John Kennedy Recognizes 'Two Prominent Louisianans' In Senate Floor Speech

from louisiana thank you mr president i would like to take a few minutes mr president to talk about two prominent louisianians who are either transitioning or have transitioned into new ways to serve our state and i'm not unbiased about these individuals as you will shortly be able to tell but i think think most louisianians who are fair-minded will agree with what i'm about to say first person i want to talk about um and i've known both of both of these folks for a long time is ralph mccollister ralph did on he sold a number of his companies what did he do well let me just say generally first roth ruff is a very astute and successful business person uh he's one of the most prominent not the most prominent publisher in louisiana uh he started from scratch a periodical called the baton rouge business report um and from that ralph expanded i mean the list of his publications is is very impressive he started with the baton rouge business report he publishes 10 12 industry report report 225 magazine in registered daily report 225 dime best of 225 this week he also started a very important tradition which is is look forward to in my state called the business awards and hall of fame uh he started the influential women in business and he started the top 40 under 40 list to recognize some of our younger citizens ralph is retiring effective at the first of the year and despite all of rolfe's success in the business world he's also a banker and he does other things all self-made uh aside from his success in in the the world of uh publishing and journalism um the the most important thing ralph mcconnellster has is his passion now he's smart he's very intelligent gradual to balance you extraordinary character very dependable if you need something done you go rough trustworthy but but it's his passion that has most impressed me about ralph mcallister first met ralph in 1987. i knew of him but i met him louisiana had elected a brand new reform governor a former congressman by the name of governor buddy romer like many of our reformed governors buddy was to serve one term and when governor romer took over gosh the state was a mess uh we had i think it was a seven eight billion dollar budget we had a 1.1 billion dollar structural deficit when governor romer became governor we couldn't make payroll our schools were a mess we had no charter schools in louisiana our our universities were floundering um are you and and when you when you don't have adequate funding your universities tend to cannibalize each other they were all competing for the dollars it was like lebanon you didn't know which faction was going to be was going to be the winner today our campaign finance in louisiana was a mess at that time it was legal and not out of the ordinary for somebody to con to put two hundred thousand dollars cash in a suitcase and take it to a political candidate and it was perfectly legal for that candidate to take it and perfectly legal for that donor to give it uh governor romer set out to try to fix some of these problems and by his side was ralph mcallister not in a paid position i was working for governor romero then as his larger roth just spent all his time helping and we needed him because governor romer would listen to him and ralph was there every step of the way and after governor omer got beat ralph didn't stop he's never stopped he's been a leader in the charter school movement in louisiana for as long as i can remember he believes that competition makes all of us better and it'll make our public schools better he did a stint on the lsu board of supervisors which runs our flagship university lsu rolfe didn't didn't ever hold back i mean he he said exactly what he thought about what was working at lsu and what wasn't working and ralph made a lot of people mad but roth always believed as did governor romer and frankly as do i i learned a lot from both of them that if you make the right people mad you're doing your job and uh this was this was all i mean it was all because of his passion because he cared so much about louisiana to make it better he didn't make any money off of it cost him money uh and i'm sure his family said hey roth you know can you come home a little earlier tonight you know the work ralph's just he's just a he he's just a fine person and i'm very proud to want to have him in louisiana when i count my blessings i count roth twice and he's transitioning to a to a new role he sold his company to his partner who's another great guy julio moira but rob's going to still be involved in my state and i just want to thank him the second person i want to mention briefly totally different in terms of the way she contributes to our state her name is melinda dalat melinda is the new i want to get a title right research director which is the number two position at the public affairs research council the public affairs research council is a big deal in louisiana i think it's our oldest think tank it's one of the premier think tanks they're not republicans they're not democrats i don't know what they are except smart and straightforward they periodically publish white papers exhaustively researched about issues like the environment fiscal policy education every year when we amend our constitution and unfortunately we amend our state constitution just about every year par puts out a publication explaining not advocating for or against but explaining the amendments i read their white papers and and their writings my clockwork the number two position there is a research director so it's important uh melinda delat is the new research director i think melinda has taken over the public affairs research council and and i'm kind of uh i'm bittersweet about it i i'm i'm very happy for par because they got one of our best and our brightest but i'm really sad for journalism uh melinda ran the associated press in baton rouge for 22 years 22 years um and and and and for me the three things that you have to have to to be a respected journalist first you've got to have brains melinda has brains aplenty i'm not saying she's the smartest person i've ever met but to paraphrase coach bum phillips the list she's on it doesn't take long to call the role you've got to be willing to work very hard to be a successful journalist and boy melinda has a work ethic but you've also got to be fair and melinda lott was she's now at par the fairest journalist i've ever dealt with um i don't know what her politics are never ask her i don't even know if she's in a party and i've been on the long end and the short end of some of her pieces uh she was unspentable you i mean by that i mean she it's not that she wouldn't listen you could call melinda she was a great listener you could you could sit there and talk to her and give her your speech for 20 minutes 30 minutes and she wasn't on deadline she'd listen to you but it i always got the impression it didn't do any good because she was so smart and so hard working and so dedicated to her profession that she was just gonna call it like she saw it and she did she did she was not an agenda journalist she was a real journalist and i knew you know the men is probably not going to like me saying this because melinda is the kind of journalist that if a politician praised her you know it's like i must be doing something wrong here you know you don't want too much praise from politicians but she's not she she's left her job so i feel like i can do it and she's gone on to another way of helping our state i wish all of our journalists were melinda delights i wish all of them are mended a lot but anyway thank you madam president um and with that thank you roth thank you melinda thank you both for giving so much to louisiana madam president i suggest the absence of a warrant clerk will call the rule

Channel: Forbes Breaking News

Views: 22,025

Keywords: Sen. John Kennedy, Louisianans, Senate

Id: XHjiyhpzC8A

Length: 12min 42sec (762 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 17 2021