4B ● Saturday, June 7, 2025 ● theadvocate.com ● The Acadiana Advocate
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OPINION T H E A D V O C AT E.C O M/opinions
ANOTHER VIEW
Michigan to test whether independent can win as governor Here’s somebody to watch in next year’s elections: Mike Duggan. He’s running for governor of Michigan as an independent. He’s already polling 25%. Pros from both major parties fear he could turn the race upside down. The 66-year-old Duggan is the current mayor of Detroit. He formerly served as Wayne County prosecutor in addition to managing the Detroit Medical Center and SMART, the region’s transit authority. In 2013, Duggan jumped into the Detroit mayor’s race. The city was in fiscal collapse with a falling population, 47,000 abandoned Ron houses and the highest unemployment and Faucheux homicide rates in the nation. For years, Detroit had been operating under state oversight. Even though Duggan had to run for mayor as a write-in candidate due to residency and filing issues, that didn’t stop him. He campaigned on the slogan, “Every neighborhood has a future.” His platform was based on fiscal reforms, crime reduction and economic development. He easily led the first round of voting. In the second round, he beat Wayne County Sheriff Benny Napoleon, a former Detroit police chief, with 55% of the vote. He’s since won two landslide reelections. As Detroit’s mayor for nearly 12 years, Duggan has focused on city finances, street lighting, public transit and response times for emergency services. That’s in addition to improving air quality and reducing blight and graffiti — practical issues that cut across political ideologies. He also strengthened park maintenance, converted vacant buildings into livable rental housing and established the city’s first office of sustainability. A new poll pegs his job approval rating in Detroit at a stratospheric 84%. Duggan’s point of pride: The 2023 census estimate showed Detroit’s population growing for the first time since 1957. Now he’s promising to bring his brand of leadership to the governor’s mansion. Current Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is term-limited and will likely seek the presidency in 2028. Michigan is a swing state with squeaky hinges. Donald Trump carried it both times he won. Four of its last eight governors have been Democrats and four have been Republicans. That’s why the 2026 gubernatorial race is nationally important. The Democratic primary front-runner is Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, 47. Recent polling shows her dominating her party’s field. One of her opponents is Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist, 42. The current Republican front-runner is U.S. Rep. John James, 43, a former two-time GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate. The primaries will be held next August. If elected, either James or Gilchrist would be the state’s first African American governor. As an independent candidate, Duggan expects to pull equally from both parties. The former Democrat plans on appealing to Trump voters who, as he says, “want to shake up the system,” but “without the nastiness … [or] divisive language.” Says Duggan on his website: “The political parties are trapped in a toxic cycle of brutal elections and battles for a slim majority….only to have the far right or far left drive the agenda. The only way to change that is to forge a new path where people come before politics, a path that enables us to bridge the divide and work together to deliver results.” He adds, “I’m not running to be the Democrats’ governor or the Republicans’ governor. I’m running to be your governor.” The Glengariff Group poll shows Democrat Benson with 35%, Republican James with 34% and independent Duggan with 22%. Other candidate combinations have Duggan getting as much as 25% and 26% of the vote, and with room for growth among voters outside of Detroit who don’t know much about him. Both parties worry Duggan will take votes away from them. And he will. The Epic-MRA poll found him drawing 23% of Democrats, 21% of Republicans and 31% of independents. It’s difficult to estimate how many votes an independent candidate will siphon from each major-party candidate. That’s because independents often win according to something I call the Layer Cake Effect. The first layer may come from Democrats and Republicans about equally. The second layer may come mostly from one party’s voters; the third layer, from the other party. Americans are fed up with the current political system. One day, they may realize that real change will only come when candidates not beholden to either major party start winning major elections. Could that happen in Michigan next year? Ron Faucheux is a nonpartisan political analyst, pollster and writer based in Louisiana.
YOUR VIEWS
Issues with Mid-Barataria project viewed fairly Commission and other nongovernmental organizations who opposed the project. Those filings outlined the modeling discrepancies, permitting conflicts, endangered species violations and NEPA procedural flaws that now undermine the project. All options must be back on the table, including cost-effective dredging alternatives. Louisiana deserves the review in process, and I applaud the Landry administration for taking this on.
costs have ballooned to $50 million a year. The project’s congressionally granted Marine Mammal Protection Act waiver was not based on science or sound marine ecology. Its bypass of standard protections would allow lethal harm to dolphins and threatened species, while ignoring concerns raised by commercial fisheries, the parish floodplain manager and the deep draft navigation. I authored the 2018 letters of objection for Plaquemines Parish working with the Marine Mammal
Quin Hillyer’s May 11 column stands out as the most balanced reporting yet on the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion by the paper. It may be providential that this project now receives a second look under the National Environmental Policy Act. As a national co-chair in sediment transport along with credentials in port and navigation engineering, I must note that the recently disclosed 2022 modeling report projects land-building at one-third of the original environmental impact statement estimate, while operations and maintenance
DENNIS LAMBERT Lettsworth
What happens next at what’s left of Nottoway matters For 150 years, Nottoway Plantation was a place of grandeur to some and a relic of hate to others, and now it has burned to the ground for everyone. It was the South’s most enormous antebellum mansion, built in 1859 by the enslaved for a “sugar baron.” Enslaved architects, mathematicians, artists, landscape designers, builders, healers, executive chefs and wet nurses created and maintained its ornate features. In 2019, hotel developer Joseph Jaeger Jr., owner of 16 New Orleans area properties, purchased the estate for $3.1 million (it’s currently owned by Dan Dyess,
Second Amendment fans sit on sidelines amid unchecked tyranny
who also owns the historic Steel Magnolia House Bed and Breakfast in Natchitoches). Descendants whose labor built and sustained this place deserve the first say in what happens next. The real tragedy isn’t just the fire. It’s that Nottoway endured as a glorified tourist attraction while hiding the violence and forced labor behind its walls. We must stop romanticizing plantations as charming relics. They are monuments to cruelty. Let us honor the lives stolen, preserve their stories and demand an honest history.
For decades, supporters of the Second Amendment have been espousing that their right to own a gun was to protect themselves and their family from government tyranny. We now have uniformed, unidentified people kidnapping people off the street that are going about their lives. It has been presumed that these uniformed people are government agents doing a duty to round up illegals. It seems that it may include indiscriminate pursuit of citizens or legal immigrants, and the government is secret about this. What we are seeing in these actions is exactly what tyranny looks like. It may be brownskinned people now. In Nazi Germany, it started with disabled, intellectuals, homosexuals and the Romani being sent to camps. It turned into arresting political opponents and eventually millions of Jews. Where are the Second Amendment proponents? Or were their protestations only justification for hatred and bigotry of “others” that had little to do with tyranny?
GARY WATSON New Orleans
Catholic Church’s rules against women clergy rooted in Bible I’d like to ask letter writer Jim O’Neill (“Catholic Church’s exclusion of women ignored”) if he is familiar with the gospels? It seems his issue is with Jesus Christ, not the Catholic Church. For O’Neill’s benefit, all 12 of the apostles Jesus chose were men. Women played crucial roles in his ministry, but none were chosen or appointed as apostles to go out to all the world and preach the good
news. As a cradle Catholic and an actual woman, what Jesus ordained is good enough for me. It’s the Catholic Church, not the U.S. government. However, there are some places, countries, religions that actually do repress women that O’Neill may want to take a look at, if he’s concerned about that.
LINDA WATROUS Harvey
EARL PRATZ Metairie
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