Michael Lunsford was an online web page developer in 2017 when he turned suspicious a few proposed half-cent gross sales tax to construct new faculties in Lafayette Parish.
Lunsford stated he dug round and located enrollment wasn’t at an all-time excessive as faculty officers claimed, however was low, with lecture rooms at some inner-city faculties sitting empty.
He and like-minded people loosely joined efforts beneath the banner Lafayette Residents Towards Taxes to defeat that tax.
A 12 months later, a few of them regrouped, creating Residents for a New Louisiana, a darkish cash 401(c)(4) nonprofit whose donors are nameless.
The IRS defines a 401(c)(4) as a social welfare group together with “civic leagues or organizations not organized for revenue however operated solely for the promotion of social welfare.” They’re allowed to be concerned in politics, however not as their major function.
Lunsford turned the full-time paid govt director at Residents in June 2018, weeks after the group efficiently fought a library property tax renewal, costing the library system about $3 million a 12 months in earnings. The system remains to be struggling to get well financially from the loss, in line with library management.
Since then, Residents for a New Louisiana has been systematically putting conservatives on volunteer commissions such because the Lafayette Parish Library Board of Management and Bayou Vermilion District, the place they now have majority management. Administrators at each tax-funded entities have resigned.
Lynette Mejia addresses the Lafayette Parish Library Board of Management at particular assembly Monday, July 25, 2022, on the South Regional department of the Lafayette Public Library in Lafayette, La.
“Stacking these boards like that is antithetical to the democratic course of,” Lynette Mejia, a library supporter who speaks in opposition to censorship efforts, stated. “They’re presupposed to be a mixture of folks with completely different backgrounds and concepts. Michael Lunsford desires to fill these boards simply with individuals who characterize a really slender slice of the neighborhood. He chooses folks like him who’re pushed to exclude folks as an alternative of are folks.”
The group, Lunsford stated, has been making an attempt to get somebody of their liking appointed to the Lafayette Financial Improvement Authority and is eyeing levee, drainage and financial improvement boards elsewhere within the state.
Residents for a New Louisiana already has an worker keeping track of the state capital and helps residents of Livingston Parish struggle to take away or relocate books they deem inappropriate from the youngsters and teenage sections of the general public library, simply as they did in Lafayette.
Lunsford is also eyeing St. Tammany Parish and the Lake Charles/Calcasieu Parish area and would really like sometime to have a presence in all 64 Louisiana parishes.
A criticism usually geared toward Lunsford is that he resides in St. Martin Parish however is interfering within the affairs of Lafayette Parish the place he can’t even vote.
As Lunsford famous in an August 2019 net publish, “Setting the Document Straight,” he was born and reared in Lafayette, the place he graduated from highschool. His grandfather was an oilfield salesman who moved the household from Houma to Lafayette within the Fifties and his father was a Lafayette-area radio and tv broadcaster.
Lunsford was fascinated with computer systems at an early age. When he was 13, his grandparents gave him an Apple IIc private laptop for Christmas. He discovered methods to apply it to his personal, even educating himself programming.
Lunsford attended the College of New Orleans, principally for a change of surroundings, however discovered he already knew extra about computer systems than they had been educating within the laptop engineering program. He dropped out, bought employed within the laptop expertise discipline and later married a lady from St. Martin Parish.
They’ve two sons, one nonetheless in highschool. The opposite, a civil engineer.
With Residents for a New Louisiana increasing, he’s changing into much less lively in extracurricular teams, together with Sons of the American Revolution, Boy Scouts and the St. Martin Parish Republican Parish Govt Committee.
He not too long ago wrote a publish criticizing the RPEC chairman for prohibiting the group from voting on the endorsement of Congressman Clay Higgins. Lunsford, who has a Donald Trump e-book on show in his workplace and attended an August cyber safety symposium of “like-minded conservatives” from throughout the nation hosted by My Pillow CEO and Trump supporter Mike Lindell, stated he’ll end the 12 months left on his time period.
Kevin Blanchard, a former Lafayette Consolidated Authorities director who campaigned to separate town and parish councils, stated Lunsford assaults Democrats and Republicans alike.
“He’s a mercenary,” Blanchard stated. “He goes after whoever his darkish cash donors need him to go after. If what he does is not political beneath our state’s marketing campaign finance guidelines then perhaps these guidelines should be rewritten.”
Just a few months after the 2018 library tax failed, when the library board accredited internet hosting Drag Queen Story Time, Lunsford organized space spiritual leaders and anxious residents. He described standing in a conga line of individuals to deal with the library board, whose members listened and adjourned with out remark.
“They only didn’t care,” he recalled. “They arrive in, do the chief director’s report, eat their cookies and have their espresso and smooth drinks and movement to adjourn.”
These two incidents put the Lafayette Parish public library system in Lunsford’s crosshairs and he hasn’t relented.
A part of Residents for a New Louisiana’s mission, he stated in a current interview, is to assist educate native residents on methods to get entangled as volunteers on boards and commissions. The group has been profitable since 2018 in getting conservatives with a spiritual bent appointed to the library board.
Andrew Duhon addresses the Board throughout a Lafayette Parish Library Board of Management particular assembly Monday, July 25, 2022, on the South Regional department of the Lafayette Public Library in Lafayette, La.
Andrew Duhon, a former library board president who was named Louisiana Trustee in 2019, stated Lunsford’s group has political energy and native elected officers are appointing folks to the library board who haven’t got the abilities and information wanted to steer the library system.
“They’ve completed an efficient job of pursuing their political pursuits,” he stated of Residents, “nevertheless it’s been to the detriment of libraries.”
Lunsford proudly declares victory on the Residents web site when conservatives are appointed to the library board and when the Bayou Vermilion District director retired, not too long ago writing that boards which are presupposed to be run by common residents have been “overrun with liberal-progressive political activists.”
Danny Gillane, director of the Lafayette Parish library system, will likely be will likely be retiring Jan. 31, 2023. Photograph from June 9, 2021, Lafayette, Louisiana.
Teresa Elberson, who was library director in the course of the failed 2018 tax renewal and Drag Queen Story Time, was pushed to retire in January 2021. Her alternative, Danny Gillane, gave discover final week that he’s retiring on the finish of January after simply over a 12 months in that publish.
Lunsford stated he hates to see Gillane go away.
Board President Robert Choose holds “This E book is Homosexual” which he voted to take away from Lafayette Parish public libraries in the course of the Library Board of Management assembly Monday, November 15, 2021 in Lafayette, La.
Library board conferences have grown contentious previously two years as a core group of anti-censorship advocates intently eye and push again in opposition to coverage and procedural adjustments. They notably disagree with board president Robert Choose, a Drag Queen Story Time protestor who voted to ban two books and was not too long ago elected to a second time period as president.
“I like Robert Choose. He’s one among my favourite folks on the earth,” Lunsford stated. “I’ve been actually impressed along with his effort.”
Lunsford blames the “rambunctious” conferences on “that mob (that) reveals up and makes hassle.”
He can’t perceive why some in the neighborhood don’t like him and his group.
“We’re thought of controversial by a sure group of oldsters on the town,” Lunsford stated. “I don’t know why that’s.”
Mejia stated Lunsford took a functioning library board and library that in 2020 was named greatest library within the state and remodeled it right into a disfunctional board and library with a excessive turnover.
“The library board, after he is had a hand in it, is totally damaged,” Mejia stated.
As a 401(c)(4) nonprofit, Residents for A New Louisiana can endorse candidates for public workplace. Lunsford claims they take a stand on taxes however not candidates.
Anybody studying the group’s social media posts would possibly query that. In the course of the 2019 marketing campaign for Lafayette mayor-president, Lunsford and the group clearly opposed Carlee Alm-Labar, a no-party candidate who confronted three Republicans and a Democrat.
Lunsford denied he had something to do with on-line assaults on Alm-Labar that questioned whether or not she is Muslim based mostly on her identify (she’s not) and studying issues into her marketing campaign emblem.
“I don’t assume I stated something like that,” Lunsford stated final week. Folks within the conservative neighborhood, he stated, made jokes about her identify sounding like she’s Arab.
“She’s Chicago, Illinois. That’s the place she got here from. Her and Al Capone,” he stated with fun.
Kevin Blanchard speaks at a city corridor assembly Thursday, June 17, 2021, Lafayette, Louisiana.
Blanchard, who labored on Alm-Labar’s marketing campaign, stated Lunsford did a number of dishonest issues in the course of the marketing campaign.
“His normal shtick is to take some small piece of knowledge, make up an elaborate conspiracy principle … after which to defend his actions by saying, ‘I am simply asking questions.’”
Lunsford and Residents had been sued by a Livingston Parish faculty librarian who spoke in opposition to censorship at a July public library board assembly about banning books or eradicating them from youngsters’s sections. She claims Lunsford and Ryan Thames of Denham Springs defamed her with social media posts stating issues like she was advocateing “educating anal intercourse to 11-year-olds.”
Amanda Jones, president of the Louisiana Affiliation of College Librarians, speaks in opposition of potential restrictions on youth literature at a Livingston Parish Library board assembly July 19.
The librarian, Amanda Jones, Lunsford stated, tried to close them down with a restraining order whereas she did interviews with nationwide information media.
“She was near being laughed out of court docket,” he stated of a court docket listening to. Jones misplaced, with the choose ruling the feedback weren’t defamatory and even when they had been, Jones is a public determine.
In December 2021, Lunsford, Cindy Dore and Will Mills shaped a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, which has stricter guidelines concerning political involvement. It’s unclear why and Lunsford didn’t appear sure whether or not the brand new entity, New Louisiana Basis, would substitute or work along with Residents for a New Louisiana, whose administrators embrace Lunsford, Jeff Giles and W. Ross Little Jr.
Lunsford stated he desires the group to point out volunteers in different parishes methods to analysis, submit public information requests as authorities watchdogs and study Robert’s Rule of Order, all beneath the Residents umbrella “so it’s clear we’re working collectively.”