This is a fact: Mary Landrieu, the Democratic senator from Louisiana, doesn’t live in that state, hasn’t for years, and nobody believes she does.
She and her husband, who, unlike the Senator, doesn’t even pretend to live in the Bayou State, live in what the Washington Post calls “a stately, $2.5 million brick manse she and her husband built on Capitol Hill.” The problem, or what should be a problem, is that Louisiana, by law, requires its U.S. Senators to really and truly live there. Louisiana’s Election Code states that a U.S. senator must be “an inhabitant of Louisiana when elected,” and Landrieu is hoping to be elected, which in her case means re-elected in November.
They are clever in Louisiana, so Landrieu, wink-wink-nudge-nudge, claims that she resides in the New Orleans neighborhood of Broadmoor in the home where her parents, Moon (yes, Moon) and Verna live. The Post explains that Verna Landrieu jointly owns the house with Nineland Partnership, a limited liability corporation the family set up for the estate planning purposes. Senator Landrieu and her eight siblings, who all grew up in the house, have equal stakes in the partnership.
She does not, in fact, live there. The other families ion the neighborhood all admit that they have never seen her. Yet when she signed papers, under oath, establishing that she was running again for U.S. Senator, though Senator Landrieu’s statement of candidacy filed with the Federal Election Commission listed her Capitol Hill home as her address, she listed her parents home as her residence to qualify for the ballot in Louisiana last week. Continue reading
