Friday, June 17, 2011

Delayed Louisiana Primary Bill Narrowly Passes Senate Committee Stage

The Louisiana Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee once again took up HB 509, two days after the panel deferred on the legislation to move the Pelican state's presidential primary back into compliance with the national party rules. FHQ tuned into the hearing just in time to catch the vote and following another effort by Senator Karen Carter Peterson (D-5th, New Orleans) to defer the bill again was defeated by a 5-4 margin, committee chair, Senator Bob Kostelka (R-35th, Monroe), broke a tie with and thus reported the bill favorably to the floor of the Louisiana Senate.

The bill would move the Louisiana presidential primary from second or third Saturday in February to the third Saturday after the first Tuesday in March. Should the bill pass the Senate it would have to return to the House to be reconsidered there. The original bill that passed the House would have moved the primary to the first Saturday after the first Tuesday in March; a date that would conflict with Passover.

NOTE: Once I've had a chance to review the committee hearing I'll update the post with any pertinent discussions from the committee.


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3 comments:

  1. astrojobJune 21, 2011 at 4:46 AM

    I was wondering if you could clarify the situation in New York. This story:

    http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2011/06/20/2011-06-20_pushing_back_start_of_2012_presidential_primaries_could_mean_more_republican_pow.html

    suggests that there's bipartisan agreement in the state to move the primary to April 24.

    While this:

    http://assembly.state.ny.us/leg/calendar/

    suggests that the legislative session is about to end. (Other reporting on the gay marriage fight likewise suggests the legislature will soon be out of session.)

    Is the window closing in NY, or will the legislature be in session again later in the year?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Josh PutnamJune 21, 2011 at 10:05 PM

    I've had a post in the works on the New York situation for about a week now and have just not had the time for it to this point. I'll hopefully have something up tomorrow on the situation in the Empire state.

    This is the second story that I've seen citing the June 20 "deadline" and neither has provided any information on the actual bill -- or more importantly the bill number. I've been checking pretty regularly and nothing has been introduced to change the primary date.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Josh PutnamJune 22, 2011 at 11:21 AM

    Here you are, MP.

    ReplyDelete