Leadership and Crisis (19 page)

One of the most famous examples occurred in 1991, when our race for governor came down to a battle between Edwin Edwards, a former congressman and governor famous for his corruption scandals and gambling debts, and David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan. That was like having a choice between being shot or stabbed—either way, it’s not going to turn out well. Much of the country was transfixed by this weird campaign, which produced unusual slogans like the pro-Edwards motto, “Vote for the Crook, It’s Important.” In the end, a majority of folks did just that. Edwards returned to the governor’s mansion, served out his term, and a few years later was sentenced to ten years in prison on corruption-related charges.

More recently, another Louisiana politician grabbed national headlines for corruption. Bill Jefferson, a man whom I served alongside in Congress and whose congressional district was adjacent to mine, was convicted of taking bribes after the authorities found $90,000 hidden in his freezer. He gave new meaning to the term “cold hard cash.”

And remember, for every high-profile case like Edwards or Jefferson, there are many more local corruption stories that don’t get a lot of attention outside Louisiana. In February 2010, former state senator Derrick Shepherd was sentenced to three years in jail for money laundering. Worse still, three of our last four insurance commissioners ended up in prison.

I sure don’t have room here to cover the whole history of Louisiana’s colorful politicians. But I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the grand-daddy of them all, the Kingfish, the one, the only, Governor and Senator Huey Long. This guy takes the cake ... and Lord knows what else.

In addition to being a tremendously talented politician and what many call a socialist, Huey Long wrote the book on patronage, packing the state government with his own network of political supporters. Offended by his corruption, cronyism, and his efforts to begin taxing refined oil to pay for his social programs, the state Legislature in 1929 moved to impeach Huey on eight charges, including bribery, seeking to intimidate the press, and misuse of state funds.
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When news of the plan to impeach the governor leaked out, Long’s handpicked Speaker of the House quickly moved to adjourn the session. After that, a massive fistfight broke out on the House floor, an event known as “Bloody Monday.” (It was a fitting name, in light of reports that some legislators used brass knuckles.) It wasn’t one of our state’s better moments, but hey, at least it was before YouTube was invented.
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The House eventually did impeach the “Kingfish,” but he stopped the effort in the state Senate by convincing fifteen senators (just one more than he needed) to sign a statement vowing they would not vote to convict Long regardless of any evidence.

Having grown tired of endless critical news stories, Long founded his own newspaper in 1930,
Louisiana Progress
, which he used to trumpet his achievements and to trash his opponents. Companies receiving state contracts were expected to buy ads in the paper, and Long even tried to pass a law forbidding the publication of “slanderous material”—in other words, negative stories about him. (My staff has repeatedly suggested I try the same thing, but so far I’ve managed to fight them off.)

As colorful a politician as Huey Long was, my favorite Louisiana character is Huey’s brother, Earl Long. Serving multiple terms as governor, Earl became famous for carrying on a multi-year affair
with a stripper, Blaze Starr. Less well-known is that Earl Long, while serving as governor, was involuntarily confined to a mental hospital. His wife, the first lady known as Miz Blanche, is said to have played a major part in having the governor committed—owing in part to his ongoing affair with the stripper.

But the story gets better. Nothing in Louisiana law required Earl to step down as governor, so he ran the state by phone from the mental hospital. He fired the head of the state hospital system and replaced him with one of his own political supporters. Long was then immediately diagnosed as having no mental illness and later released from the hospital. He began wearing a large button that read, “I’m not crazy.”

You just could not make this stuff up. And if you did, no one would believe it. I know many people who fervently insist most politicians should be committed to mental hospitals. Imagine how chagrined they would be to learn that, in Louisiana at least, even that will not stop a politician.

So it was against this backdrop of bribes, cronyism, strippers, fist-fights, and mental institutions that I pledged right after being elected in 2007 to try to be Louisiana’s most effective and most boring governor of all time. My wife immediately told me that I would have no trouble with the boring part.

To be fair, Louisiana does not have a monopoly on government corruption. I saw for myself that Washington, D.C., has its share—and then some. I served in Congress at the tail end of the Republican revolution that began in 1994 when the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives for the first time in over forty years. By the time I got there in 2005, the revolution was running on fumes. The
new thinking and idealism that had fueled the Republican renaissance had given way to a desperate attempt to amass and retain power. This led to a series of ethical lapses by congressmen—not strictly Republicans, but plenty of Republicans for sure.

The party that had a decade earlier stormed into Washington to change it had become changed by it. Of course these are generalities, and they don’t apply to everyone, but they do apply to far too many. And the Republican Party was much too slow to condemn their own. You can’t slam the other party when one of their guys breaks the rules and turn a blind eye when one of yours does it. The public sees that for what it is: hypocrisy.

Ethical lapses were not the only reason Republicans lost control of Congress, but they played a big part. In my short three years in the House we saw one of our own, Duke Cunningham, nailed for taking bribes from defense contractors. Another Republican, Bob Ney, pled guilty to corruption charges. And Republican Mark Foley was discovered to have been sexually harassing male high school students in the House page program.

Of course, with 435 members of the House and 100 members of the Senate, you’re always going to have a few bad apples. And with all the temptations of power in Congress, corrupt people, shall we say, will always be well-represented there. But the key issue is how seriously we try to prevent corruption, and how we deal with it when it’s discovered. Personally, I’m for throwing the book at elected leaders who cheat, steal, enrich themselves, and otherwise exploit their position for personal gain.

I had made fighting corruption a centerpiece of my 2003 campaign for governor, and I stressed the issue again in my successful 2007 campaign. The problem in Louisiana has not only been that elected
officials were breaking the rules, but that the rules were too lax. This created what I would call systemic corruption, otherwise known as business as usual.

Cleaning up corruption in our state is not just some do-gooder crusade. There is also a tangible benefit: jobs. People don’t want to invest their money or start companies in a state they don’t trust. For years, companies have admired Louisiana’s workforce, climate, natural beauty, and plentiful energy resources, but have been chased away by fears they would not get a fair shake or that they would be subject to a shakedown. In a 2004 Louisiana State University survey, 945 out-of-state business CEOs were asked what could be done to make Louisiana more business friendly; eradicating corruption was tied as the top recommendation.

During my 2007 campaign, I introduced a detailed plan for ethics reform based on five pillars.

1.
You cannot be both a lobbyist and a legislator.

Our state has a part-time Legislature that sits in session less than one-quarter of each year. Over the years too many legislators had been allowed to augment their income by working as lobbyists or as “consultants” for lobbying firms. In my view, this was an inherent conflict of interest that cost us business and hurt our reputation.

2.
Legislators should be required to submit to financial disclosure.

The best way to prevent corruption is to mandate transparency. Statewide elected officials in Louisiana were required to submit financial disclosure forms, but legislators, local officials, and other state appointees were not. Some complained they would not serve if they had to fully disclose their income, assets, and debts. I responded that they should not let the door hit them on the way out. You can now go online and see full disclosure for these officials.

3.
You cannot serve in government and do business with the government at the same time
.

It had become routine for legislators or their family members to own or be part owners of businesses that work for the government. In my view, you can do business with the government or you can serve in the government, but you cannot do both. You are elected to serve the public, not yourself.

4.
Lobbyists must fully disclose all their actions.

The public has a right to know who is lobbying whom and for what.

5.
Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.

When the penalty for breaking ethics laws is a small fine or a slap on the wrist, the whole system becomes a joke. Severe offenses must be punished by expulsion and/or criminal charges.

After I became governor, many in our state capitol were startled to learn this wasn’t just empty campaign rhetoric. In fact, when we first announced our ethics platform in 2007, some reporters didn’t cover the event because they thought it was just a meaningless pledge.

It’s said that Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill had the same reaction to President Reagan’s election in 1980. A year into Reagan’s first term, O’Neill reportedly told the president they had assumed his campaign promises to reduce government and cut taxes were just rhetoric. He said they were shocked to find out he really meant it. Now that is a great compliment.

In my first month as governor, I called a special session of the Legislature, and we completely rewrote our ethics laws along the lines of my proposals. As a result, we’ve finally begun to change our century-long reputation for corruption. The Center for Public Integrity says
we have gone from 44th to 1st in the country in terms of legislative disclosure laws.
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And we have gone from the bottom 5 to the top 5 on the Better Government Association’s “Integrity Index.”
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Still, there’s more work to be done. In fact, I warned folks that the new rules could result in many more politicians getting prosecuted, creating the perception that things are actually worse than ever. But make no mistake—the casual toleration of corruption is a thing of the past.

It’s a bit sad that ethics in government has become such a pressing topic. Conducting one’s business in an ethical manner, be it public service or any other pursuit, should be seen as standard practice, not as some wonderful virtue. Being ethical is only a minimum requirement for a politician. I can only laugh when politicians brag that they have never been involved in corruption. So what? I should hope not. That hardly seems like grounds for support.

Unfortunately, the public today often expects the worst from politicians. Can you blame them? Certainly corrupt politicians have been with us for all of human history. That said, we are on a strong bipartisan run of “men behaving badly” in the past few years. Bill Clinton was just the tip of the iceberg. In just the past year or two, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer resigned after getting caught with prostitutes; New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey stepped down over a homosexual affair; South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford was censured for “hiking the Appalachian Trail”; Idaho Senator Larry Craig was caught toe tapping in a bathroom stall; Nevada Senator John Ensign preyed on his staffer who also happened to be his best friend’s wife; and New York Congressman Eric Massa resigned amidst allegations he had sexually harassed his male staff. I could go on—but this is plenty.