Dardenne Now Wants the Votes He Once Tried to Dump  

Baton Rouge, La – At the kick-off of his gubernatorial announcement tour on Monday, Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne hoped Louisianians would forget that he once tried to purge registered voters from the rolls. As secretary of state in 2007, Dardenne embarked on a large-scale effort to denying voting rights to those hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina, less than two years after the destruction.

“Now that Lieutenant Governor Dardenne wants us to give him a promotion, he is hoping that we will forget that he denied tens of thousands of Louisianians the right to cast a ballot,” said Stephen Handwerk, executive director of the Louisiana Democratic Party. “At a time when our state was still trying to rebuild from a natural disaster, our lieutenant governor had the wrong priorities and chose to contribute to the anguish our families felt. We couldn’t count on him to be a productive leader then, and we certainly cannot expect him fix our state now.”

Dardenne’s efforts drew national attention as the NAACP filed a civil rights lawsuit against the state for violating federal law.