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Dr. Christie L. Maloyed, co-editor along with Dr. Pearson Cross of The Party is Over: The New Louisiana Politics, joined Discover Lafayette to discuss the recent release of her book by LSU Press.



The Party is Over provides a comprehensive reassessment of Louisiana state politics, institutions, and policies in the 21st century. The book comprises fourteen chapters written by different political experts in Louisiana hailing from institutions such as Tulane, LSU, Southern, UL-Lafayette, UL – Monroe, and non-government organizations, where they focus on issues impacting Louisiana.




"Politics can be so negative. But political science brings an analytical framework that gives students the tools to step back from the vitriol and think about the factors influencing how our institutions work, why do people act like do, and why do they advocate for some policies over others? When you can prepare students with that research mindset, it changes the way that they're able to engage in political discourse that makes conversations much more productive."




Other books have been written about a single aspect of Louisiana politics or the history of well-known people such as Governors Huey Long and Edwin Edwards. But The Party is Over zooms out to that 20,000-foot level to assess the current state of affairs in Louisiana and the forces that brought us here.



Louisiana political analyst Jeremy Alford's writing focuses on the dramatic changes we have seen in the Louisiana legislature. His chapter takes a deep dive into the way campaigning and term limits have dramatically altered the nature of relationships in the legislature. While term limits have benefits in that people can't serve in office for life, it has also kept people from building long-term relationships. With more turnover, there is a cost to the sense of camaraderie that comes along with it.



Louisiana has always been a sui generis (unique) state, being predominantly a "big D" (Democratic) state, holding on longer than other southern states in the U. S. (which experienced the shift to a majority of Republican voters and elected officials). Democrat and Republican ideals didn't historically cause a division among our Louisianans; rather, people were either "Huey Long-ites or Anti-Huey Long-ites."



But the national trend of partisan politics has trickled down into Louisiana and in the past ten years, many elected officials have made the shift from Democratic to Republican. Interestingly, however, this dramatic shift hasn't occurred among the voting population. We still have an inordinate number of registered Democratic voters in a state where the majority of elected officeholders are Republican. In 2000, Democrats held the overwhelming number of elected seats in the Louisiana House of Representatives and Senate; in just twenty years, those numbers are upside with the Republican party holding a vast majority of the elected seats in both houses. Outside observers puzzle over this conundrum, but with Louisiana's open primary system, people can vote for candidates no matter what their registration is. There is no push to go through the process of changing parties when you can vote for any candidate no matter their party.



On the local government front, Dr. Maloyed had taught her political science students about the concept of "consolidated government" but had never experienced it. When she moved to Lafayette in 2015, she was intrigued by consolidation and glad to have the opportunity to learn more about how it worked in reality. She has found that many of the citizens of Lafayette parish who are otherwise very politically astute find consolidation very confusing; they do not understand how consolidation works. "That's somewhat baked into the design of Lafayette's system,