it on a 3-2 vote. Two of my colleagues thought it was social engineering."
On her initiative, she said, the commission also created a master plan for a statewide fiber-optic network, began a relay system to help deaf people communicate by phone with the hearing world and, for the first time, hired an African-American law firm to work on a case, Blanco said.
Campaign contributions
At Sunday's candidate forum in Shreveport, Jindal asked Blanco if state law should ban regulators from getting campaign contributions from the businesses they regulate.
Blanco first described her ethical history as unblemished, then agreed with Jindal's proposal.
"I'm glad she now agrees with me," Jindal said Monday. "I'd be curious to know what changed her mind."
When she ran for lieutenant governor in 1995, Blanco accepted thousands of dollars in contributions from telephone companies and trucking firms the PSC regulated.
Jindal said later that he doesn't have any evidence that Blanco violated any ethics rules with those contributions. But the state needs to eliminate "the appearance of a conflict of interest," Jindal said. "It doesn't set a good image."
Lieutenant governor role
On the campaign trail, Blanco touts her success as lieutenant governor in boosting the state's tourism industry, which is up $2.5 billion in annual revenues and 21,000 new jobs during the past eight years.
The head of the riverboat casino trade association said his industry deserves credit for much of that increase.
"I'd like to think we had something to do with it," Wade Duty, executive director of the Casino Association of Louisiana, said in a September newspaper story.
Blanco had little involvement with promoting the casinos, he said.
The association represents nine of the 14 riverboats operating in Louisiana.
Since Blanco took office in 1996, two more casino boats are operating and several expanded and built hotels and restaurants.
Blanco said gambling is not a major factor in the rise of the tourism industry. Several new hotels have been built in New Orleans since 1996, she said.
Blanco took some heat in 2000 when the Department of Recreation, Culture and Tourism spent almost $5.7 million to buy Rosedown Plantation, an antebellum home in West Feliciana Parish.
Critics said the state shouldn't spend that kind of money when it could not afford to keep open health clinics or raise teacher pay.
The complaints were "obviously a political ploy," Blanco said at the time.
Rosedown's purchase would pump millions into the Baton Rouge-West Feliciana economy, she said.
Blanco also says in campaign appearances that the cruise ship business in the state tripled during her tenure as the state's top tourism official.
Blanco's???
She fought hard for a larger meeting room at the PSC, huh? Wow, I'm real impressed.
Yes we do need Bobby Jindal in a big way. I have been telling everyone who will listen that he has a specific plan to get from A to B to C. The others just say there needs to be change, but have no plan of getting there. Talk is cheap, we need action.
If true, then wily ol' EWE has certainly lost his touch. Must be all that starchy prison food. :-)
I'm not sure that Edwards could possibly help Blanco. Edwin's political longevity was due to his personality; Kathleen seems to be lacking that particular gift. She may be as nice as can be in person, but thus far her campaign has done nothing to shatter her perceived negatives. You know... distant, boring, hum-drum, always expounding on problems but never suggesting answers. Blanco is blank-o.
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