Word: roemer
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From fire-breathing Huey Long to high-living Edwin Edwards, Louisiana's populist Governors have almost always pushed at the boundaries of executive power. The latest to occupy the mansion, Democrat Charles ("Buddy") Roemer, has quickly stretched those boundaries to all but a breaking point. Since he took over from Edwards in March, the scrawny Harvard-educated chief executive has extracted from the legislature budgetary and political power rivaling that $ once held by the dictatorial Kingfish. "I'm the most powerful Governor in America," exults the pragmatic populist as he flashes a baby-faced smile...
Unlike his predecessors, Roemer is using his new clout to dismantle the pattern of extravagant patronage and spending programs that made Louisiana seem as profligate as a Cajun on an old-time oil-patch payday. The Roemer Revolution is a drastic effort to restore solvency to a state that is, in Treasurer Mary Landrieu's words, "flat broke." In fact, it is worse than broke: it faces a deficit of $1.3 billion. Roemer proposes to reduce the state's historic dependence on oil and energy revenues. Already, the tax-shy legislature has earmarked a 1 cents sales-tax increase...
Although he is a diabetic who gives himself a shot of insulin twice a day, Roemer has been working 14-hour days seven days a week. He is trying to abolish 100 of the state's 415 boards and commissions while cutting 16,000 people from the state's 75,000-person payroll over four years. He is pressing for tighter environmental laws and increased spending for education, including a 5% pay raise for teachers...
...second gust of reform to hit the Deep South in a month, similar to the election of Buddy Roemer as Governor of Louisiana, Mississippi's partner at the bottom of most measures of prosperity. Both men are young reformers with graduate degrees from Harvard who are dedicated to dispelling the tarnished establishments that have dominated their states' politics, beefing up education systems and aggressively seeking new forms of industry...
...good times roll. But, as an unusually subdued Edwin Edwards noted, "it has to end sometime." After finishing second in an open primary on Oct. 24, he admitted defeat in his attempt for a fourth term as Louisiana's Governor. His successor will be four- term Congressman Buddy Roemer, 43, a reform-minded conservative Democrat...