Political opponents still at it

Photo by: www.fametracker.com

By Ken Grissom
t_news@bellsouth.net

The political struggle between Troy Hebert and Jeff Landry isn’t over, even though Hebert won their hard-fought struggle for a seat in the Louisiana Senate last year.
Hebert allegedly blocked Landry’s appointment to the state Board of Ethics and Landry is crying foul.
“The campaign for 2012 has already started,” Hebert told The Teche News.
Ironically, if that’s true, Hebert has only himself to blame, Landry said.
“My appointment to that board would have prohibited me from engaging in any type of political activity,” he said. “I couldn’t run for office, donate to a campaign, or a political party even.”
Landry, a New Iberia attorney, was one of several nominees recommended to the House and Governmental Affairs Committee by the presidents of the state’s private colleges and universities. The committee rejected Landry’s nomination by a 3-9 vote, allegedly after Hebert lobbied against him in a private message to some of the members.
News reports out of Baton Rouge said that Kimberlee Bergeron, secretary for a Senate committee Hebert chairs, came into the House committee room as its members were discussing Landry’s nomination and passed out notes or documents to some of the members of the panel. A few minutes later, according to the accounts, she retrieved the papers.
Landry said that several committee members later told him the message was an attack on his nomination, to the extent of saying that putting him on the ethics board “was like appointing Bonnie and Clyde to a bank board.”
Hebert declined to comment on the content of the message, saying that was a private matter between colleagues.
“Jeffery needs to stop whining and blaming everyone else for his failures,” Hebert said.
“This state needs good, honest, respectable people to serve on the ethics board, and judging by the lopsided vote of the committee, it’s obvious they felt he did not meet those standards.”
Landry said the way Hebert and members of the House committee handled the matter is patently unfair.
“If he’s got some sort of facts that he felt might inhibit my ability to serve on the board, he was free to publicly voice those concerns,” Landry said. “The fact that he did so confidentially just raises the question of whether it was done as a matter of public protection or pure vindictiveness.”