BATON ROUGE – With a new day dawning in Louisiana state politics, and a new landscape taking shape with the return of good governance and fiscal responsibility to the governor’s office, we can look ahead to a 2016 marked by key policy priorities that would have been impossible during the Jindal/Vitter era. Louisiana family values, the Democratic values that will be the hallmark of our new governor’s administration, touch on a range of issues— but we’ve compiled the initial Top Ten, below.

  • Expanding access to Medicaid, setting the wheels in motion to finally reclaim the millions in Louisiana tax dollars flooding out of state because of GOP spite and obstructionism. While there remains hard work to be done, our state is now closer than we’ve ever been to helping thousands of working families get access to quality healthcare.
  • Respecting our mothers, wives and daughters by enacting and enforcing legislation that will ensure equal pay for equal work for women in Louisiana.
  • Restoring funding to higher education, and defending our students’ pathway to a brighter future.
  • Dismantling unproductive tax giveaways, creating a government that works for the people of Louisiana, not out-of-state corporate special interests.
  • Protecting and funding coastal restoration, vital to our culture, our industry and our way of life.
  • Raising the minimum wage, currently among the worst in the nation. If you work full time in Louisiana, you should never be consigned to poverty.
  •              Electing a Democratic United States Senator, continuing to build on the momentum of this year’s elections and taping into the statewide frustration with failed GOP policies.
  • A Governor who will wake up in Louisiana every day, whose priorities are those of this state— not another campaign for another office in another place.
  • True bipartisan cooperation, with a Democratic governor reaching out to a Republican Commissioner of the Division of Administration, to build a brighter, better future for every Louisianian.
  • Uniting the people of our state behind a leader who will put Louisiana first.

Restoring the state and the people of Louisiana after so many years of fiscal irresponsibility and craven mismanagement under the GOP will take time, but with Governor-elect John Bel Edwards assuming office and Democrats across the state energized by his victory, we are poised to make a grand beginning.

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