Jenny Beth takes a trip to the bayou and visits with Louisiana State Rep. Blake Miguez. Blake is a businessman, an attorney, and a world champion pistol shooter. He is a founding member of the Louisiana State Freedom Caucus and is currently serving as the House Majority Leader in the Louisiana State House. Blake is also a candidate for Louisiana State Senate. In this episode, Blake lays out the incredible opportunities the state of Louisiana has if it will just elect conservative leaders.
Jenny Beth takes a trip to the bayou and visits with Louisiana State Rep. Blake Miguez. Blake is a businessman, an attorney, and a world champion pistol shooter. He is a founding member of the Louisiana State Freedom Caucus and is currently serving as the House Majority Leader in the Louisiana State House. Blake is also a candidate for Louisiana State Senate. In this episode, Blake lays out the incredible opportunities the state of Louisiana has if it will just elect conservative leaders.
Twitter: @BlakeMiguezLA @JennyBethM
Website: www.blakemiguez.com
Blake Miguez (00:00):
We have a transition going on in Louisiana right now away from sort of the good old boy style, status quo politics, basically ripping away the power out of their fingertips. But this is a brighter future for Louisiana's children and our grandchildren. If we could get more conservative voices in Baton Rouge. And I'm seeing the trend. It's pushing that way every single day.
Narrator (00:18):
Keeping our republic is on the line and it requires Patriots with great passion, dedication, and eternal vigilance to preserve our freedoms. Jenny Beth Martin is the co-founder of Tea Party Patriots. She's an author, a filmmaker, and one of time magazine's most influential people in the world. But the title she's most proud of is Mom To Her Boy, girl Twins. She has been at the forefront fighting to protect America's core principles for more than a decade. Welcome to the Jenny Beth Show.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:50):
I'm Jenny Beth Martin and for this episode of the Jenny Beth Show. We are interviewing Blake Mazz and we are in New Iberia, Louisiana. He is currently the house majority leader in the Louisiana State House and he is running for state Senate. Blake, thank you so much for opening up your office and having us here today.
Blake Miguez (01:09):
Jenny, thank you so much for coming here. We're fresh off the campaign trail and the minute we get off air, we're going to be right back on the campaign trail. I'm running for the state senate and District 22. Right now we're only three weeks away from election day and one week away from early voting. So things are very busy here in the meas household and the meas campaign trail.
Jenny Beth Martin (01:25):
Very good. So in Louisiana it's a jungle primary. Explain that to people who maybe aren't familiar with that.
Blake Miguez (01:31):
So we're one of, I think three states that have a jungle primary. So whatever party you are, if you're not no party, you sign up to vote and it's whoever gets 50 plus one vote. So in my particular race, we have five candidates. Me being one of them, we have two Republicans, two Democrats and one independent. So if no one reaches 50 plus one votes on the first round, then we'll go into a runoff in November. So the two highest vote getters will be in the runoff if no one reaches that threshold.
Jenny Beth Martin (02:00):
Okay, well, I hope that maybe we don't have to do a runoff, but if we do, then we'll know.
Blake Miguez (02:05):
That's the goal is to try to win it in the first round. But with that many people in the race, it's never a guaranteed, but we have our sight set high and we're striving for that. And whether we win on October 14th or we got to go into November, we're ready at the end of the day. We want to make sure we get a W and make a win for conservatives because I've been a very loud conservative voice for people at the capitol and we have a transition going on in Louisiana right now away from sort of the good old boy style, status quo politics in which we're basically ripping away the power and I mean, they're out of their fingertips and they don't like it too much, so they're fighting back really hard. So that's a lot of the resistance that I've seen on the campaign trail, but this is a brighter future for Louisiana's children in our grandchildren. If we could get more conservative voices in Baton Rouge, and I'm seeing the trend, it's pushing that way every single day,
Jenny Beth Martin (02:53):
Why do we need to have more conservatives in Louisiana specifically?
Blake Miguez (02:57):
Well, it's very simple. Just look at the statistics. Louisiana has an out-migration problem. We lost 48,000 people last year to neighboring states. Now keep in mind, we are part of the south and the south picked up 1.4 million in residents last year. So where are all these people going and who are they? Well, these people are leaving Louisiana. They're going to neighboring states like Texas, Florida, and most recently Mississippi. And who are these people? Well, they're our children, our grandchildren, and we're in a situation where we're losing our youngest and our brightest talented individuals to these neighboring states, and we've got grandparents now have to get on airplanes and fly to these states to go visit their grandchildren. We're talking about a situation where these are multi-generational families from Louisiana. My family in particular on both sides has been Louisiana for seven generations. Wow. We don't want to lose the next seven generations to another state, and where are we at?
(03:46):
We're at the bottom of all the good lists and at the top of the bad lists, and that's a bad place to be and we want to make sure we want to come off the bottom of those bad lists. And how do you do that? You get rid of the old status quo and what is the status quo? Just a few corrupt politicians. I say a few lightly. It's probably a lot of corrupt politicians in the past and status quo policies that have held Louisiana back. You want to fix this state, you want to keep our children here, make sure it's affordable to live here and make sure we have job opportunities for our children. Well, how do you do that? Control government spending. Make sure we have a legal environment that doesn't sue every small business out of this state and make sure you have a tax code that's fair and that taxes make sure people are paying more, people are paying less tax than the few people that are left in the state paying all the taxes. I mean, think about the out migration we've had. We're ranked the top five in states for out migration. We're along there with states like California and Illinois and New York. There's something, you see a trend here. Yeah,
Jenny Beth Martin (04:42):
That's not for a seed in the south people. I don't think most people around the country would imagine that's happening
Blake Miguez (04:49):
Here, but we do have something unique about Louisiana that aligns. If you look at the data, we're the only state in the south that's run by Democrat governor.
Jenny Beth Martin (04:58):
There you go.
Blake Miguez (04:59):
I've seen the governor and particularly the state senate veto more great legislation the last eight years, which has put our state back. We should be making progress. We're the state that needs to be ahead of the curve in order to catch up. And we've had a democratic governor with a Republican majority, which I'm proud to say we are making progress here in the legislature. We're hoping to make progress at the governor's mansion because this year is our election year on October 14th, and won't just be me on the ballot running for the state Senate, we'll have the opportunity to elect a new Republican governor. And we are fortunate right now. We have a Republican governor candidate who's endorsed by the state Republican Party right here from Acadiana, right here from my backyard. That's Jeff Landry, and he's a very conservative, constitutionally conservative, reform-minded candidate, aligns very well with political ideology and he has the backbone and the courage to do what's right to make the state a better place for our kids and our grandkids.
(05:54):
I look forward to the opportunity of working with that new governor and he's fighting the same type of fight that I'm fighting good old boy establishment, and we've got to get rid of the past if we want to make sure Louisiana can see forward to the future in recycling old politicians, whether it's on the local level or the state level is not going to get us there. We have no more time left. I know people are worried about this country and we'll deal with that next year in a presidential election, but right now we're just trying to save Louisiana.
Jenny Beth Martin (06:20):
When you see that you're at the bottom of the bad list, explain what that means.
Blake Miguez (06:26):
Look, I mean you're talking about job opportunities and economic indicators. Remember, Louisiana is growing just like every other state. We're not a third world country, but how fast are we growing? We're judged next to every other state. And when you look at economic indicators, we're at the bottom. I think we're 49th on the list of growth economic opportunities. That's job opportunities for our children. So when our children grow up, what do they after we educate 'em, what do they do? They lead a job to raise their families and make sure it's affordable. Well, they're just going right over there to Texas that picked up probably 750,000 people last year. If you continue down this same trend at our next census, we're going to lose another congressman. You know how important that is in dc You lose another congressman, your voice is eroding away. Louisiana is eroding away.
(07:13):
And have you been around Louisiana? Seen all the amazing things that we have here? If not, I could give you a long list and you'd have to stop me. Louisiana's greatest asset is its people. You go down the road, you catch a fly tire, somebody's going to pull over and help you Here. I can tell you amazing people, amazing food, amazing culture. I mean our jazz music we just talked about our food and our festivals, our tourism ministry, which we're rebuilding an agriculture industry that's robust, an oil and gas industry that we're rebuilding as well. We have natural resources under our feet. We have some of the best hunting and fishing here in the entire nation. The best. I mean if you go around, it's beautiful in these swamps and so much history. Yeah, what's been holding us back bad political policies of the past.
(07:54):
We're still in the Huey P Long era where we need to make sure we need to move forward and embrace leaders like Jeff Landry and Donald Trump and other people that want to fix and make our country great, but also we just want to save Louisiana. Make Louisiana as great as it can be. Like I said, a place that we can all be proud to call home. And the only way we're going to do that is by putting constitutional conservatives and conservative money individuals in office that are the voice of the people that don't answer to the establishment and don't answer to the people that have been making their living off of government paychecks or government contracts that answers directly to the people. They're frustrated more than ever here in Louisiana because they are watching their greatest asset, their children, their grandchildren move into other states after seven to eight generations here in this beautiful state that we have, I'm just as frustrated as them.
(08:40):
That's why I ran for office because I'm worried my kids are going to move out. So that's where we all need to work together as a team. Look, I've seen the changes since 2015 when I was elected, very moderately led state and I've seen a lot of moderate still around in the legislature down here, they call 'em rhinos Republican's, a name only. But I've stood up. I've fought against the governor who's a Democrat. I've fought against the liberal left. I fought against the Republican establishment, some leaders in some very high positions and put myself in some very uncomfortable positions because I thought that it was the right thing to do and I thought that the people's voice needed to be heard. But I'm hopeful just this last spring, Louisiana, I was able to visit with a Democrat. I consider him, they call him blue dog Democrats down here, socially conservative Democrats who he had been voting with the Republican delegation for three years this term. I said talk to him, said, why are you a Democrat? I mean, look at what the national party's doing. I mean, this doesn't align with your views. You vote more with us than them. After three years, I finally convinced him to switch parties after being in the legislature for 47 years.
(09:43):
I'm going to turn 42 next month. He's been the legislature longer than I've been alive. And we were able a conservative Democrat and a conservative Republican, and we look at our age disparity is very large. He's twice my age. We found common ground in our children. It was best for our state. I was able to convince him to move and switch to Republican party in this springtime creating the first super majority in our state's history. Democrats have ran this state the entire history of our state. Now Republicans have an opportunity to step up and run this thing and run it like it needs to be run. And like I just told you earlier, we've got an opportunity to elect the Republican governor. Louisiana's best days are ahead. I know the people feel the same way I do. I can see it in the feedback that I get on the campaign trail.
(10:29):
I can see that the red wave coming not only in the legislature but for the governor's race as well. And I think I have hope that Louisiana can do what's necessary to move this state forward. And I look forward to it because I can tell you the last 30 sessions in the last eight years that I've been through under this Democrat left leaning governor has not been good for Louisiana. It's led to high crime. It's led to less job opportunities, more billboard and lawsuit attorneys than ever. Some of the highest taxes in the nation, some of the highest auto insurance rates. Now, some of the highest homeowners insurance rates we got a lot of fixing to do. And I can tell you it's going to take bold leadership and it's going to take a backbone. It's going to take courage, and I'm ready to go to work.
Jenny Beth Martin (11:09):
That is very, very important to do. I want to talk about some of that and elaborate on it before I do Louisiana when it comes to crime, there's some pretty shocking statistics about crime in Louisiana, aren't there?
Blake Miguez (11:26):
Yes, it's very shocking. I think we have three of the top 10 cities for crime here. I think of Shreveport, Baton Rouge and New Orleans. I mean we all New Orleans was bad, but now we got two more to add to the list. That's something our Republican governor candidates came out and said that when we come in in January, we swear in on the ninth, we're going into a special session to address this issue. We had some progress, the legislature this last session on trying to be tougher on fentanyl, which is pouring across our borders. It's killing people every single day. But we got to take a different approach and empower our law enforcement and the legislation needs to stand behind this initiative to make sure our cities are a lot safer because I can tell you tourism, we talked about that earlier, and you all choose to be a place everyone went.
(12:11):
And I can tell you people down where I'm at in the Cadian area, we don't go to New Orleans as much anymore because we're concerned about the safety of ourselves. So that's the state's largest cash register that has not taken in tourism income and it creates a plethora of other problems when we're talking about our budgets and just people in New Orleans are more frustrated than us. We want to go to New Orleans, listen to their music, have a good time, and they want you there and they want us there and they want us paying taxes there. And they're frustrated with their mayor and their leadership there just like we're frustrated the situation that they have there. And again, status quo, both run by blue Democrats run by both the state and that local government there, and it hadn't served those people too well. Look, our governor candidate says this and this sums it up. Louisiana just wants a government as good as its people and that's what they deserve and we intend to bring them.
Jenny Beth Martin (13:06):
I think it's so important. When I first realized that three of the top 10 crime cities, one of those bad lists are here in this state. This is not a very big state,
Blake Miguez (13:18):
Only 4.2 million people.
Jenny Beth Martin (13:20):
And to think that the crime in these three cities, two of the cities are not large metro cities like Chicago and San Francisco and New York, and yet they're still on that list.
Blake Miguez (13:32):
I think we have stories, 4.2, 4.6 million people here roughly. The numbers gone down, unfortunately. But look, we had a gin legislative session that said we're going to start a pilot program for victims rights. So victims could go online and see exactly where the criminal had victimized their families, exactly where the clarity on his sentence, where he was in the process. It was a pilot program for those three areas that were the top ranked and the governor twisted arms and it ended up dying in the legislature. And that's just one good bill example of things that could make our streets safer. And it's just unfortunate. It seems like the governor's more worried about releasing criminals out of jail instead of putting the ones that need to be in jail there. So they stop victimizing law abiding citizens. Our constitutional Second amendment rights is another issue. You want to deter crime. You make sure the law abiding citizens can then defend themselves. I mean, look around this. I talked about our children moving other states. I talked about it being unaffordable to live here. Well, all the surrounding states have constitutional carry rights here in Louisiana. It's illegal to open carry a firearm, which I don't recommend doing because it makes people uncomfortable unless you're, and
Jenny Beth Martin (14:38):
You knew a little about firearms. Yes,
Blake Miguez (14:41):
I know a little bit about firearms being a world champion shooter and shooting my entire life. I probably fired over a million rounds in my lifetime and I'm trying to shoot another million before I've seen my better. Well, what I'm telling you is right now it's legal to carry a pistol openly, but if you put a jacket on that's illegal, well, that's the most appropriate way to carry a firearm, right? Because the only time you use a firearm when you most necessarily have to, when your life's endangered and you got to defend yourself. We're not trying to showboat our guns around here unless you're on a ranch and you're out in the country in the woods, that's a different story. But you need a government's permission. You need a permit to do that. But yet you go to Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Arkansas, and you can constitutionally carry no problem.
(15:22):
This is a bill that receives overwhelming majority through the legislature. It was vetoed by the governor, probably the first constitutional carry bill that's been vetoed in the entire nation, and our legislature couldn't find the courage to override it. Where did it fail in the Senate? Couldn't find the courage. So look, I'm a numbers guy. I'm very hard to get to the threshold to override a governor here in Louisiana because as you know, you may not know Louisiana's governor position is one of the strongest in the entire nation as opposed to our lieutenant governors, which is just the head of tourism. I mean, our governor has veto line on veto power on the budget. He has veto power on any bill and he controls the bond agenda, which determines where all the capital outlay spending goes. So he's got a lot of carrots and even bigger sticks, and he's used that position in the state to make throughout the history of our state to not be overridden.
(16:14):
And we overridden overrode the governor recently with two issues, women's fairness and sports as well as our congressional maps redistricting, but we had a lot of other good bills that constitution carried we just couldn't get the votes for, but I'm tired of having to try to get super majority votes. You get a Republican governor that has the courage in the backbone and he sets his agenda out that's best for Louisiana, which also says all that woke cliff craziness that comes from California don't belong here. So you can just not even bring the bills and you bring positive things like focus on our education system, job opportunities, strengthening constitutional rights, protecting our children, protecting innocent life in the womb, and you send that to the legislature. I can tell you this legislature through a majority vote, probably almost a super majority vote, is going to send this back to the governor.
(16:59):
We're going to sign it into the law. We'll finally have a state where our constituents can be proud. I've seen some of the things going on in Florida. They're proud whenever they kill all this crazy woke left stuff overnight and they focus on what's best for their constituents. That's the kind of leadership we want here in Louisiana, and I think that's kind of leadership governor, hopefully soon to be governor Jeff Landry. Currently our attorney general is going to bring here, and that's the kind of leadership that we're going to need. We're going to need bold, aggressive leadership to move forward. We are behind when you're 49th, you got a long way to go, but we got to start working in that direction. We got to move the state in the right direction. Are those next generations won't live here. Remember I told you eight generations, I want you to go back and you go down here down the road in New Iberia Building Plaza. It's our town center. Go look where the statue's at. There's a bunch of names of nine. I think it's nine families that founded this town. The city of New Iberia Juan. That's my seventh great grandfather right here in New Iberia.
Jenny Beth Martin (17:56):
So he was one of the founders of the city.
Blake Miguez (17:58):
Exactly. Wow. My mother's side of the family, which is Newville Dele Shoty, they're from the Lauraville, COTA Homes, St. Martinville area. They helped build the sugar mill there in the 17 hundreds. They've been here for seven generations. Half of that's directly from France. The other half is through Nova Scotia, Acadian French. So we have a strong Spanish and Acadian French heritage here. I'm just an example of one of many. We've had seven to eight generations living here, right here in Louisiana. Wouldn't it just be terrible to lose that kind of family history and heritage? I mean, you ought to see if I let you go, if you knew how to survive and let you go out there, you could live off the land out here. You can catch crabs, you can hunt ducks, you can hunt doves. You can even catch an alligator if you're good at wrestling one. But you can live off the land here. We got amazing deep water fish. We got freshwater fish. You can go shrimp in here. I mean it's really an amazing estuary that we have here in south Louisiana on the Mississippi River Delta and people want to live here. We enjoy our Cajun heritage and we take our football and our politics very seriously.
Jenny Beth Martin (19:05):
Well, you're in the south SS e c schools tend to do that. That's
Blake Miguez (19:10):
Right. Have you ever been to Death Valley? We can. Might be to pop your eardrum over there.
Jenny Beth Martin (19:13):
Yeah, I haven't been, but I want to mention something. I went to U G A I am A U G A grad, but I went to public schools in Georgia and when I was going through public schools, we competed with Mississippi to be the worst school system in the state. We are 49th or 50th consistently for years in Georgia. And that was something that even in high school, we realized that we weren't getting as good of an education as other parts of the country. It's a bit demoralizing. And then if you had no economic growth on top of it, I can understand why this is a huge, huge issue that has to be, it has to be addressed for the
Blake Miguez (20:01):
Younger people. At the same time, our teachers are being distracted. My wife's a special needs public school teacher and I hear all the complaints from the classroom. I mean, she just wants to help children. She wants to help mold the minds of children so they can be great leaders in our community for the future. The pay is very important. Believe me. She would like to get more pages like any other teacher has and the legislature has slowly worked in that direction. But more importantly, she wants a classroom environment where she can teach. She doesn't have to worry about all the bureaucracy and the red tape and then shouldn't have to worry about all this crazy indoctrination left liberal indoctrination. I mean, I'm from the country. It's on your birth certificate, what your biological sex is. Okay. The other thing is those kinds of conversations about the birds and the bees belong between parents and their children, not between teachers and their students.
(20:46):
They're there to teach education. They're not there to talk about their sexual preferences or give advice on what their student's sexual preferences may be. Those kids will grow up and be adults one day and they can figure all that stuff out and they can make decisions on their own. So as their children, let's just keep our children, children have 'em focused on God, education lover our country. Let's make sure that we have a positive influence where we can make them into the leaders that need to be. I was very fortunate. I had a very supportive family. I was able to be in scouting. I ended up being an Eagle Scout. I got taught the right things, how to serve my community. I met a beautiful redhead who's captivated my life and been my support system. My wife, her being a public school teacher has captivated what and given me the drive and show me what it's like to be in public service.
(21:31):
I mean, she's been my support system along the entire way. And my three children, I mean they rank an age from 21 down to eight years old. We got a very, very busy household. If anybody's got anything to lose out this state, it's me, it's us. It's our families here in south Louisiana. Our heritage, we got to get this state right. And I know that conservative values and principles align for the people and that's what the government needs to align with the government as well. And like I said, they just need the government. They deserve. They absolutely one is going to serve them.
Jenny Beth Martin (22:05):
Now, when we talk about government spending and economic opportunity, there were some shenanigans in the legislative session recently, right, that were not going to create economic opportunity but might've helped line pockets of people who wanted additional government spending.
Blake Miguez (22:24):
Well, there's a lot of extra money here flowing through Louisiana, which has been something different because we've had a lot of deficits throughout the past and I've been in tough situations where we've had to have conversations about raising taxes or cutting critical government services like higher ed and healthcare. Most recently we've seen in 2020 we've had the Covid Pandemic, which saw a lot of federal money intruding into our state through federal government assistance as well as we had two hurricanes hit a lot of FEMA spending, a lot of construction spending due to the hurricanes we had two years ago on our southwest and southeast coast. All that together had a lot of surplus dollars. They're not organic dollars from our normal economy. They're just federal assistance that's just flowing through our economy, propping up our numbers. It's the one opportunity that you have to put Louisiana sound financial footing moving forward.
(23:10):
White study before and had heard the problems of the past back into can Katrina hitting, was it 2006? I believe in 2008, I think it was the 2008 session. Those legislators had another influx of money. And what they did at the time was they grew government, they grew reoccurring expenditures and they grew programs. And once all this money started dwindling down, they had to go back to the environment they were before, which was 49th out of 50th on their rankings on economic opportunities and business opportunities. They had a shortfall. And how do you settle a shortfall when the good old boys are in charge? You sell it with a tax increase, which I've voted against every tax increase since being elected. They don't live within their means. They don't live within their budgets. They wait until the emergency happens and then they say, oh, I'm sorry, we're going to shut down.
(23:51):
Actually, our governor actually said he was going to shut down L S U football and put granny on the curb out of the nursing home unless you voted on a tax increase. I mean, it sounds like you'd hear in Washington. CNAs was a perfect example of that. So we saw the problems of the past with all this extra money, wanted to make sure and invest in things that are going to move the state forward. So the conservatives got together, freedom Caucus members built a larger coalition of members who are fiscally conservative and said, we're going to take this extra money. We're going to limit the growth of our reoccurring expenditures and use uses one-time money on one-time expenditures. And those would be things like hopefully paying down as much unfunded, accrued liability debt as possible, investing in infrastructure, things that we can pay down old debts, things that we could do where we can make sure our sharp falls of the future would be reduced.
(24:36):
And we took that approach a very fiscally responsible approach. We can tell you like any other budget scenario, there's always pushback from the big government guys. They always push back. They want to spend, spend, spend. We want to pay down debt and be responsible. Obviously, there's always a compromise in the process, good news and bad news. The bad news was is that this thing got pushed at the very last minute. It required in order to spend an additional 1.4 billion on top of billions of extra spending we had on top of our last year's budget, it required the expenditure limit to be through a two thirds vote to be pierced. And the legislature decided to do that was only 19 members, including myself, that decided not to do that because we thought spending all that money in the last year of this governor's term before we get new leadership coming in wasn't the smartest thing to do.
(25:22):
And then once the expenditure limit was busted through a resolution, we thought, okay, we'll see what they actually want to spend the money on. I was monitoring things like the debt monitoring things like teacher pay monitoring, things like law enforcement pay, things that we knew that were important to us, but we didn't get that budget bill down to the last 20 minutes of session, 20 minutes. And these things flew through the process, we're asking questions, and we got a few promises on some of the larger ticket items. And actually our leadership put us through a position where we had to pick between either voting on a budget that you knew I knew more than anybody else. I was on the appropriations committee and I was pulling people on the side. I feel bad for the other members that didn't know what was going on. They had to choose between voting for a budget.
(26:06):
They didn't know what was in it or pushing us into a special session, which would require three forts. Majority vote to pass the budget in election year, which would've transferred all the power from the Republicans to the Black Caucus and the Democrats. And they would've even spent more money than we would've spent and they would've spent it on things, programs and other things. So that's the position we got put in. So we started asking questions. I started asking questions. We started making motions, things like that. The speaker just totally went berserk on us. Turned into, I guess he turned into a king up there, started ignoring our motions, started breaking parliamentary procedures and just started passing the bills, opening 'em up for a vote. We wouldn't even taking roll calls and lockouts or anything of those. Nature just opened 'em up for votes and the bills ultimately passed because Republicans were just scared to, it would be worse if we ended up into a special session.
(26:56):
The Senate was having hearings, the Senate who signed off on a lot of these bills and the negotiation process started having hearings after the fact to figure out where they spent the money. I mean, that's just ridiculous. The people of Louisiana deserve better. I had went to the floor, I think I'd asked the speaker who went to the floor, it was probably a week or two before the end of the session and asked him some tough questions. Like we went the bill 72 hours before. We need to pass it so we can know everything that's in it so we can make sure we had the best product for the people of Louisiana. Unfortunately, the moderate leadership was more concerned about punishing conservative members who didn't vote against the taxpayer to spend an additional 1.4 billion on top of the billions they already spent. So they were worried about retribution and they just didn't worry about transparency. So we found ourselves in a situation where the capital outlay budget bill got passed in eight seconds. I mean, that's the time it takes to ride a bull to get a trophy. Okay, you got to stay on a 30
Jenny Beth Martin (27:53):
Seconds. How long was the bill?
Blake Miguez (27:55):
The bill was hundreds of pages long
Jenny Beth Martin (27:58):
And how much money was in it?
Blake Miguez (27:59):
Oh, hundreds of millions of dollars, if not a billion dollars of spending eight seconds, I mean eight seconds. Went through and passed the bill, didn't take any motions up, boom, passed the bill through. And look, I don't want to cast the most negative shadow on the budget because at the end of the day, the conservatives did get $690 million worth of debt payments passed through the legislature. I think 150 million or so got vetoed by the governor. So we did pay off some unfunded accrued liability. We did invest in some great infrastructure projects, but we also bought band uniforms and redid museums that didn't need to be redone. And we put money in programs that nonprofit programs that NGOs and these types of things that you could use the money to invest more in infrastructure or programs that can actually create job opportunities for our kids. So it was more good than bad, but man, if we'd all worked together and members would've been there trying to seek retribution on conservatives, then we probably could have got a better product for the people of Louisiana.
Jenny Beth Martin (28:56):
Now you're the majority leader. That's right. You're usually the majority leaders normally thought of as leadership, but you're
Blake Miguez (29:05):
This state a little conservative. This state's a little different. So in this state, the speaker of the house has all the committee appointments, sets the agenda, sets it all the Republican majority leader or the delegation chairman as myself, I have the heartstrings. So my job is to rally the troops, which is we have seven one members without any characteristics and come to them and say, guys, this is the right thing to do. This is why you should vote this way. And look, majority of that delegation was on board with me. They were standing up and saying, we want to see the bills in advance, they want to pay down debt. And we held our leadership accountable. But when you don't control the agenda and you control the bill, they brought the bill at the last minute. A lot of frustrated members throughout the body. But we did hold the leadership economy.
(29:48):
I tell you, if Republicans wouldn't have got together, we'd have saw reoccurring expenditures grow out the wazoos things we couldn't afford in years in our outgoing years. And look, lemme remind you that we know, I hate to say certain, but by statute we know that about $800 million is dropping off of the books in 2025, the second year of our new governor because we have a temporary sales tax, call it temporary. It's been on the books for nine years, that's dropping off 0.45. Plus we moved some money from a vehicle sales tax out of the general budget where it didn't belong into our Transportation Trusts fund, which goes into roads and asphalt actually repairing our roads, which are in disarray in Louisiana. So that's falling off the books and we knew, we know that's falling off the books. So in order to stop that shortfall, you got to do things like paying off debt at high interest rates.
(30:36):
You've got to put more into one-time expenditures versus reoccurring expenditures to sort of control which outgoing years would look like. And I think we did a relatively good job at that, but I think we're still staring down the barrel of a potentially 500 million to $1 million shortfall with the new governor. But I seem to think that some of these members who are not a big fan of the conservative candidates for governor, were saying, man, you know what? This is my last year in office. I'm going to bring home the bacon. I'm going to spend it all in my home area and I'm not going to worry about what the next governor's got to deal with. They probably said, I don't even particularly like his politics, so I'm going to do what's best for me and my politics. The problem is that's not best for Louisiana and our children
(31:19):
And we got to deal with the problems as we move forward. The fortunate part is that our fiscal year starts in July, so that old governor only has six months of control over that budget. So when that new governor comes in, if he's a fiscal conservative, which I know the lead candidate is, he can start rearranging some of those dollars and fix or mitigate any types of damages and start looking towards settling out that whatever that deficit may be. And look, those numbers change every day, but we know there's a deficit there coming up in about two years
Jenny Beth Martin (31:47):
Right now, in addition to being the majority leader, you are also a member of the Freedom Caucus here. Yes. When did that start?
Blake Miguez (31:57):
So the Freedom Caucus, they have a state network now, and I think there's around 11, 12 states, about a dozen states that are setting up local Freedom Caucus, state Networks chapters in each state. I was one of the founding members who formed a Freedom Caucus in the spring here in Louisiana, and I can tell you they hit the ground running. They got together with small, very small numbers, but very tight-knit team that's built strong together and very well aligned have influenced on a very large magnitude. They're the members, and I won't say who they are because they're undisclosed, but they're the members that do their homework. They're the members that read all the bills. They're the members that have the backbone, the courage to speak up. They're the members that go out and do what needs to be done in order to make sure that the voice of the constituents back home in Louisiana, that conservative voice is brought to the capitol and they've broken through the good old boys and the status quo.
(32:50):
And I can tell you they've also started a Freedom Caucus PAC that's run independent from the membership and they're getting involved in the election process here, the reelection process going on. We are finally starting to see all the conservative pieces start to come together and fight a unified front. And a lot of that credit goes towards the Freedom Caucus for started putting that together and making sure all the conservative voices, all the conservative allies, every advocate, every blog, every conservative writer, every conservative, every APEC Republican member who's conservative has a place to all get together and we can make sure we're a very pointed spear and we can charge forward and make sure that the state gets to government it deserves, and we can make sure we hold our leaders accountable and also make sure that we protect our leadership there. I know the Freedom Caucus wants to recruit and grow their leadership, but they have a very high threshold in order to become a member. They're not like these other delegations. You don't just pay a dues every year and sign your name to the ballot as a Republican and you get to be a member. You really have to prove yourself. You have to show that you're willing to stand strong, you're willing to stand for conservative values and you're willing to do the work or there's no place for you there
Jenny Beth Martin (34:02):
That's amazing and such a small group of people can make a huge difference. I've watched that happen in Washington DC with a few dedicated people who are willing to do the right thing and risk it all in order to stand for what is right
Blake Miguez (34:18):
Because a lot of times a lot of folks just want to follow. They're looking for an easy route. There's a lot of members of the great members. I represent the Republican delegation, very diverse group, very large. We have a lot of great members. They just want to be led in the right direction with the proper solutions. Unfortunately, our leadership, our speaker and some of his leadership team has led us in the wrong direction, but they've always wanted to go in the right direction. We're just a few leaders away from moving the state in the right way. It's not like we are just infected with bad legislators, it's just we're infected with bad leaders. And if we can just make sure from the start, we start from the governor's mansion, then you elect a strong speaker to house. You elect a strong president of the Senate if they are conservative minded and reform-minded and they have the courage. Politics will always be politics and it takes a long time to clean up Louisiana, but we got to start moving in the right direction. There's a lot of swamps in Louisiana need to be drained. A lot of alligators hiding out, lurking around a lot of water moccasins and it's time to put on our shrimp boots, our waiters, whatever it may be. I know the water's pretty high. Probablys a set of waiters, get out there and chug through it and do what's right for the people of Louisiana.
Jenny Beth Martin (35:28):
And if you are elected to the state Senate, what are the first things going to be that you will do?
Blake Miguez (35:33):
Well as a state senator, if I'm fortunate enough to be elected, I'm going to continue to for the things that we hold there. I've been fighting for a number of years. I have one of the most conservative voting records in the legislature. I'm going to fight for an instant life in the womb. I'm always going to fight to protect our children. I'm going to support our second Amendment rights. I'm going to try to solve this out migration problem by creating job opportunities for our future children and our children future generations. We're going to look at making sure our education system focuses on education. We're rebuild our infrastructure, make it affordable to live here in relationship to bills. I mean, I want to start working on accountable measures to control our spending and make sure that our expenditure limit is just that. It makes sure that the government doesn't grow faster than the private sector.
(36:16):
I want to be a team member and work on tax reform. Maybe one day we'll have the opportunity to eliminate the personal income tax here in Louisiana. I want to see what the options are to get that done. I wanted to see the options to make our tax code a little more evenly handed in the stop picking winners and losers so we can organically grow small business here. I can tell you I'm looking forward to getting involved in the first special session. If they call a session on crime, I want to make sure I'm on the forefront of fighting to protect Louisiana and hold criminals accountable and make sure our communities are safer for our children. Also look forward to bringing the constitutional carry bill carry. That's something that the people of Louisiana deserve. Years back. I work very closely with the Louisiana Suiting Association, the National Rifle Association, gun Owners for America and all the other different gun groups to make sure that Louisiana citizens have the strongest second amendment rights in the south.
(37:09):
And we did some great work on preemption, but constitutional carry is something that's long overdue and I plan on bringing that early on in the regular session if elected to the Senate. But this is about a team. We have a lot of experts on different things in the legislature, on different subject matter in the legislature and want to make sure those bills are put in the proper hands and whatever committees that I get assigned to by the next Senate president, I'm going to do my best job that I can in those committees and I'm going to find legislation that fits within those purviews and moves Louisiana forward in the best direction. But I can tell you, serving in 30 legislative sessions for the last eight and a half years, I've got a wealth of legislative experience in the process. I mean, I've been in the underdog position and had to make floor motions and make different procedures.
(37:54):
Look, I told you earlier, I didn't have leadership on my side all the time. You really got to get creative. You really got to dig down deep in order to be successful in those situations. I'm looking forward to a situation where I no longer have to play defense, but I can start playing offense where we can start moving the ball forward. And look, I'm okay if I'm on the sidelines getting the Super Bowl ring as long as I'm working with the team to make sure we move the ball forward. But I can tell you getting beat up on the defense with the Democratic governor for the last eight years, it's been tough. It's been the right thing to do because we've killed more bad legislation than we passed good legislation because he stopped a lot of it. But now we get the opportunity to actually pass some good legislation.
(38:32):
All I got to do is go through my notes for the last decade and find good bill that's been vetoed by the governor. Start with that. I mean, one example is election integrity. I mean Zuckerberg's Bill, we were the first state in the country to offer a bill to ban the influence of private funds and non governmental funds to pay for our local election systems. But yet it, it's not law in Louisiana, but it's in law in probably 25 states across this nation. Been vetoed by the governor twice, been killed by the Senate president at the request of the governor a third time. I had to bring it as a constitutional amendment and it'll be on the ballot at the same time as being in October. And I'm hoping that the voters will ban foreign government money as well as non-governmental money invading our local election system. We call 'em Zucker bucks. And I feel, I trust that they will. But look at how long it took to pass that common sense piece of legislation that was easily passed in 25 other states. So we've got a long list of catching up to do and I plan on working hard as a member of the state senate doing my part as a member of the team to move our state forward.
Jenny Beth Martin (39:35):
Well, it sounds to me like even though Louisiana right now is on the bottom of some bad lists, there's a lot of opportunity for upward upward progress with the right kind of leadership and the courage of convictions and constitutional, conservative, principled people. That's right. And you've got all of that opportunity and as you said, you've got wonderful natural resources and the number one resource is the great people in the
Blake Miguez (40:07):
State. Well, wouldn't it make sense to spend all of our time fighting for things that matter, like job opportunities, tax reform, spending reform, but yeah, we got to fight just to protect our children just to stop biological males competing in female sports, just to stop biological males from going into ladies' bathrooms to stop our, to stop the ban sex changes on minors. I mean, that stuff is common sense to me that woke cliff stuff doesn't belong in Louisiana. We can get that done in one session. I want to get focused on the things that matter that create job opportunities and we're distracted by those things. They're very important, but we're distracted because we're having to fight tooth and nail just to make sure our social conservative values are protected here in Louisiana. That should be a non-starter. We're a pro-life in a very conservative, valued state. Family values. I mean, those things are not up for compromise. They're not. They're just simply just not. And we need to make sure we have a governor that believes the same as us.
Jenny Beth Martin (41:07):
You are exactly right and not just a governor. You do need a governor who does that. And there's an amazing one who will be on the candidate, I mean a candidate who will be on the ballot.
Blake Miguez (41:19):
That's right. He talks funny just like me. He's from south Louisiana,
Jenny Beth Martin (41:23):
Man. He has so much courage. He's such a fighter, and you are as well, and we need people like you as well, so that you can turn Louisiana around and make a real difference and show what can be done when conservative values are put to the test.
Blake Miguez (41:40):
That's right. We can make people do anything. Look, we even had a New York boy come down and for a $500 bed, we got 'em to jump in to the swamps where all the alligators are in the lily pads. We got Donald Trump Jr to jump into the marsh. So if we get Donald Trump Jr. A boy from New York to jump into Marsh, I think we can fix the state of Louisiana.
Jenny Beth Martin (41:59):
Absolutely. You absolutely can. Well, thank you so much for having me in your office today, Blake, and I've learned a lot about you. I wish you luck in the next few weeks. I
Blake Miguez (42:09):
Really appreciate
Jenny Beth Martin (42:10):
It, and I really hope you do very well in the election. I know that you may have to go on to the runoff, so it might be another seven weeks or so before we know the turnout.
Blake Miguez (42:21):
We're dedicated. We're looking for a win, whether it's in the first round, the second round, we're going to achieve our goal. We're getting great feedback from the community. We've been around this district for the last year campaigning very vigorously. We've got a lot of great things to come with our campaign moving forward. My family's fully on board, they support me. We've got everything that we need to win, and we've got the momentum on our side. We look forward to just doing that. After I get elected, I look forward to getting back on the shooting range as well and competing again around the world and shooting a little bit. So we're fighting for our kids. We're fighting to exercise our Second Amendment rights, and I tell you what, I've tasted a lot of great gumbo and jambalaya and crawfish touche on the campaign trail. That's probably one of the best things about campaigning in south Louisiana.
Jenny Beth Martin (43:02):
Blake, thank you so much for having us in your office today, and I wish you the best of luck in the next few weeks as you are campaigning. This is Blake Gue. He is running for state senate in Louisiana. Be sure to check him out. There are amazing opportunities before the people of Louisiana as say, go to vote this October and then again in November. I'm Jenny Beth Martin, and this is a Jenny Beth show.
Narrator (43:25):
The Jenny Beth Show is hosted by Jenny Beth Martin, produced by Kevin Mohan and directed by Luke Livingston. The Jenny Beth Show is a production of Tea Party Patriots action. For more information, visit tea party patriots.org.
Jenny Beth Martin (43:45):
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