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President Donald Trump has picked an Assumption Parish native as his next secretary of energy.
Trump on Friday selected Dan Brouillette, deputy to departing Energy Secretary Rick Perry, to lead the Energy Department, calling him a “total professional” with unparalleled experience.
Brouillette is a native of Paincourtville in Assumption Parish, according to the office of U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, who offered his congratulations.
“Dan Brouillette understands the relationship between energy policy and the overall economy. Louisiana workers depend on thought-through energy policy,” Cassidy said in a press release. “Mr. Brouillette’s experience will serve the country well as the United States pursues energy dominance and energy employment.”
Brouillette has served as chief of staff to the U.S. House of Representatives Comm-ittee on Energy and Commerce under former U.S. Rep. Billy Tauzin. He has also served as a member of Louisiana’s State Mineral and Energy Board.
Brouillette is a U.S. Army veteran. He also previously worked as a vice president at Ford Motor Co. and as the head of public policy and senior vice president at United Services Automobile Association
Trump acted quickly on the appointment, just a day after Perry told the president that he would leave by year’s end.
Perry said his decision was not related to his role in administration actions on Ukraine that are now the focus of a House impeachment inquiry.
Brouillette has embraced Trump’s call for U.S. dominance of international energy markets and says he backs an “all of the above” policy that promotes nuclear and renewable solar and wind energy as well as coal, natural gas and oil.
Environmental groups, many lawmakers and others fault the administration for trying to spur the country’s oil and gas production boom rather than rein in the climate-damaging fossil fuels.
He has traveled from Japan to former Soviet states to Qatar and Israel and beyond, promoting U.S. natural gas and natural gas production companies.
“When it comes to exporting LNG, the United States is open for business,” Brouillette said in one such European stop last year.

Desiree Frentz Lyons, 57, a native of Franklin, resident of Charenton and former resident of Patterson, died Sunday, Oct. 20, 2019, at Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans.
She is survived by her husband, Edward Lyons Sr.; two children, Raven Guillory and Christopher Fryar; eight grandchildren; three stepchildren, Beonka Anderson, Precious Lyons and Edward Lyons Jr.; one step-granddaughter; four siblings, Jarrie Chaisson, Cherie Brewer, Konrad Frentz and Monique Bergeron; and a host of other relatives.
She was preceded in death by her parents.
Visitation will be Thursday from 10 a.m. until services at noon at Bethel Pentecostal Fellowship in Patterson. Burial will follow in Ibert’s Memorial Park Cemetery.
Ibert’s Mortuary is in charge of arrangements.

LAFAYETTE (AP) — Healthy eating may not be associated with the Acadiana lifestyle, but a local organization is trying to infuse cajun cuisine with healthier options.
Healthy Acadiana is a healthy communities coalition that began about two years ago. The group’s mission is to promote a healthier lifestyle for Acadiana through improving social, economic and physical environmental factors. As part of that mission, Healthy Acadiana is leading a healthy food drive — along with Eat Fit Acadiana and the Women’s Foundation — that officially kicked off on Oct. 10.
“Instead of a 5-pound bag of white rice, perhaps give the whole-grain rice or whole-grain foods,” said Bradley Cruice, one of the leaders of Healthy Acadiana. “Instead of canned food that’s high in sodium, maybe give the canned vegetables that are low in salt.”
The Acadiana area — particularly when it comes to diet and exercise — historically hasn’t been the picture of health.
Lafayette’s percentage of adults with obesity has increased over the last five years, from 28% to 32%, according to Louisiana Department of Health data. Other Acadiana parishes — Vermilion, Acadia, St. Landry, St. Martin, Iberville, Iberia and Evangeline — have rates above 35% for 2019, with Iberia Parish at 40%.
Cruice said Healthy Acadiana doesn’t want to change the region’s culture, which is so heavily centered on food. But instead, the group wants to promote healthy alternatives that can fit within the culture.
For example, Cruice said using whole-grain rice in dishes like jambalaya or gumbo instead of white rice can make a meal healthier without sacrificing taste.
“You can’t even tell the difference,” he said. “It’s simple things. It’s about choices. It’s about incorporating health into the culture.”
The push for healthier eating falls under one of the organization’s three task forces. It has one for promoting healthier food options, one for promoting physical activities and a third for developing policies and an environment that help the other two goals flourish.
One of the organization’s main priorities is education, Cruice said. He said educating people about how their choices impact health is key — even simple choices like stairs versus elevators.
Cruice quotes Yvette Quantz, a registered dietitian and leader of Eat Fit Acadiana, saying, “When we know better, we do better.”
“Our goal with this food drive is to help educate our community of donors that what we give can make a difference,” Quantz said in a press release. “If we can shift our mindset from just giving whatever food is in the back of our pantry to sharing nutrient-dense foods, we will see our community thrive with healthier and stronger citizens. Together we can help nourish and build a healthier Acadiana.”
The Healthy Acadiana Food Drive goes through October. Collected donations will be distributed among FoodNet, Second Harvest, and student pantries at South Louisiana Community College and the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
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Information from: The Advertiser, http://www.theadvertiser.com

Several rural parishes that supported Gov. John Bel Edwards in 2015 are now solidly in the corner of GOP challenger Eddie Rispone, or are at least leaning his way, creating what could become a critical roadblock for the incumbent’s reelection campaign.
In the 2015 primary, Edwards managed to win the most primary votes in 23 rural parishes that former U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu lost in 2014. While black voters were a driving force in his memorable election, it was also the country vote that helped Edwards cross the finish line.
(Those parishes were Jackson, Webster, Avoyelles, Union, Winn, Ouachita, Franklin, Richland, Lincoln, Catahoula, West Feliciana, Washington, Tangipahoa, St. Charles, Livingston, Ascension, St. Mary, Jeff Davis, Calcasieu, Beauregard, Allen, Evangeline and Rapides.)
After the recent primary vote, Rispone has either won or turned competitive 11 of those rural parishes, gathering a total of 116,000 votes to Edwards’ 156,000.
Rispone flipped five outright, including the parishes of Beauregard, Jefferson Davis, Livingston, Union and Webster. He lost another by less than 100 votes (Allen) and another five by less than 1,000 votes (Ascension, Catahoula, Evangeline, Jackson and St. Mary).
At this point, however, Rispone has merely made this segment of the runoff competitive. He’s down by 40,000 votes in these 23 rural parishes. Moreover, Edwards won Calcasieu, Tangipahoa and Rapides by more than 6,000 votes each, and enjoyed a more than 11,000 vote lead in Ouachita.
What’s not factored in here is where the votes of Congressman Ralph Abraham, the race’s third-place finisher from north Louisiana, will go, although it doesn’t take much imagination to see many of them landing at Rispone’s feet.
While every prognosticator around will tell you that Edwards has to increase black turnout in the runoff, these numbers from rural parishes show he has other problems as well. The governor has got to go into these rural parishes and grab the totals he pulled down in 2015.
That’s no easy task along the countryside, where folks have to “drive into town” to vote.
Then again, Edwards remembers those back country roads well. (His favorite XM station is Willie’s Roadhouse.) The real question is whether voters there will remember him.

Political History: Edwards
(the First) loses (sort of)
This week marks the 32nd anniversary (Oct. 24, 1987) of three-term Gov. Edwin Edwards losing his throne to then-Congressman Buddy Roemer.
Technically, Edwards didn’t lose anything. He advanced to the runoff besides Roemer, although trailing 33 percent to 27 percent.
What Edwards did do, however, was resign from the race. That was a better option than getting tossed by voters.
EWE made his decision known that evening, to a crowd of “weeping family and friends,” according to The Shreveport Times.
Two days later The Washington Post published another article with this headline: “EDWARDS CUTS HIS LOSSES.” Here are the first three paragraphs:
The Edwin Edwards era ended in stunning fashion early this morning when Louisiana’s bon temps governor, reading the long odds against him, withdrew from his reelection race after finishing second in the bipartisan primary behind Rep. Charles E. (Buddy) Roemer III, a young, conservative, reform-conscious Democrat from Shreveport.
As a result of Edwards’ decision, there will be no runoff in November, and Roemer, who three weeks ago was running last in a five-man race, woke up this morning as governor-elect, preparing for his move next March to the white mansion in Baton Rouge.
“It’s absolutely unbelievable. I’m still not over it,” Roemer said today in a telephone interview from his Shreveport hotel room, referring both to his meteoric rise and the Democratic governor’s unexpected withdrawal. “An era is over, but let’s give Edwin Edwards this much credit: He came in with class in 1971 and he went out with class.”
Edwards, of course, wasn’t exactly down for the count. He, of course, made another comeback in 1991, besting David Duke at the polls in the so-called “Race From Hell.”

They said it
“Now, if this doesn’t happen, don’t quote me on it, but normally I can tell by the text message I get from the coach whether they’re going to win. I’m serious. If he doesn’t feel really good about their preparation and stuff, I kind of get a sense of it. He tells me that they are ready to play tonight and that we are going to win. When he tells me that, we always win.” —Gov. John Bel Edwards, on his communications with Coach Ed Orgeron, in Sports Illustrated
“So how do I handle it? Sometimes I laugh and I have laughter like that. Some people now that—we’re kind of not past what happened—we’re rebuilding and we’re getting our basic end, when I come in to argue, sometimes they say, ‘You’re just like Hurricane Katrina, you just storm in a room.’” —Sen.-elect Katrina Jackson, on being named Katrina in Louisiana, in LifeNews.com
For more Louisiana political news, visit www. LaPolitics.com or follow Alford on Twitter@LaPoliticsNow