Bayou Billy, Dutch, and the Duke

...In the Hart gang's heyday, Billy Broadhurst had also brought in his old law partner, the twice-indicted, never-convicted, fun-loving Governor of Louisiana Edwin Edwards, and his brother Marion, another lobbyDavid Kleck, a lifetime observer and veteran of the Louisiana political scent now lives in Menlo Park, California...

...His nickname, "Dutch," according to friends from his childhood, is a tribute to his stubbornness and/or his tightfisted way with a dollar...

...Broadhurst had paid for the fatal yacht, Monkey Business, and had invited newsworthy guests to use his four-bedroom Washington townhouse...

...With President Hart's blessing, he would emerge as indispensable to any number of national corporations...

...12 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1988 his law offices to three cities and his client list, both legal and lobbying, to a lengthening series of national firms...

...But lush patronage involving huge fees is an old Louisiana industry, as necessary to the economy as crabs and shrimp and crude oil...

...They were already calling him "Mr...

...Those who know Morial also wonder how the volatile and abrasive ex-Mayor will wear with the national press, should a Dukakis administration take over in January 1989...

...but one of its members, ex-Mayor Eugene Morial, soon found a new home in the high echelons of the Michael Dukakis campaign, in the process turning his back on Jesse Jackson for the second time in recent history...

...The upshot of all this was that Texaco agreed to pay the state $200 million, return 37,000 acres to the state, and—more importantly—cover the Broadhurst firm's legal fees totaling more than $1.5 million...

...The Broadhurst-Morial relationship was truly cemented in 1986, when Morial was president of the United States Conference of Mayors and engineered Broadhurst's selection as the association's lobbyist...

...gushed a dazzled matron...

...For more than a decade he had been the man to see in Louisiana and now he was going to be the man to see in Washington...

...the tough little ex-mayor will lay on leans observer said, "I think Du- coming at you down the road, nine of It is no secret that in New Orleans, Dukakis...

...Will a Democratic victory bring a new kind of cabinet officer, one who thrives on confrontation...

...Broadhurst had represented the state in a series of legal altercations with Texaco, Inc...

...A predecessor company, the Texas Company, had been one of the key players in the wholesale leasing of oil acreage during the Long era...

...Can you imagine what it was like to walk down the Champs Ely-sees with Edwin Edwards...

...The Monkey Business and Broadhurst's Washington townhouse passed into history...

...W hile Gary Hart's star was still rising, the New Orleans group of opportunists grew larger and louder, brassier and more confident...

...If the Republicans nominated Bush, it would all be over before it started, they told each other...

...The Coonass governor ultimately made Broadhurst, his former law partner, the man to see in Louisiana...

...And there was old "Dutch" Morial, the feisty black ex-mayor of New Orleans, hungry for a cabinet job...

...He shrewdly chose the Massachusetts governor, turning his back for the second time on Jesse Jackson...

...I'd given him $10,000, but he got so upset I had to give him another $10,000...

...The state constantly found use for Broadhurst on state business, even when someone on the state payroll could have done the job...

...They sat around laughing over good wine and Creole food, chiefly entertained by their own certainty that anything was possible when you had brass and big money, and that they had both of those, and a lot more besides: The convention was coming and Hart was a sure bet to be nominated...

...Beautifully...

...Broadhurst opened an office and took an apartment in Denver to be close to the "next President...

...As one New Or- Coolidge, who said: "If ten things are of ditches...

...After this election," he said, "only three people will be able to see the President, and I'll be one of them...

...After one of his elections Governor Edwards had climbed up on his desk for the cameras and shouted: "Let's hear it for the Coonasses . ." 2 They had given him his margin of victory...

...The Governor's old friend Billy Broadhurst was becoming Louisiana's ranking lawyer, doing work the fretting Attorney General should have been asked to do: Broadhurst shared with two other lawyers $1 million in fees for defending the state's "first use" tax on offshore gas production...

...He is a descendant of the gens libres de couleur, the slaves freed before the Civil War, who had given the city its skilled artisans...

...Deep Pockets...

...When the smoke cleared away, Morial was the only member of any consequence left standing...

...It somehow seems poetic that the clandestine Hart cabal began in the Fairmont Roosevelt Hotel, successor to the old Roosevelt after the San Francisco Swig family had bought it...

...It had been a long dry spell for Louisiana politicians in the nation's capital...

...T he gang's origins traced back I only to 1985, when Billy Broadhurst met Gary Hart via a strategic introduction by Raymond Strother, a Louisiana-born, Washington-based media consultant who had handled Hart's clever first presidential campaign...

...Things looked good...

...but, driven by arrogance and suspicion, complicated by his complete misreading of the white power structure, he split New Orleans from top to bottom, like a stump riven by a giant cleaver...

...Considering equipped with computers and other really know about the man they sal- Jackson, and that's the game they're that the Democratic nominee already modern political weapons have made vaged from the old Hart gang...

...Actually, as skin colors go, Morial looks white...

...With a psyche deeply rooted in racial conflict, and unable to understand—or master—the art of compromise, Morial virtually repulsed, often nastily, white efforts to help his administration...

...Even though he had attained some national standing as president of the Conference of Mayors, Dutch knew he would have been lost in the host of black leaders around the Reverend...

...Once, at a birthday reception honoring Japan's Emperor, he ostentatiously poured the residue of his drink into a reporter's Coke...

...Up to the time Broadhurst whispered in his ear about Hart appointing him to his cabinet, Morial had been a lukewarm advocate of the Rev...

...14 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1988...

...It is New Orleans did when they first words of Ronald Reagan's icon, Calvin told Dukakis to find a place with lots conjectural what kind of a due bill elected him mayor...

...If the past is any guide to the future, it is worth reporting that Morial actually entered the mayor's office with a splendid opportunity to unite the city at a critical juncture in its history...

...Some said he was an able lawyer, though a better purveyor of influence...

...Billy had it and the campaign spent it and before long they were calling him "Mr...

...Laissez le bon temps rouler' was their cry, heard as far away as Paris, Las Vegas, and Lake Tahoe...

...The company had gone so far as to lease a chunk (State Lease 340) of Louisiana offshore areas, thereby pushing the state boundary some 27 miles out to sea, until the preposterous lease was voided in the postwar years...

...One of the more curious facets of the whole affair was that Gary Hart, the unimpeachable idealist, the new kind of man in government, understood all this going in...

...Bayou Billy could see himself as the number one power broker of the new Hart administration...

...Indeed, doctrinaire Democrats scrambled to climb on board...

...After all, in its time Louisiana politics had made many millionaires, and would make many more...

...He could not distinguish white opposition to his policies, however well reasoned, from mindless Southern racism...

...Prob- playing...

...You could never tell, could you...

...Along the way he acquired the four-bedroom townhouse in Washington, D.C., where Gary Hart and Donna Rice would titillate the nation...

...When the ceiling fell in, Bayou Billy virtually disappeared, along with most of the gang...

...But after Bayou Billy's message got through, Morial became a Hart convert and the first black leader of any significance to reject the charismatic Jackson...

...He filled two planes...

...Heavy were the deals consummated, the plots hatched, but what most old-timers remember are Depression-era cameos like old Governor "Walking Stick" Dick Leche, dancing across the supper club floor, yelling to friends: "Only made $60,000 today . . ." For those untutored in the audacity of Louisiana politicians, the Hart group may come off as pretty silly...

...While Edwards insouciantly continued his indiscretions throughout his terms as governor—earning the nickname "Fast Eddie"—Billy's adventures were largely confined to politics and the pursuit of power...

...He actually tells people what to give...

...Broadhurst, the ringleader, like his buddy and childhood friend, Governor Edwards, and like Judge Reggie, had come from a little rice-growing town in Cajun country where they eat red hot food, tell crazy jokes, and speak politics with a patois accent...

...He spent what one reporter called an "incredible amount of time" with Hart and soon the Hart people were calling him "Mr...

...Even then, his motivation was not 31n Louisiana, candidates may put campaign surpluses in their pocket, after paying proper state and federal taxes on them...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1988 13 and much beholden to black experts...

...The governor of Louisiana declared: "When Billy was pimping for me he was more discreet," then left for a secluded ranch in Texas...

...Indispensable...

...It would be difficult to give Mori-al high marks on influencing black votes, but it must be remembered that in the arcane precincts of black politics, white politicians are still poorly versed "After this election," Broadhurst said, "only three people will be able to see the President, and I'll be one of them...

...Before it all blew up with a noise heard around the world, the Louisiana gang sat around and laughed and talked about how they were going to "penetrate" the White House...

...Besides being the man to see, Broadhurst was the standard beneficiary of Edwards's largesse...

...A mild, understated, intentionally inconspicuous man, his round face and horn-rimmed glasses appeared faintly—and not unpleasantly—owlish...

...kakis's people know Dutch is tough them are bound to run in the ditch whence Morial comes, black leaders What do Dukakis and his people enough to stand between Mike and before they get to you...

...And of course, money was not a problem...

...Still, it would be hard to call Bayou Billy evil...

...Brother Marion had arranged a second-term fundraiser for Edwards—$10,000 a head to fly to Paris and have a Louisiana State dinner at the Palace of Versailles, gussied waiters and all...

...Like a bullfrog gulping air, Broadhurst expanded "Coonass" is an unsavory synonym for "Cajun," or more formally, "Acadian"—a descendant of long-ago French exiles from Nova Scotia, memorialized in more romantic terms by Longfellow in his poem Evangeline...

...It was a sweet and nourishing dream...

...He was simply playing by the rules as he found them...

...matic years, when it hovered near dictatorship, this hotel had been headquarters for Huey P. Long and his henchmen...

...Here Huey's brother, Governor Earl K. Long, had urinated on the rugs, and an ex-New Orleans mayor, Robert S. "Red Light Bob" Maestri, had holed up for years...

...In no time at all he was regularly visiting Massachusetts, giving pre-convention political seminars for selected leaders, his rank in the Dukakis campaign hierarchy attested by the fact that he reported exclusively to the Duke and campaign manager Paul Brountas...

...And his language was the semantics of confrontation: "I don't get ulcers, I give But year after year, he attracted more heavy contributions than any mayor in New Orleans history, sometimes salting away as much as $1 million, even in an off-year.' Democratic ex-mayor Moon Landrieu, Jimmy Carter's Secretary of HUD, and Morial's articulate, racially liberal predecessor as mayor, said of him, "They never gave me anything like that...

...there, under Broadhurst's tutelage, he would meet some of the state's key players...

...They altered its name and redecorated, but the memories were lodged in the walls forever...

...After all, hadn't one of the key figures said they had old Gary in the sack...

...The rest followed naturally...

...Secretary...

...And there was Gary Hart, the ersatz idealist with political cataracts—he was going to be the next President...

...History would later record...

...It was an image cashable at any Louisiana—and some national—banks...

...Why did Dukakis embrace the fractious black leader, when Jesse Jackson had already contributed a plethora of battle-trained black political organizers to the unified party...

...During Louisiana's most trau'Let the good times roll...

...Cajun country—Southwest Louisiana bayou country—is the fulcrum of the Louisiana balance of power...

...Louisianans who know the ambitious Morial are now asking not what does Jesse want, but what does Dutch want...

...And there were others, like City Judge Edmund Reggie, the longtime intimate of the Kennedy clan, and the last prior Louisiana link with the White House...

...Hart would fly to Louisiana...

...but now old Billy, Morial, Edwards, and company thought they could glimpse the light from under the Oval Office door...

...And then it all blew up...

...His client list was fast growing to resemble a modest Fortune 500, as the state work continued...

...ist with a retinue of pedigreed patrons...

...Few people knew their politics better than the genial Broadhurst and in the present instance he was confident he had been promised the keys to Gary Hart's White House...

...authentic racism, but personal animosity, increasing in virulence and volume as time passed...

...In 1978, a coalition of liberal whites and consolidated blacks elected him the first black mayor of New Orleans...

...Broadhurst first surfaced in New Orleans in the late 1970s, when he opened an elaborate suite of law offices for his firm, Broadhurst Brook, later to become Broadhurst Brook Mang-ham and Hardy...

...The location, in the shining new Texaco Center in downtown New Orleans, was in itself interesting...

...Jesse Jackson...

...The first black elected to the Legislature since Reconstruction—from a poor ward where he did not actually live—he analyzed his service by saying: ". . you sure had to have a sense of humor to get along with those clowns...

...In the days when Bayou Billy and Edwards had been law partners, therewere those who swore they'd seen irate fathers chasing Edwards through the streets of the town...

...He has been known privately to threaten and publicly to humiliate reporters...

...It was a match conceived in a political Eden...

...At one time he had said for publication: "Give me a gallon of kerosene and a match and I'll lead the damn parade...

...To the carefully orchestrated Dukakis campaign, Morial adds a crashing chord in an atonal key...

...had Jackson to deal with and now he themselves millionaires in the mer- ably no more than the people of One is reminded, however, of the has Morial, it might be well if someone chandising of the black vote...

...But in Louisiana, those who heard about the gang were careful not to laugh too hard...

...In 1984 the state paid the Broadhurst firm, among other fees, more than $873,000 to investigate the payment of royalties by the giant oil firm...

...A former field secretary for the NAACP and a protege of A. P. Tureaud, New Orleans' most distinguished civil-rights lawyer, Morial had not always marched to this same drummer...

...Local wits said that, in the months leading up to the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, Morial interviewed candidates Gore, Gephardt, and Dukakis...

...With Dukakis, however, he easily attained celebrity and an important step upward toward that long-sought cabinet post...

...That fellow Hart," the word went, "can hear a skirt lifted in the next parish...

...Others charged that he lacked principles, an almost irrelevant accusation in Louisiana...

...A carefully timed vote for a tax increase earned him an appointment as Orleans Parish Juvenile Court Judge, from which he was elevated to the Louisiana Court of Appeals...

...Explains the president of a ranking New Orleans stock-and-bond house, concerning his dealings with Morial: "Sure I gave him $20,000...

...When the pugnacious Morial came to the end of his tenure at New Orleans City Hall, to no one's surprise he accepted a predestined invitation to join the Broadhurst firm...

...Bayou Billy Broadhurst over there, the Washington lobbyist, he was going to be the new Michael Deaver or maybe the new Clark Clifford...