Louisiana Voice

While residents of Louisiana’s coastal area were trying to determine how they were going to obtain food, clothing and shelter in the AFTERMATH of Hurricane Ida, supporters of Attorney General Jeff Landry were passing a good time during Landry’s annual ALLIGATOR HUNT fundraiser.

Never one to allow a natural disaster interfere with the all-important business of political fundraising for Landry’s Louisiana First Fund PAC, the event attracted a record number of participants for the two-day event last Friday and Saturday, according to Courtney Guastella, spokesperson for the event.

Other than to acknowledge that “a lot” attended the gator hunt, Guastella was a bit vague in providing information about the event, although the Louisiana First Fund web page boasted last week that the “hunter’s packages are sold out for 2021. We are simply out of slot.”

The first day of the hunt was only five days after category 4 Ida slammed into the Louisiana coast, destroying home and knocking out power for hundreds of thousands of people left to swelter, sweat and starve in the heat and humidity of late August and early September.

No matter. “Due to your generosity and the growing popularity of this event, for the first time in 11 years, we are sold out of actual ‘hunts,’” the message on the web page gushed with understandable (understandable for Landry’s standards, that is) excitement. “We can no longer register folks for the actual morning hunts. We would love to have you join us this year for the festivities, good food, and live music (some of the best parts of the hunt).”

So, while the Red Cross, the Louisiana National Guard and so many other unselfish volunteers were passing out meals and bottled water, Landry’s supporters were whooping it up with good food and live music.

The PAC’s web page was careful to make it perfectly clear, however, that while the hunter’s packages were sold out, there were still plenty of one-day passes and OPPORTUNITIES to be a “Bayou Sponsor.”

To get your hands on one of those one-day (Friday or Saturday, take your pick) passes, all you needed to do was to kick in a $1,000 “contribution” per person. But hey, that was cheap, as Mad Magazine used to say about its newsstand price.

To be a “Bayou Sponsor,” the cost was only $2,500 per person or company for up to four passes for both Friday and Saturday main events. That “per person” indication was important because to be a “Bayou Sponsor” for four persons, the total cost would be $10,000, not $2,500 – all of which sounds like some kind of bait and switch scheme to us.

Those “Hunter’s Packages,” about which Guastella knew so little, considering she was the point person for obtaining passes to the event, called for a $5,000 “contribution” per person or company for one hunter to hunt gators on both Friday and Saturday.

But after that, we’re starting to talk about real money. To snare the designation of a “Bayou Host,” which was a package deal for two hunters and six VIP passes – with VIP Tent Special Thursday Events (we thought it was just a Friday and Saturday hunt) and Friday and Saturday Main Events, you’d have had to pony up $25,000.

But if you really wanted to put on the dog and to show those hundreds of thousands of HURRICANE SURVIVORS what they were missing, you could chip in $50,000 and call yourself a “Swamm Master Corporate Sponsor, good for six hunters, 12 VIP passes for those same Thursday, Friday and Saturday Main Events.

And while Guastella wasn’t much help (she didn’t even know how many gators were bagged during the hunt), the event left a couple of other questions unanswered:

• How many corporate CEOs did Landry lean on with possible veiled threats of inconvenient investigations in order to solicit those Swamp Master corporate sponsorships or, for that matter, the $25,000 Bayou Host packages?
• What office will Landry be seeking? Will he be running for a third term as AG or will he go after the job he really wants on the fourth floor of that 24-story building across Capitol Lake?

It will be interesting to see hos the Louisiana Republican Party handles this knotty little problem. The state GOP wants the governor’s office back and the party will be pretty certain to seek out the strongest Repugnantcan candidate available.

Meanwhile, one has to wonder if the money spent on a gator hunt for the benefit of a reptilian politician might have been better spent helping victims.