When it comes to corporate welfare, elected officials in Louisiana are on a DIFFERENT PLANET from the voters they represent. A thread.

On Tuesday Louisiana voters rejected Constitutional Amendment #5. It would have allowed oil & gas corporations to *negotiate* whether they pay property taxes.

Louisiana's legislature had APPROVED Amendment 5 by HUGE margins back in May. 82-16 in the House. 32-4 in the Senate.

At the ballot box, Amendment 5 didn't just lose. It got walloped.

It lost in EVERY SINGLE House & Senate district in the State.

Consider the tally:
Legislators voted 114 to 20 FOR Amendment 5.
Their districts voted 144 to 0 AGAINST.

Amendment 5 was ENDORSED by the LA School Board Assoc @LSBALeads, Police Jury Association & Sheriffs Association, in each case WITHOUT OPPOSITION.

It then LOST in 99% of school board districts, 99% of police juror districts & all 64 parishes where those sheriffs are elected.

So what's going with this big disconnect between what voters want and how the people they elect are voting when it comes to corporate welfare?

Let's not complicate it ...

Lobbyists raise money for elected officials and cultivate relationships with them. With Rs. With Ds. With Is. With everybody.

Those elected officials have been voting with those lobbyists, against their constituents, to win corporate welfare for the lobbyists' clients.

That may sound like a tale as old as time.

But what the result of the referendum on Amendment 5 shows is that the constituency AGAINST this culture of corporate welfare is REALLY big. Crazy big. Like, apple-pie-and-girl-scout-cookie big.

The constituency against Louisiana's culture of corporate welfare is SO big and so across-the-board that officials who keep voting for corporate welfare, against their constituents, are likely to start paying an electoral price for doing so.