Landry makes it official: he’s running for governor, leaving door open for Jindal holdover Liz Murrill candidacy for AG
Landry makes it official: he’s running for governor, leaving door open for Jindal holdover Liz Murrill candidacy for AG
October 6, 2022 by tomaswell
So, Jeff Landry has made it official: he is an announced candidate for governor in 2023. It was the worst-kept secret in the state and yesterday’s formal announcement just made it official.
And while the gubernatorial race is certain to dominate the news cycle for Louisiana media in the coming months, it’s important to remember that his candidacy will leave a vacancy for what is arguably the second-most-important state office: attorney general.
Enter Liz Murrill.
Landry, as attorney general, had a standing rule that any employee of the AG’s office who run for political office must resign or take unpaid leave.
For Murrill, Landry made an exception a year ago and she filed paperwork to run for attorney general provided her boss didn’t run for reelection.
Murrill is a holdover from the BOBBY JINDAL ADMINISTRATION, working as his Deputy Executive Counsel for 2½ years before being elevated to Executive Counsel. When Christ Nichols was named as Jindal’s commissioner of administration, she brought Murrill over as her executive counsel.
It was in that position that she became embroiled in debate with legislators in 2014 over Jindal’s plan to radically change Office of Group Benefits (OGB) health coverage for state employees and retirees – after Jindal had reduced OGB’s $600 million operating surplus to only a memory.
OGB members testified before the House Appropriations Committee that dramatic increases in co-pays in their health care plans could cause their health benefits to exceed their monthly state pensions.
Murrill, in defiance of a legal opinion from Landry’s predecessor, Bubby Caldwell, insisted that the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) mandated public comment and legislative review before policy changes could be implemented.
Murrill, who serves as Landry’s solicitor general, last January ARGUED to the US Supreme Court in opposition to President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates – remotely, because at the time she had tested positive for COVID.
Way back in 2009, while in the employ of Jindal, she became involved in a RUNNING DISPUTE with LouisianaVoice over the release of public records related to the LSU Board of Supervisors’ decision to cut health care spending and to privatize state hospitals. Attorney Shelby McKenzie, retained by LSU, said he was advised by Murrill had advised him that the board should invoke the so-called “deliberative process” in order to deny release of the records.
Jindal consistently hid behind the deliberative process as a method to shield the operations of the governor’s office from public scrutiny.
But it’s interesting to note that McKenzie at the time was an attorney with the Baton Rouge firm of Taylor Porter. Another member, a partner, in fact, was John P. Murrill, who served on the firm’s Executive Committee.
He is married to Liz Murrill.
Taylor Porter has dozens of contracts with the State of Louisiana totaling millions of dollars. Contracts with law firms are traditionally issued by the attorney general’s office with the concurrence of the agency to be represented.
Ethically, there is no violation of the AG’s office issuing contracts to the firm. State law prohibits any person holding at least a 25 percent ownership in an entity from doing business with an agency that employs an immediate family member of the vendor. John Murrill does not hole a 25 percent stake in Taylor Porter but perceptions being what they are, the relationship does not have a good look.
If she is elected, she would take a significant PAY CUT. She currently pulls down $223,366 per year, which is about $72,100 more than her boss’s current $151,275 salary. Both make more than the $130,000 Gov. John Bel Edwards makes.
But if she and Landry are both elected to the respective offices they seek, we’re going to have a Republican legislature, a Republican governor, and a Republican attorney general.
Imagine the carnage that combination, working in tandem, could inflict on Louisiana and the rights of its citizenry.