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NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Former sheriff’s deputy Clay Higgins galloped into Congress two years ago in part on the strength of viral anti-crime videos in which he displayed the cowboy swagger that earned him his “Cajun John Wayne” nickname.
Back then, his outsider image helped separate him from a pack of fellow conservative Republicans running for an open seat in southwest Louisiana. Now, he’s an incumbent with an endorsement from President Donald Trump.
He’s also a target. At a recent Lafayette forum, attorney Josh Guillory, a fellow Republican, chastised Higgins for votes Guillory said raised the federal debt and for living outside the district he represents — the 3rd Congressional District covering southwest Louisiana. Higgins responded with indignation. “I represent the culture and communities that the Higgins family has lived within for 200 years and it’s somewhat personally offensive to me to suggest otherwise,” said Higgins, whose home in Port Barre is north of the district line.
Guillory is one of six challengers facing Higgins on the Nov. 6 non-partisan ballot. Four Democrats and a Libertarian round out the field.
Higgins’ camp boasts polling that shows him with more than 60 percent support, plenty more than the majority needed to avoid a December runoff. Campaign finance records show him with a significant fundraising advantage with more than $816,000 raised. His closest money-raising competitors: Guillory, who reports more than $200,000 raised plus a $127,800 self-loan; and Democrat Mimi Methvin, an attorney and former U.S. magistrate judge, who has raised nearly $184,000 plus a $51,000 self-loan.
Higgins’ solid 93 rating from the American Conservative Union and his Trump endorsement haven’t stopped Guillory’s attack from the right. And Guillory also has an endorsement from Trump’s personal lawyer and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani told The Advocate newspaper he learned of Guillory through Guillory’s finance director, Jennifer LeBlanc. New York media have linked Giuliani and Leblanc romantically.
Methvin criticizes Higgins’s vote for a tax cut that Democrats have long labeled as weighted to the wealthy, as well as his vote to kill the health care law passed under former President Barack Obama. She insists she’ll have a strong enough get-out-the vote effort to make it to a runoff with Higgins.
The challengers face a tough path says Joshua Stockley, political science professor at the University of Louisiana-Monroe. “I think the chances are good that he’s going to win outright,” Stockley said of Higgins.
The other five incumbents also have more money and name recognition than their little-known opponents.
As I’ve written before, old reporters like to tell old stories.
But here’s one that seems to have some relevance to today’s news. It’s about what happens when a federal bomb investigation lands on a small town, and when the feds decide you’re guilty.
And they’re wrong.
Cesar Sayoc has been accused of mailing homemade bombs to several political officials and media people last week. Aside from the presumption of innocence to which Sayoc is entitled, I've seen nothing to suggest that federal authorities didn't lay on a swift, effective investigation.
But that's not always the way things work out.
The events I'm thinking about began just before Christmas 1989. I was the news editor at the Enterprise, Alabama, Ledger, the daily paper in a small town with which some of you may be familiar.
Enterprise shows up in Ripley’s because the town’s main street features a statue of a Greek goddess holding up a boll weevil. The idea is that the weevil wiped out the local cotton production and forced farmers to grow what turned out to be more profitable crops, mostly peanuts.
The local hotel’s restaurant made a chocolate pie with a little peanut butter boll weevil on top. It was — excuse the expression — the bomb.
Enterprise also is next door to Fort Rucker, the post where the Army trains all its helicopter pilots. Lots of those pilots end up in Louisiana, flying back and forth between south Louisiana and offshore oil platforms.
I was alone at the office late on a Saturday night, finishing up Sunday’s paper. Just before deadline, The Associated Press moved a story about the death of a federal judge near Birmingham.
He and his wife were sitting at their kitchen table, opening a package that had arrived in the mail. The package exploded, killing U.S. District Judge Robert Vance and seriously injuring his wife.
Around the same time, another mailed bomb killed Robert Robinson, a civil rights attorney at an NAACP office in Georgia. Somewhere along the way, the FBI linked the bomb to a letter from thing called Americans for a Competent Federal Judicial System.
The NAACP bombing, the animus toward the feds and an unsuccessful NAACP bombing in Florida led investigators to think they were after a racist wacko.
A month later, on Jan. 22, 1990, then-Attorney General Richard Thornburgh held a press conference to announce a major break in the Vance case. That day, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, 150 agents strong, dropped on Enterprise like locusts, bringing the national press with them.
Their target was Robert Wayne O’Ferrell, who was in his 40s then. He was a junk dealer with a beaten-up shop full of not much of anything at all.
Two years earlier, O’Ferrell had sent a typed letter to a federal court, complaining about the outcome of a lawsuit he’d filed against a former boss. The feds seemed to believe his letter and the Americans for a Competent Federal Judicial System letter were typed on the same machine.
So the FBI picked up Enterprise, population 20,000, and gave it a good shake as they searched for the typewriter.
Agents held and questioned O’Ferrell. They searched his shop. They searched his house in nearby New Brockton. They searched under his shop and house.
O’Ferrell’s customers complained that they were being questioned by the FBI.
Agents even searched O’Ferrell’s septic tank. The Coffee County sheriff at the time, Bryce Paul, had a puckish sense of humor. He gave each of the FBI agents involved in the septic tank search a T-shirt saying, “Sewage Handling Investigation Team.” The artwork emphasized the acronym.
The Ledger ran a cartoon in which the boll weevil atop the famous statue was replaced with a typewriter. The artist made a couple of bucks from selling T-shirts featuring the artwork.
But for O’Ferrell, the episode wasn’t so funny. His name was connected with a heinous crime. Many of those customers who got hassled by the FBI never came back to his shop. O’Ferrell lost his business.
It’s easy to say now, but I had my doubts at the time that O’Ferrell was the bomber.
I talked to a young man who had been trained by O’Ferrell to be one of our paper’s motor carriers. The young man is black, and he told me he never heard O’Ferrell make disparaging remarks about African-Americans.
That’s one thing about bigots. Usually, they won’t shut up about it. That didn’t sound like O’Ferrell.
He was never charged but never really cleared, either, until the feds convicted someone else. In 1991, Walter Leroy Moody of Rex, Georgia, was found guilty by a federal jury in the death of attorney Robinson. Later, Moody was convicted of killing Vance.
Moody died by lethal injection in April 2018 at age 83, the oldest person to be executed in the United States since the death penalty was reinstated in the 1970s.
It’s still not clear why Moody sent the bombs.
His wife was badly hurt by a pipe bomb in 1972, but federal authorities couldn’t convict Moody directly. They did manage to put him away for a five-year prison sentence for possessing the bomb.
After Moody got out, he went on a letter-writing crusade, telling appeals court judges that his conviction was unfair and that it should be reversed. His campaign went nowhere.
To get his message across, Moody turned to pipes, powder and postage.
The NAACP bombings may have been a fake-out to point suspicious at white power groups.
As for O’Ferrell, he sued the federal government for $50 million. He even attracted some sympathy in 1996, after William Jewel was falsely accused of setting off a bomb at the Olympic Games in Atlanta.
But O’Ferrell’s lawsuit seems to have petered out. A story in Alabama’s Southeast Sun last April said O’Ferrell, in his 70s now, lives on his Social Security in a mobile home near the local senior citizens center.
Reporter Michelle Mann noted that there was a typed message in a typewriter in his trailer. The message begins, “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. …”
Bill Decker is managing editor of The Daily Review.
Kenneth McGill, 70, a native of Wheeling, West Virginia, and resident of Patterson, died Sunday, Oct. 28, 2018, at his residence.
He is survived by three children, Kevin McGill of Orlando, Florida, Kristen Fulton of Davenport, Florida and Kortney McGill of Evansville, Indiana; three grandchildren; two great-granddaughters; and a brother, Bill McGill.
He was preceded in death by his father, mother, a sister and a brother.
A Celebration of Life will be Saturday, 11 a.m.-4 p.m., at his residence.
Ibert’s Mortuary Inc., 1111 Lia Street, Patterson, LA 70392, (985) 395-7873, is in charge of arrangements.
OCTOBER FEST
At Mt. Pilgrim Baptist Church, 113 Federal Ave., Morgan City, 6-8 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 31. Ages 2-12 invited. Free food and games.
RUMMAGE SALE
At Patterson United Methodist Church, 1204 Main St., from 8 a.m. to noon, Saturday, Nov. 3. Includes clothes, shoes, linens, household items, books, toys, and fall and Christmas decorations.
DINNERS
Sold by New Zorah Baptist Church, 604 Julia St., Morgan City, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 3. Menu: barbecued chicken, rice dressing, baked beans, potato salad, cake and drink. Donation $7. Will deliver. Call Joyce Matthews, 985-253-4548 or Tim Matthews Sr., 985-255-9935.
AARP DANCE
St. Mary AARP Saturday Night Dance from 7-11 p.m. Nov. 17 at St. Mary Senior Citizens Center, 4014 Chennault St., Morgan City. Music by 5 O’clock Shadows. Tickets $8. For info call 985-384-2277.
Joyce Gates, 73, a resident of Berwick, died Monday, Oct. 29, 2018, at her residence.
Jones Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements, which are incomplete at this time.
Patterson Garden Club President Evelyn Estay, center, attended the Louisiana Garden Club Federation District 3 meeting Oct. 25 in New Iberia. Hosting the meeting was Azalea Garden Club. The host presented a play, “Murder on Main Street,” followed by lessons on proper pruning of crape myrtle trees. With Estay are District 3 Director Patsy Hebert, left, and Director-elect Linda Brashear.
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (AP) — As an actor who got his start here in Winston-Salem, K.T. “Todd” Nelson has never been afraid of the limelight, and being center stage was nothing new for him.
But when it came to his breast-cancer diagnosis earlier this year, Nelson shut down and shied away. In fact, he didn’t tell anyone about his diagnosis until a few weeks into treatment.
“When (doctors) told me, I still don’t know if I processed it immediately,” said Nelson, 34. “I had stage 2 breast cancer and I started treatment the following week.”
His silence was not for nothing. As a staunch believer in strong mental health, Nelson took the alone time to mentally prepare himself.
“Imagine having to tell the story 40 to 50 times, and you’re reliving it every time,” Nelson explained. “It’s a lot emotionally, and it can become debilitating so I tried to be mindful of myself and what I needed.”
Once he realized his behavior was starting to change, though, he reached out to his closest family and friends not only to make them aware of his diagnosis, but for help. Nelson participated in a “cocktail treatment” of sorts, which included a few rounds of chemotherapy, radiation and meditation all over the course of four and a half weeks.
According to the National Breast Cancer Foundation Inc., fewer than 1 percent of all breast cancer develops in males — and unfortunately, Nelson would become part of this small percentage.
“I originally went to the doctor for sinus and allergy issues but he started asking questions about my overall health,” Nelson said. “I told him about a bump on my left breast and he decided to get it checked out just to be safe. Breast cancer was the farthest thing on my mind.”
During his treatment, he lost nearly 30 pounds and was unable to work. Sleep was something he was afraid to do. But today, Nelson is currently showing no evidence of disease (NED, as it’s commonly referred to in the medical community) and he recently hit his 90-day cancer-free mark.
His fight isn’t over yet, though. He’s gotten heavily involved in various breast-cancer organizations and has taken to social media to be an outspoken advocate for preventative measures.
On these platforms, Nelson often urges men and women to complete breast self-exams — especially since he’s living proof that men can also get breast cancer.
“I have become a unicorn of sorts to be honest because there are not a lot of men with breast cancer,” he said. “It was embarrassing at first — because there’s so much stigma associated with it.”
He’s also heavily involved with Beats to Beat Breast Cancer, an organization that uses the power of music to drive awareness and raise funds for research and prevention.
On Oct. 14, Beats to Beat held an awareness brunch and awards ceremony to honor Vanessa Bell Calloway, a well-known actress who has attended and served as co-chair of the National Black Theatre Festival.
Nelson has also participated in the festival, starting there as a teen.
All of his volunteering is simply just part of his individual healing process.
“For me personally, I didn’t want to talk about anything at first because I’m still in the midst of everything,” Nelson said. “This is part of my healing process and I’m starting to tackle it.”
Regardless of age, race and gender, Nelson urges everyone to take as many preventative measures as possible, which includes regular doctor visits and genetic testing, if possible.
“Ignorance is not bliss, and there’s knowledge in power,” Nelson said. “It’s amazing how something seems like the end of the world but it’s actually my story, and it’s why I’m here.
“I’m grateful for my cancer because it gave me a better trajectory on life, and I value life in a different way now.”
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A Patterson man was caught with LSD, methamphetamine and marijuana after Morgan City police stopped a vehicle without a license plate, Police Chief James Blair said in a news release.
—Brennan R. Tabor, 30, of Hendricks Street in Patterson, was arrested at 9:50 a.m. Monday on charges of no license plate on vehicle, driving under suspension, possession of marijuana, methamphetamine, LSD and drug paraphernalia, and on a warrant charging him with three counts of failure to pay fines.
An officer on La. 182 observed a vehicle without a license plate. A traffic stop was conducted, and the driver, Tabor, had a suspended driver’s license. During the investigation, the officer located suspected marijuana, methamphetamine, and LSD inside Tabor’s vehicle, Blair said.
Blair reported that officers responded to 47 calls and reported the following arrests:
Tabor had an arrest warrant through city court. Tabor was jailed.
—Jodie Aucoin, 34, of Cane Road in Centerville, was arrested at 5:30 p.m. Monday on a warrant charging her with failure to appear for trial.
Aucoin was located on La. 70 and arrested on a 16th Judicial District Court warrant. Aucoin was jailed.
—Shawn Scully, 44, of Yellow Bayou Road in Franklin, was arrested at 6:46 p.m. Monday on a warrant charging him with failure to appear for restitution for simple battery.
Scully was transported from the Franklin Police Department to the Morgan City Police Department on a Morgan City Court warrant. Scully was jailed.
—Rubin Bias, 63, of Egle Street in Morgan City, was arrested at 12:18 a.m. Tuesday on a warrant charging him with failure to appear in court.
Rubin Bias was located on Egle Street and arrested on a 16th Judicial District Court warrant. Bias was jailed.
St. Mary Parish Sheriff Scott Anslum reported that deputies responded to 46 complaints in the parish and reported the following arrests in east St. Mary Parish:
—Stacey Grubb, 38, of Iberia Street in Franklin, was arrested at 1:15 p.m. Monday on a charge of driving under suspension.
A deputy patrolling Amelia observed a vehicle cross over the fog line. The deputy conducted a traffic stop and made contact with the driver, Grubb. During the stop, the deputy learned that Grubb’s license was suspended, Anslum said. Grubb was released on a summons to appear Jan. 4, 2019.
—Eric Frentz, 37, of Front Street in Morgan City, was arrested at 4:46 p.m. Monday on charges of driving under suspension and no seat belt.
A deputy patrolling Amelia observed a vehicle being driven by a man who was not wearing a seat belt. The deputy conducted a traffic stop and located the driver, Frentz.
During the stop, the deputy learned that Frentz’s license was suspended, Anslum said. Frentz was released on a summons to appear Jan. 4, 2019.
—Conley Jones, 69, of Joseph Street in Morgan City, was arrested at 11:38 p.m. Monday on four warrants for failure to appear on charges of improper turn, improper display of license plate, operating a vehicle while license is suspended, possession of drug paraphernalia, possession of marijuana, possession of a controlled dangerous substance in a drug-free zone and two counts of contempt of court.
A deputy patrolling Siracusa observed two men walking in the middle of the road. The deputy stopped and spoke to the men. During the investigation, the deputy found that one of the men had no outstanding warrants. Therefore, he was free to go home.
The other man, identified as Jones, was found to have four active warrants for his arrest through the Morgan City Police Department. Jones was booked into parish jail with no bail set.
Franklin Police Chief Tina Thibodeaux reported the following arrest relating to east St. Mary Parish:
—Shawn Scully, 44, of Yellow Bayou Road in Franklin, was arrested at 6:17 p.m. Monday on a Morgan City Court for failure to appear for restitution on a charge of simple battery. Scully was booked and then transported to the Morgan City Police Department.
Berwick Police Chief James Richard reported no arrests.
Patterson Police Chief Janis Merritt reported no arrests.
Franklin Banner-Tribune
P.O. Box 566, Franklin, LA 70538
Phone: 337-828-3706
Fax: 337-828-2874
Morgan City Review
1014 Front Street, Morgan City, LA 70380
Phone: 985-384-8370
Fax: 985-384-4255