Louisiana Voice

We can always—ALWAYS—count on a few unforeseen surprises when the Louisiana Legislature is in session. That’s a certainty, along with death and taxes.

Throw in a simultaneous congressional race between two legislators, grab some popcorn and sit back to watch the show.

Fifth District Rep. Julia Letlow is seeking a promotion in challenging Sen. Bill Cassidy who is up for reelection this year. Accordingly, that leaves Letlow’s seat up for grabs and three Republican legislators, Rep. Michael Echols of Monroe and Sens. Blake Miguez of New Iberia and Rick Edmonds of Baton Rouge, and state Board of Regents member Misti Cordell, have entered the sweepstakes with nothing really to lose because the unsuccessful candidates will still have a job. Either Letlow or Cassidy, on the other hand, is going to have to seek a different livelihood.

Aye, but here’s the rub, as Billy Wayne Shakespeare once said: One of the candidates for Letlow’s seat, Miguez, has secured the endorsement of Yellow Potato Trump and Echols wants it so badly that he even submitted a bill, HB 221, to name the as-yet unbuilt but proposed new Mississippi River bridge in Baton Rouge after ol’ Cankle Ankles.

Rep. Michael Echols (R-Monroe)

If that doesn’t do the trick, what will?

Two stories that appeared Wednesday in THE GUARDIANand THE ATLANTIC, maybe, both of which revealed that Miguez had been accused of rape nearly 20 years ago.

Sen. Blake Miguez (R-New Iberia)

On the other hand, that could serve to solidify Trump’s endorsement, but that’s another story.

The Guardian received a response from Miguez’s campaign by providing an email dated Feb. 24 in which the accuser’s father proclaimed that his daughter was a “liar and has a drug problem.” Miguez’s campaign said it had the father’s permission to share the email, which was apparently sent some 19 years after the accusation was made against Miguez.

The Guardian story said the rape accusation was reported to local law enforcement the same day of the alleged assault, but never disclosed to the public. That would have been the beleaugured Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Department because the New Iberia Police Department was DISBANDED in 2004 for more than a decade and its duties assumed by then-Sheriff Louis Ackal whose department at the time was preoccupied with crackdowns in the black community.

The Atlantic story was a bit more specific. It said the accusations against Miguez were made by his former girlfriend. The police report filed at the time, the woman told police how Miguez had sex with her even though she told him no, and then followed her when she fled the home. She told police that she hid behind a car near a convenience store until a friend arrived and then she called 911She was taken by deputies to a hospital for a rape-kit examination, the report said. Miguez was then 25 years old at the time and was detained and questioned. He was released after the woman, then 22, said she did not want to press charges. “I called 911 ‘cause I honestly was/am scared!” she wrote in a voluntary statement to deputies.

Trump’s people are aware that there was a “massive bomb” about to be released soon after he made his endorsement, though no one was aware just what was coming.

Miguez did not return an email from LouisianaVoice seeking comment but Echols did give us a call.

We asked him if he was aware of the stories in the two publications and “Did you, your campaign or someone on your behalf leak either of these stories?”

“All I know about them is what I read in those liberal papers,” he said. ‘Neither I nor my campaign had anything to do with them going public, although I’d heard about the story earlier.”

He called the story, if true, “damning” to Miguez, adding, “I sincerely hope it’s not true. I don’t want something like this to cloud the race.”

Echols has not been shy about attacking Miguez on another matter, however. “He’s a CARPETBAGGER,” he said of his opponent. “He doesn’t even live in the 5^th District.”

While residency is not a requirement in Louisiana congressional races, it is significant that Miguez is from New Iberia, which is in Louisiana’s 3^rd Congressional District, currently represented by Rep. Clay Higgins. In fact, the 3^rd and 5^th Districts are separated for most of their boundaries by the 4^th District. New Iberia is “about 100 miles from the nearest border with the 5^th District,” Echols said.