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If you didn’t get enough politics in 2019, you’ll love 2020.
In addition to presidential, U.S. Senate and U.S. House elections, a Morgan City mayor race and at least two tax propositions will appear on local ballots next year.
The tax propositions are a property tax renewal for Morgan City Municipal Auditorium and a new half-cent sales tax for parish public schools, both likely to appear on the May 9 ballot.
Parish Councilman Kevin Voisin and shipyard owner Lee Dragna, both of whom ran against current incumbent Frank “Boo” Grizzaffi in 2012, say they’re planning to run for mayor again in the Nov. 3 primary.
In the campaign to succeed Grizzaffi, who is term-limited, expect to hear a lot about the economy.
“We need to jump-start our economy and try to diversify our economy, too,” Voisin said.
As a Parish Council member, Voisin has had to deal with the effects of a 5-year economic downturn that depressed tax revenue. He said things may finally be looking up.
“The people I’ve been talking to are saying the phone is ringing and people are getting a few jobs,” Voisin said.
But the region can’t depend on the oil industry anymore, Voisin said. And he’s willing to take a no-new-taxes pledge while maintaining the current level of services.
Economy diversification is at the top of Dragna’s list, too. And he agrees that Morgan City must rely less on the oilfield.
Dragna said he’s the man to help the economy. He pointed to his two shipyards, their 180 employees and a $40 million-$45 million backlog, plus contacts developed while doing business with NASA and Space X.
And Dragna said he’d like to bring the city together again.
“It needs to be the way it used to be when everyone came here to work and everybody knew each other,” Dragna said.
Another rumored potential candidate, City Councilman Louis Tamporello, said Tuesday that he has no current plans to run for mayor but he isn't ruling it out, either.
In 2012, with a big turnout and the Obama-Romney presidential race at the top of the ballot, Grizzaffi got 35% of the primary vote in a five-candidate field. Dragna won the second runoff spot with 19%.
Voisin, who has served three terms from Parish Council District 7 and is nearing the end of a second term from at-large District 11, finished out of the running in 2012 with 14%.
In the general election, with a smaller turnout on a December Saturday, Grizzaffi beat Dragna 69%-31% to earn the first of his two terms.
Long before the mayoral election, Morgan City voters will be asked to renew the 2-mill property tax for the auditorium. The City Council approved a resolution Tuesday asking the state government to put the renewal on the May 9 ballot.
The tax raises $230,000 to $278,000 a year for the auditorium’s operation and maintenance, depending on the city’s assessed valuation.
Another property tax, established to service a debt that is being paid off, is also scheduled to expire next year. It amounts to about a mill, depending on the debt service requirements for that year.
The City Council talked briefly at the November meeting about asking voters to rededicate the debt service tax for some other purpose, but members haven’t taken any action.
A mill is 1/10th of a cent of tax applied to each $1 of a property’s assessed valuation. Homes are assessed at 10% of their market value.
The 2-mill tax adds $20 to the annual property tax bill for a $100,000 home. Louisiana’s homestead exemption does not apply to city taxes.
Another tax likely to appear on the May 9 ballot may prove to be more controversial.
The St. Mary Parish School Board voted Dec. 12 to ask voters for the additional half-cent sales tax before voters. President Michael Taylor argued that the board needs the added revenue to provide pay increases to teachers and staff members both as a reward for the district’s performance and to keep the district competitive.
But, without mentioning the School Board proposal directly, both Grizzaffi and Parish President David Hanagriff indicated they’d oppose new taxes. They said the parish’s economic slump make this a bad time to burden taxpayers and businesses.
Also in 2020, St. Mary residents will go to the polls to help pick a president. Republican President Donald J. Trump got 65% of the St. Mary vote in 2016.
The presidential primary date is April 4.
U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins, R-Port Barre, will be up for reelection in the 3rd Congressional District, which includes St. Mary. Higgins, completing his second two-year term, has drawn at least one opponent: Rob Anderson of Beauregard Parish. He ran as a Democrat in 2018, when Higgins won election in the primary.
U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Baton Rouge, will also be up for reelection in November 2020. Cassidy, a physician who has been active in health care policy debates, is completing his first term since beating three-term incumbent Mary Landrieu in 2014.

Dolly Durocher Chapman, 68, a native and resident of Morgan City, died Thursday, Dec. 12, 2019, at her residence.
She is survived by four daughters, Karen Philips of Bayou Vista, Tracy Rhodes of Berwick, Chasity Massicot of Kenner and Brittany Chapman of Colorado; a son, Gary Durocher of New Iberia; numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren; four sisters, Julie Simoneaux, Gloria Marino and Diana Ackman, all of Morgan City, and Mary Sons of Patterson; and a brother, Herbert Durocher Jr. of Patterson.
She was preceded in death by her parents, two children, a sister and a brother.
Visitation will be at 1 p.m. Friday at Twin City Funeral Home with graveside services following at 2 p.m. in Morgan City Cemetery.
Twin City Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.

Samuel Cross Jr., 82, a native of Franklin and resident of Jeanerette, died Friday, Dec. 6, 2019, at Ochsner St. Mary in Morgan City.
Visitation will be Saturday from 9 a.m. until services at 11 a.m. at Jones Funeral Home in Franklin. Burial will follow in St. John Cemetery-Pecot Street in Franklin.
He is survived by eight sons, Jerry Cross, Alfred Favors, Ray Favors, Jerry Favors, Samuel Favors, Mark Cross and Sammy Cross, all of Patterson, and Troy Singleton of Baldwin; two daughters, Yvonne Williams and Evelyn Cross, both of Patterson; four brothers, Calvin Cross, James Cross and Ernest Harrison, all of Franklin, and Edgar Harrison of Houston; three sisters, Glenda Savage and Thelma Coleman, both of Houston, and Joyce Jones of Baldwin; 14 grandchildren; 12 great-grandchildren; and a host of other relatives.
He was preceded in death by his parents, two brothers, two sisters, four sons and one grandson.
Jones Funeral Home of Franklin is in charge of arrangements.

Given the fact that we will celebrate almost anything, it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that Louisiana was the first state to recognize Christmas as a legal holiday.
We’ve celebrated the day from the time the first settlers set foot on our shores, but nobody declared it an official holiday until we did it in 1831. In fact, celebration of Christmas was banned for many years in the Puritan colonies of the northeast. Pilgrim leaders thought it shared too much with some old pagan rites. In Massachusetts they went so far as to punish anyone who baked or ate a plum pudding during the Yule season.
Puritan preacher Cotton Mather’s description of the celebration made it sound like Mardi Gras. He wrote in 1712 that the “Feast is spent in Reveling, Dicing, Carding, Masking, and in all Licentious Liberty,” and, even worse, by “Mad Mirth, Long Eating, by Hard Drinking, by Lewd Gambling, by Rude Reveling” and more.
It’s true that we can trace some of our Christmas customs back to ancient Roman days, even to the Druids who lived long, long ago in Britain. But the French and Spanish and Germans who were among our first settlers embraced the ancient ways and adapted them to their celebration.
The French and the Spanish adopted the tradition of midnight Mass at Christmas, followed by a huge feast. Nobody knows for sure how that custom began. Canon law decrees that the first Mass on Christmas should be in nocte (while it is still night). Early Christians sang that nocturnal Mass at the first cock’s crow, around three in the morning. In Spain, an early Mass is still sometimes called Missa del gallo, Mass of the Rooster.
Réveillon is the French name for the feast that followed midnight Mass, and a feast it was. Extension Service agents recreated a typical réveillon during a convention several years ago. It included, among other delicacies, deviled eggs; baked eggs; a loaf of French bread laced with dates, apples, almonds, wine, and spices; daube glacé, dates soaked in wine, and three different wines to drink. Many of the feasts included gumbo, ducks or geese fresh from the wild, and dishes such as candied yams, rice and cornbread dressings, turkey, and ham, all of it topped off with coffee noir comme le diable, fort comme la mort, doux comme l’amour, et chaud comme l’enfer — black as the devil, strong as death, sweet as love, and hot as Hades.
According to legend, our Christmas trees originated in Germany, as did the ornaments we put on them. American trees were decorated with nuts and cookies and homemade ornaments until the 1890s, when dime-store mogul F. W. Woolworth began making buying trips to Germany. One year he came home with what today would be about half a million dollars’ worth of blown-glass tree ornaments. He sold every one of them in just three days. Christmas tree lights were invented about the same time by a guy who had the job of installing little bulbs on telephone switchboards. One year he made a string of them and put it on his tree, and that was that.
And, of course, we all have our private, family rituals. I don’t know if I invented the Ritual of the Great Shaking, but as a kid I was one of its most fervent practitioners.
Our family gathered at my grandparents’ house each Christmas Eve to distribute gifts, most of which were put under the tree well before the big evening. That is how the Ritual of the Great Shaking began. Each grandchild (I presume the others did it, too) sneaked into the “tree room,” found their presents, shook them to get a clue about what they might be, then carefully placed them in the front of the tree so that Grandad would hand them out first.
I was reminiscing about it a dozen or so years ago when one of my cousins pointed out that Grandad knew all about the ritual. “Boy, were you a dummy,” she said. “That’s why Grandad always started at the side of the tree and the girls and the grownups got their presents first.”
I refuse to believe that kindly old gentleman was, in fact, sneakier than me.
A collection of Jim Bradshaw’s columns, "Cajuns and Other Characters," is now available from Pelican Publishing. You can contact him at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.