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We power life.

Additional support provided by the Fred Bea and Ruth Ziegler Foundation and the Ziegler Art Museum located in Jennings City Hall.

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With support from viewers like you.

Republicans had very good a very good night.

Mid-term trends around the country.

As students were running away to students Leonard Brown and Denver Smith felt that shot from a buckshot blast.

Students looking to the 1972 protests that left two dead.

You know those football Saturdays and Tiger Stadium were so precious.

LSU football rapidly revives.

The Republicans had very good a very good night.

Mid-term trends around the country.

As the students were running away.

Two students, Leonard Brown and Denver Smith, felt that shot from a buckshot blast.

Students looking to the 1972 protests that left two dead.

The other was football Saturday, and Tiger Stadium was so precious.

LSU Football Rapidly Revives.

Hi everyone.

I'm Kerosene Sear.

And I'm Andre Moreau.

Hurricane Nicole made landfall just south of Vero Beach, Florida, early on Thursday, though this was a huge storm.

It covered most of the entire east coast of Florida before it went on up the East Coast.

Heavy winds, widespread power outages, threatening floods.

It was a big storm.

Yeah.

And it's very unusual to see a hurricane this late in the season making Nicole one of only three recorded.

And now to the news making headlines across the state.

The website Lending Tree released a report this month ranking New Orleans with the highest rate of maxed out credit cards among the nation's 100 biggest cities.

36% of New Orleans cardholders have at least one maxed out credit card.

Baton Rouge ranks second in the nation at 34%.

Big news from the governor this week.

DCFS secretary Marquita Walters resigns under pressure.

The announcement came Thursday after a baby died of a fentanyl overdose on Halloween.

Governor John Bel Edwards blasted DCFS for its handling of that case, calling it an absolute failure.

Walters said staffing changes and internal issues led to lax oversight of the child's case.

Resignation is effective immediately.

All right.

Mid-term elections in Louisiana lacked a governor's race as the center of it, but still had some intrigue, including some local mayor's races.

So we have Greg Hilburn, who covers the state for USA Today Network.

And Greg, you've got some great insight about the mayor's races and about everything, in fact, that went down.

So let's begin in Shreveport with the mayor's race there.

Interesting.

Well, incumbent mayors are becoming an endangered species around the state.

Adrian Perkins, who stormed onto the scene four years ago as a young man with a Harvard pedigree, a military pedigree.

And so much promise, so much promise, he ended up running for Senate.

That may have done that may have turned some people off and lost.

But he was ousted.

Yeah.

And in a ten person race.

And it'll be an interesting race.

There's a Republican there.

You wouldn't think that a Republican would have a huge chance of winning.

Tom Arceneaux.

But he's a strong candidate and he'll be going against a wily veteran of the legislature, Greg Tarver, and a Ross senator, Greg Tarver, in a runoff.

That's right.

Exactly.

Alexandria Mayor Jack Roy making a return appearance after leaving to serve two terms before he left.

Jeff Hull from the legislature, former representative, won the mayor's seat there and he crushed, you know, Mayor Hall, he was, I think, 51%.

But the incumbent only got 22%.

I mean, that's these these incumbent mayors are people go quickly, quickly disenchanted with them.

Sort of amazing.

In New Orleans, another local race, the race to replace Karen Carter Peterson.

How did that go down?

That was an important race because it's really the most considered, the most progressive seat in the Louisiana state Senate race.

And that had two heavyweights go to House members, Royce Duplessis and Mandy Landry, and then in a very competitive race, Royce du Plessis ended up winning.

He'll take that seat in the Senate and Manley will stay in the House for now.

Just broadly, any surprises that happen other than these local mayor's races?

Well, I was surprised by the the you know, the strength, the overall.

All of the incumbent congressmen in Louisiana and women and and Senator Kennedy were expected to win.

Yes, but they won, each of them in landslides, including the one that some people thought might have been most vulnerable.

Republican Kelly Higgins.

From the Acadiana District, the third district.

And he outperformed his last his last reelect say I think that says he is especially embedded as a Trump supporter.

And some of the other many of the other Congress, men and women had had had previously been big Trump supporters.

And then Louisiana seems to be and I think Louisiana is deeply, still deeply embedded with Trump, maybe not, maybe more than other states, as you've seen.

Well, the nation not necessarily saying that at all.

There is a lot of that's a lot of anti-Trump support out there.

There is.

But here Mr. Trump won by 20% in 2020.

It looks like he still has coattails, still are long here.

Okay.

What about those amendments?

Okay.

So the amendments, there's one that stands out.

There were ten.

Three.

Got three.

One.

One that failed was an amendment that was designed to clarify the state's ban on slavery.

And indentured should just confuse people.

Though it was the language was muddled, it was confusing.

Even the author, Representative Jared out, he said, no, this could do something I don't want it to do.

You know, it's too confusing.

I'll clarified and we'll redo it next time.

It failed a couple of tax break, property tax, taxes.

When you say it's failed, let's clarify that so that folks voted.

It was a proposed amendment to change the Constitution and the voters said, no, we're not going to.

We were against this.

And I think it was just too hard to understand and confusing.

So it does make it look like we still support indentured servitude.

Well, you know, it's kind of a moot point because the US Constitution banned slavery.

Right.

But it's still symbolic and it's important to a lot of people.

So I think Representative Jordan says he's going to clean up that amendment, bring it back and this time support his own amendment and try to get it across the finish line.

What about some of the others, though, that only three of the ten made it and two of them were property tax amendments, one to give a break to veterans, which overwhelmingly passed, another that would give a break to those who are disabled property tax.

And then the third that passed was giving utilities the water utilities, the ability to charge customers less if it wasn't their fault that there's an infrastructure problem.

Busted lines tell me so that that that wrapped up the amendment but there's three more on December the 10th ballot.

Don't ask me about it.

Okay.

All right.

Your takeaway overall from this midterm take away for us in Louisiana is we are more red than ever, but not just red.

We're very Trumpian here in Louisiana still.

And we're that his his grip may have loosened in other states.

I don't believe I don't see that here.

Not yet.

Well, we could be really out of step then with a lot of other states, including Florida, for example, as there, Governor DeSantis won overwhelmingly and is setting up a run for the presidency.

Absolutely.

And he he and Trump are at odds, even though they have a lot of similar positions.

But I don't think the president wants anybody to step into his spotlight, do you?

Yeah.

Well, the former president.

You mean the former president?

Yeah, right.

Still calling the president.

I see.

Yeah.

Well, it gets stuck on you, though.

Thank you very much, Greg.

It's always great to be here.

Good to see you.

Thank you.

All right.

And to Hilburn Point, I mean, there was a lot of anticipation for Tuesday's midterm, especially in Louisiana.

We held true to our voting patterns here.

But nationally, some states really did break the mold.

So I talked with John Cooley, who's a political analyst and a pollster who expands on trends and numbers across the country.

Last night was of course, election night, which is much anticipated whenever you're looking at the trends.

You know, a lot of people were expecting more people to vote red or some were expecting there to be more of a blue wave.

But what actually happened?

So what would happen?

A lot would depend on what state you're talking about because the results were quite different depending on what state that was applicable.

For instance, Louisiana and Florida, the Republicans to use two examples.

The Republicans had very good a very good night here in Louisiana.

Our incumbent senator and all Republican congressmen, as well as, of course, Troy Carter, the lone Democrat in the delegation.

They were all reelected overwhelmingly without the need for a runoff.

And not only was John Kennedy reelected overwhelmingly, he got over 60%, which he in fact, he exceeded his 2016 showing when he was first elected.

And then, of course, over in Florida, the Republican governor and senator were overwhelmingly reelected and they brought a few new congressmen in with them.

However, if you start going to other states, the picture was quite different.

Specifically places like Pennsylvania and Michigan.

So what I think is going on here is that a continuation of the political realignment we have seen starting in 2016 was to some extent in play last night, where the swing voters who may have voted for Biden but weren't necessarily comfortable voting Democratic for Congress, while they weren't comfortable voting Republican for Congress either last night in these swing states.

I want to say that last night, the Republican underperformance reminds me a lot of 1998.

What was special about 1998 was, of course, you had the Clinton impeachment trial and there were expectations that the Republicans were going to pick up dozens of seats when they essentially broke even, even though that was not, strictly speaking.

Technically a loss.

When you underperform relative to expectations, then you basically have gloom and doom in that party's headquarters.

That is what I think would be an apt description of last night's elections, because as we speak, we cannot honestly say which party will control either house of Congress.

I mean, you are a political analyst and a pollster.

Was this something that you expected?

It was not.

And the interesting thing about that, to kind of further expound on the answer to your question was I had been religiously following all publicly released polls going all the way back to August.

And I will tell you that I did see movement towards the Republicans starting in mid-September.

What I did not see was strong movement like what I saw in the 2010 and or 2014 landslides.

So I was seeing this as a mild red night.

But last night, I think it's best described as a trickle.

A trickle.

A red trickle, yes.

So were there any issues on the ballot that you think prompted, you know, these results?

So I think you have to make the honest assessment of whether abortion did, in fact, hurt the Republicans at the ballot box.

Not just abortion, but the fact that in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, you did have the appearance being created, whether deserved or not.

But the appearance being created of the Republicans spiking the ball and seeing how many abortion restrictions they could get on the books in multiple states.

And I think that kind of thing did turn off voters, because every poll I've ever done about abortion, people's opinions of it are complex, and they're not necessarily a pure pro-life or pure pro-choice.

I think the truth is somewhere in between with which would be a person would describe him or herself as pro-life, but with exceptions, it's the with the exceptions part that I think the Republicans quite honestly, fumbled the messaging on in the wake of the Dobbs decision.

So when you're looking strictly at numbers, I mean, how did we do on early voting?

Who actually showed out to the polls?

Who showed up?

And, you know, is that also what you expected?

You know, the interesting thing about that was one of the paradigm shifts that has occurred since the summer of 2020 is mail in voting has become a Democratic thing, as in any volume of mail in voters in almost any states.

That's going to be the most predominantly Democratic voting group.

Now, with in-person voting being in between and Election Day voting being most Republican.

Well, what happened was the Democrats had a respectable lead with early voting.

And while the Republicans did better with in-person voting, obviously it was not enough with that bloc of voters or with Election Day voters to overcome the massive edge Democrats had with mail ins.

And no one was that more apparent than in Pennsylvania.

We had over a million mail in voters that were banked.

And most likely, John Fetterman got 80% of that vote because it was so heavily Democratic.

And also, you know, whatever you're thinking about this past election, you know, the congressional maps and the redistricting was a really big deal in Louisiana this year.

Do you think that any of the news about the way the map was redrawn or, you know, what the Supreme Court is going to decide, do you think that played a role in how people voted this election season in Louisiana?

Would not have because our elections were basically perfunctory affairs.

I don't really know if it would necessarily have had an impact in other states, because the thing is, in other states, different parties had different levels of advantage or disadvantage, and then you had the complexity of independent redistricting commissions.

All in all, I think redistricting was a wash that didn't really benefit either party one way or another.

Thank you so much for speaking with me.

You know, it's it's nice to have you on every single time.

So thank you so much for joining me.

Anytime you have a good afternoon.

All right.

You, too.

In 1972, a peaceful demonstration with Southern University students ended in a violent encounter with police, leaving two students dead.

Denver Smith and Lenard Brown.

Now, 50 years later, LSU and Southern University's students are investigating what really happened.

I sat down with Tru Hawkins and Brittany Dunn as they explained the details of their cold case.

The seventies were a political turning point for the United States.

The Watergate scandal was in its infancy while protesters were pleading for a more peaceful world.

Louisiana was no different.

Students at Southern University were begging for change.

In 1972, there were student protests at Southern University.

The students were protesting for a lot of things, but among them, better conditions, more control over their courses.

And to talk about this and to address the discrepancy in funding that Southern University got as compared to other state universities like LSU is a really big one.

Yeah, financial financially per student.

Southern University was about more than $1,000 less per student.

And so there was a very, very large disparity in funding for that between the two universities.

Drew Hawkins and Brittany Dunn are both students working to uncover exactly what happened on Southern University's campus in 1972.

You see, the protests didn't go as planned.

On November the 16th.

The students will start to rest about 4 a.m. in the morning.

And the students that were not arrested at the time, they had maybe previously been arrested earlier that week.

They have warrants out for their rights.

They went to the administration building to.

Meet with medical and medical.

Told the students to wait and he will go and advocate on their behalf at a school board meeting that he was heading.

So the students waited, and while they were waiting, there was a call that Netherfield had been held hostage and that the administration building was being taken over.

When that call went out, law enforcement asked students to vacate, but they didn't.

An administrator had told them they could wait there.

But that's when the violence started.

The sheriff's deputies were out there.

Some of them who had shotguns were using cartridges that fired tear gas.

And they're very similar in appearance to buckshot cartridges as possible as they're firing at students to deploy tear gas to get them to disperse as the students were running away.

Two students, Leonard Brown and Denver Smith, felt that shot from a buckshot blast.

This is where the story gets confusing.

Hawkins and Dunn say the FBI records say that sheriff's deputies imploded their weapons and shot at the students, leaving two kids dead.

Two young men died in the wake of a violent confrontation.

Now, the only question is who shot the fatal shot and what happened afterward?

That's what Hawkins and Dunn are trying to piece together.

Even as we've been covering this, as we talk to some people, it's still a really relatively little known shooting.

And we thought that it's worth investigating, especially given the fact that there hasn't really been much light shed on it over the past 50 years.

You know, various reports will come out, but they all come to the same conclusion that it was this group, this area where a group of deputies were positioned.

No one really ever pushed it further than that.

But that task hasn't been easy.

Getting the trust of these students that have been either misrepresented or not heard, even if nobody has tried to shed light on this place to put it, or even look into their stories and their backgrounds as to why they were doing it.

As you stated, they were the demands of these students.

Well, the.

Reason Hawkins and Dunn have interviewed several witnesses, several family members and several officials who remember that day.

They've written three articles explaining the story at length.

To them, it's more than just a cold case.

The goal is to tell the story as accurately as we possibly can for the sake of history.

And like Brittney mentioned a moment ago, you know, one of the biggest facets that's been Underexplored is who Denver Smith and Leonard Brown were as people.

So there's a direct connection between what happened in 1972 to today.

And additionally, a lot of the demands of the student protesters were making.

Some of those disparities still exist as a funding disparity that still exists between public universities like Louisiana and Southern universities.

So 50 years ago was not that long.

On November 16th, the shooting will officially be 50 years old.

That means 50 years of unanswered questions, 50 years of grief for families that may never know what truly happened that day.

Hawkins and Dunn may never solve the case, but they hope their work can at least preserve the story for generations to come.

Dunn and Hawkins findings are published in two articles highlighting the different aspects of this cold case.

They're currently working on their third and fourth edition.

You can read them all on Ellis you cold case project dot com.

And most people are still talking about what LSU did last Saturday night against Alabama and on as to why we cover stories that are important to people in Louisiana.

And so I'd say this is a story that is still important and becomes even more important.

Maybe Matt Muscala, who is ESPN radio guru in Louisiana and beyond, is here to talk about it.

And the smile on your face says it all.

I'll talk about this as long as people want to talk about this.

Yes, forever stories people will tell forever.

And you know, of course, Arkansas is a game tomorrow.

Mighty important, of course, any of the games are.

But four weeks ago, LSU lost to Tennessee.

When you see that compared to where LSU is now, it's astonishing.

Well, it's incredible.

It it shows what good coaching can do.

I think it also speaks to how much Brian Kelly and his staff had to go through a phase of discovery with this team.

Consider Andre through the first eight games.

They had six different offensive line combinations.

Of the 22 starters against Florida State, eight are no longer starting.

So much of this was a process of this staff figuring out their team.

You take pride in it and it's kind of exciting for Brian Kelly as he made that call to go four, two like that.

And it really shocked me and it shocked Alabama was running all over the field trying to figure it out and fans were trying to compose themselves to gather what was going to happen.

It happens and they make it and they win.

But even if he hadn't, I think he earned so much respect from LSU people, it's hard to imagine how far that goes.

I think the game against Florida State where he had a similar decision to go for two to win it, not in overtime in regulation, going to win it or kick the course of the peer to block.

I think that probably lingered.

The other thing, did you notice how emotional he was after the game?

Yeah, he was sort of tearing up on field.

Brian Kelly is not known as an emotional guy.

He's more of that sort of, you know, Irish, Northeast Red Face.

That's kind of his reputation yelling.

Yeah, he came to LSU, Andre for one reason.

He came here to win a national championship.

The only thing he hasn't been able to do and his two previous opportunities against Nick Saban's, Alabama's teams, they got blown out of the building for being 1 to 14 and 32 to 14.

So to to get this done in year one, I think was very validating for him.

What about what's next?

LSU suddenly could possibly, if they went out, play in the national championship round.

How wild is that?

I can't believe like saying it.

I can't believe we're having a very different conversation now.

Yeah, it went from hey, really nice season, good bowl game to LSU.

If they win against Arkansas and Ole Miss loses, LSU is going to Atlanta.

Where is it exactly?

Right.

If LSU manages to win out, go ten and two, you'll have a date with Georgia in the SCC championship.

Game number one, probably unbeaten Georgia.

If you manage to win that game, it's a big ask.

If you manage to win that game, you're an 11 into a SEC champion.

You're going to be in the college football playoff.

Big ask again and all that.

I predict that today.

But but it's amazing that we're even having the conversation.

Yeah.

In his first year of coaching, considering what happened in the first six weeks, even if you keep the Florida State and Tennessee in line, things have gotten so much better since then and again since Saturday night.

It gives so much reason for optimism in the future as well because yeah, yeah.

Let him start to build recruiting class upon a recruiting class and get this roster back to what it's supposed to look like.

And then you can really see in over the next decade the life of this contract you may have as as good or or more successful a decade as LSU's had in the last two.

And this quarterback.

Yeah, people I think love him.

Suddenly it's going to be he's going to have an interesting decision to make too.

Oh, he's got another year of eligibility.

But you keep playing this way.

His his draft prospects keep increasing.

You'd love to have him back for another year, because if he came back next year, Andre Yeah, he would be a Heisman frontrunner and LSU would be a national championship contender.

But that's a big if right now.

All right.

So let's look at what LSU has to do right now and what they have to focus on.

And do you fear that they may not somehow?

So I would be stunned at this point if they didn't end up winning the SCC West.

I think Brian Kelly has shown an incredible job this year of getting his team refocused.

A lot of people worry about Arkansas, 11 a.m., 38 degrees know let down spot they've.

Got some problems so.

Late.

All of that is is I think a valid concern.

But just look at one that you mentioned, the Tennessee loss.

We were all fearful when you lose to Tennessee and the next week you're going to Florida thinking, oh, man, they went another game, right?

And they played maybe their best game of the year and now they've stacked three good games on top of each other.

Brian Kelly is so detailed oriented, his attention to detail is masterful.

And I think he will have these guys ready to play and aware of what's ahead of them.

So I do expect them to win out.

I expect them to beat Arkansas, beat UAB, Texas A&M and go ten and two and then see what happens.

And we will just take it one game at a time.

So what is sticking in Arkansas right now?

But what I think is fascinating is that the UAB game, which I thought might have about a half full stadium, you may have a sellout in that game because it's the last time at home people will get to see this team.

Regular season mentality and Tiger Stadium.

And, you know, those football Saturdays in Tiger Stadium are so precious.

And yeah.

It's so fun that I come back to you.

People are people I think are going to take advantage of the opportunity to go in that stadium, especially if the Tigers get the win this weekend against Arkansas.

Yeah.

Thank you so much, Matt.

Good to see you.

My pleasure.

Appreciate it.

And in honor of our veterans, a new exhibit has opened at America's National World War Two Museum in New Orleans.

It's a first of its kind, nighttime, sound and light show.

Next week, I'll talk with CEO Stephen Watson of the World War Two Museum for next Friday's SWC.

And everyone, that is our show for this week.

Remember, you can watch anything any time, wherever you are with our LPD PBS app.

You can catch LBB News and Public Affairs shows as well as other Louisiana programs you've come to enjoy over the years.

And please like us on Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and Instagram for everyone.

Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

I'm Andre.

Morales and I'm kerosene.

Here until next time.

That's the state we're at every day.

I go to work for Entergy.

I know customers are counting on me.

So Entergy is investing millions of dollars to keep the lights on and installing new technology to prevent outages before they happen.

Together, together, together.

We power life.

Additional support provided by the Fred B and Ruth B Ziegler Foundation and the Ziegler Art Museum, located in Jennings City Hall.

The museum focuses on emerging Louisiana artists and is an historical and cultural center for Southwest Louisiana and the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

With support from viewers like you.