Louisiana Voice

Like the Energizer Rabbit, he just keeps on running.

Like the wristwatch in the old Timex commercial, he takes a licking and keeps on ticking.

Former Sheriff and former State Rep. Steve Pylant, like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, Heeere’s Steve! – and he’s running once again for sheriff of Franklin Parish.

He will be running to fill the unexpired term of former Sheriff Kevin Cobb who was plucked by the Louisiana Sheriffs’ Association in Baton Rouge to become its new executive director.

Pylant previously served as sheriff for 16 of his 28 years in law enforcement and followed that by serving eight years in the Louisiana House of Representatives.

Apparently, all that public service was not exhaustive enough and he now wants more.

As I wrote in 2019, I omitted him from my book Louisiana’s Rogue Sheriffs: A Culture of Corruption, but it was an oversight and never an intentional slight.

That was because his EYEBROW-RAISING ACTION that same year on behalf four former felons seemed somehow at odds with his rigid law-and-order stance in the legislature.

Normally, I would not open old wounds but Pylant’s re-entry into the public fray qualifies the five-year-old incident as legitimate news.

Typical of today’s brand of Republicanism, a moral code seems to be whatever happens to be convenient at the time, never mind the obvious contradictions.

Pylant obviously applies that logic to his actions, never mind that the action themselves conflict mightily with his public stand as a lawmaker.

That seems to be the trend today, from the very top all the way down to the local level.