Washington, D.C. — Commerce Secretary was this year’s big draw at the always popular Friday economic development lunch at Washington Mardi Gras, but a nice bit of lagniappe was the annual airing of whatever’s on the minds of Louisian’s members of Congress.
This year, there seems to be plenty. And lots of it traces back indirectly, if not very directly, to the stark political division that permeates the delegation, the Congress and the country these days.
U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, the embattled incumbent in the May 16 Republican primary against a field that includes U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow — who recently scored a key endorsement from Lutnick’s boss, President Donald Trump — used his few moments at the mic to remind the gathered business leaders of the bipartisan infrastructure law that he played a key role in passing.
“I wake up every day thinking about how I make my state and my country a better place,” he said, pointing to the law’s huge federal investments for the Morganza-to-the-Gulf hurricane protection project and for broadband in underserved areas — something he focused on after a business leader at a prior Washington Mardi Gras said he couldn’t site a distribution center in north h due to poor internet access.
Left unsaid was what just about everyone in the room knew, that every other Republican member in Louisian’s delegation voted against this Joe Biden signature accomplishment.
Then came House Speaker Mike Johnson, who chose to tout tax cuts in a different law, Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, which passed last Congress last year with only Republican support.
U.S. Rep. Troy Carter was the first Democrat to speak, and his comments contrasted with the pro-Trump rhetoric from Lutnick, Gov. Jeff Landry and his own very administration-friendly colleagues. It was also one of the few times the current troubles across the country infiltrated the festivities.
“I want to cap off this evening with just a reminder ... of how important it is as we look around this room at the diversity, the strength of our individual lived experiences and the beauty of what America is — that we don't look the same, we don't talk the same,” Carter said. “We come from different places, and we bring different examples of what life, liberty and justice means to us. The Constitution does not belong to any one party, the rule of law does not belong to any one party.”
Columnist Stephanie Grace
Fellow Democratic U.S. Rep. Cleo Fields alluded to a different controversy when he used the week’s frigid weather to frame a recent conversation with Republican Clay Higgins about the voting rights case that the U.S. Supreme Court will soon decide, which will determine whether Fields’ newly drawn majority-minority district will disappear. As they were speculating about the outcome, Fields said Higgins joked that it’d be a “cold day in hell” that the court would rule in Fields’ favor.
The last speech was perhaps the most anticipated, as Letlow’s presidentially-backed Senate candidacy has vastly elevated her statewide profile.
But if political junkies were looking for a sign of how she’ll run against Cassidy and what she’ll say about Cassidy’s 2021 impeachment vote to convict Trump for the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and his more recent, incredibly awkward reincarnation as a Trump devotee, they got nothing.
Instead, Letlow focused on the past — on her unusual path into politics after the sudden death of her husband, who had been elected to the seat, and on her time serving on the House Appropriations Committee, which she noted would soon come to an end.
“Thank you for believing in me. Most importantly, thank you for praying for me,” she said. “It's not lost on me I was never supposed to be here, and everybody considers D.C. to be sometimes a dark place. I knew if I did anything, I just wanted to come up here and be a light.”
If you didn’t know better, you’d think Letlow was packing it in and heading home, not trying to trade up to higher office by unseating a much more senior colleague.
Of course, everyone in that particular room did know better.
How times change
Fields is only in the second year of his current tenure, but he’s been to Congress before — back in the 1990s, until the majority-minority district he represented then was thrown out by the Supreme Court, just as his current district may or may not be. So I was curious what changes he’d noticed in his decades out of federal office.
As far as the event goes, not so many, he said.
“The people are the same. People come here to have a good time and to connect to Washington from a business perspective. All of that is the same,” he said.
The difference, Fields said, is that what’s happening beyond the cozy hospitality suites at the Washington Hilton feels more present, at least to him.
“Now, you’re thinking about: Do I have to run back to Capitol Hill to keep the government from shutting down?” he said. “The climate outside of this Mardi Gras is so different. Everybody here is from h, and they want to have a good time, and everybody’s accommodating. But the atmosphere in the nation is different. There’s so much hostility, so much unrest. You don’t see it in the halls of the Washington Hilton because everybody’s here to relax. But at the end of the day, as a member of Congress, I can’t help but feel it. I feel more burdened this time.”
UNO in the House
Louisian’s higher ed community has long shown up in big numbers at Washington Mardi Gras; after all, this is a sector that relies on government grants and faces many issues involving federal policy. But one school that came to Washington with a full agenda this year, the troubled University of New Orleans, has a distinct aim.
has suffered a yearslong enrollment decline that led to a financial crisis and a now a looming switch from the University of h system to h State University system. There’s both excitement and trepidation about the change, and UNO officials came to Washington less to participate in the usual lobbying and more to drum up support among folks back home.
Judging by the attendance at its Saturday morning jazz brunch, it was a good call. Indeed, those who got themselves up and out early after the Friday night parties saw an impressive show of force.
Describing the school’s potential, Master P, the homegrown music mogul who doubles as the university’s quoted an image Lutnick had offered up at the economic development lunch the day before about not letting great assets sit idle in the garage.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise was there, talking about hopes that the new partnership can attract students. So was shipbuilder Boysie Bollinger, a past king of Washington Mardi Gras whose name graces the lakefront university’s school of naval architecture and marine engineering. Rico Alvendia, last year’s king and the LSU Board of Supervisors’ transition team chair, touted the process of melding “two world-class brands,” alongside board chair Scott Ballard and several other members.
And new LSU System President Wade Rousse reminisced about his years as a part-time master’s student at UNO and thanked UNO President Kathy Johnson, who was symbolically dressed in purple and silver to represent one of the most visible changes, the Privateers’ switch from blue and silver to LSU’s highly recognizable purple and gold. Johnson, Rousse noted, had inherited a mess and has been forced to oversee wrenching cuts.
“There’s gonna be some hard decisions, but there’s gonna be some great celebrations along the way, and we’re gonna win together,” he said.