Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal owes one to the Senate. As of this weekend, 36 out of the state’s 38 senators mailed in ballots voting to cancel the scheduled veto override session. For Jindal, that’s all it takes to avoid yet another conflict, since only one body of the Legislature needs to disagree to call off the show.
The Senate acted so quickly, however, that it’s difficult to gauge how votes in the House were shaping up. According to staffers in the offices of the House clerk and speaker, barely any ballots from the Lower Chamber had been mailed back as of this past weekend. As House Speaker Jim Tucker points out, it’s now a moot point.
“But I imagine by the time it’s all said and done, we will receive a majority of ballots” against the override session, says Tucker, a Republican from Algiers. “A lot of (House) members were on vacation this past week and many are just now getting back to work.”
Tucker says that Senate President Joel Chaisson II, a Democrat from Destrehan, also had an easier task of contacting his membership – compared to the House’s 105 members – and urging them to act quickly.