Austin Paradelas
Dec 7, 2023
Richard Nelson, former candidate for Governor, has been appointed Secretary to the Department of Revenue by Governor-Elect Jeff Landry. While I believe this is a good choice, as Nelson and those on his campaign are great guys to plug in anywhere, it is demonstrative of a problem Louisiana politics has suffered with for a long time. Cronyism.
While it's understandable that people want to do favors for their friends whenever they get into high positions, they want to take care of the people who helped get them there, like those who dropped out of a race and gave an endorsement to make victory even easier, that doesn't mean it's necessarily a good thing. Giving your friends jobs because they are your friends is corruption that tears apart trust within the government. Whether or not Nelson and his team deserve this position doesn't matter because it's not up for debate. They are getting the position anyway.
I love Richard Nelson; he's a fantastic guy. I love everyone who worked on his campaign. They were excellent to be around; I don't have a bad thing to say about these guys. I even extend my blessing and will say that these guys are good picks for the job. They may have a limited amount of experience that could be applicable to the Department of Revenue; however, they're smart guys who will be able to manage just about any system they get put into. This ending to the story is good, but just because something worked this time does not mean it is permissible.
We see politicians give out jobs to those who don't always deserve it all the time. We see them give jobs to people based on things that have nothing to do with the job at all: skin color, sexuality, ties to particular groups, you name it, someone probably gave them a job for it. Politicians have been scratching the backs of those with no business being in their appointed jobs for years. I don't always agree with John Schroder, but when I do, I do. This is cronyism, definitionally. Cronyism is the appointment of friends or family to positions they otherwise don't have any reason to be involved in. Even though there's a case to be made that Richard Nelson and those who served on the Nelson gubernatorial campaign are deserving and qualified to do these jobs, it is nevertheless a display of a significant issue that plagues Louisiana politics.
People like to get wealthy, take care of their friends, and then help their friends get wealthy along with them, and it's hard to blame them for that because who doesn't want that? Everyone wants to get to the top, but that is the exact principle Nelson's campaign ran against. Nelson's favorite tagline was comparing Louisiana politics to LSU football, saying that if LSU had a couple losing seasons in a row, we would have fired the coach, the cheerleaders, the players, the mascot, the guy who delivered the water coolers, we would have taken everyone out of the situation and replaced them all. However, Louisiana politicians continue to fail us election after election, and we keep sending the same guys to do the same thing with the same absurd plans.
You can't run on a platform like that, drop out of the campaign, endorse the candidate most notoriously associated with that analogy, kiss the ring, and then accept a job. However, that is precisely what we saw: Nelson dropped from the campaign, endorsed Jeff Landry, and is being rewarded with his position. Every man has a price; apparently, his was to be Secretary for the Department of Revenue. I can't blame him; he wasn't going to beat Landry, so if you can't beat them, join them, but where are the morals? Where are the principles that were preached so powerfully?
I love Richard; he's a fantastic guy, an excellent Rep, and an extraordinary leader. He did a great job as a representative, and I'm sure he will do great in the position he's been appointed to. But it's not Richard who is the object of this situation; it's the friendly appointment to the job. Whenever Landry made that team to handle New Orleans, how many of those guys were massive Landry donors? How many of those guys were big spenders to Landry's gubernatorial war chest?
As a Republican, I support our Governor; as a Conservative, I look forward to the values that I hope he implements into our political order, and as a Louisiana citizen, I really hope he can change the state for the better. We must remember, however, that appointing your friends to do jobs is the kind of thing that gets us into trouble. I think Nelson and his campaign team were a great choice over other Landry donors, so we can be happy that a great leader like Richard has been appointed to the position, but understand that this was absolutely a handshake deal for dropping out of the race and doing what his campaign was explicitly against, kissing the ring.