Louisiana's Budget Crisis Empowers an Unusual Group

Governing: The calls started coming in to Rep. Stephen Dwight nearly every day after his election to the Louisiana House last year. Interest groups all across the political spectrum were eager to meet with the newly elected member. For Dwight, it was a bit bewildering. A 38-year-old Lake Charles lawyer, he had never held elected office before. Suddenly, as a member of the Republican majority on the House Ways and Means Committee, he was in the middle of the state’s most severe budget crisis in decades. “It was like drinking water from a fire hose,” he says. “Everything was coming at us.”

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