Commentary: Election winners should not forget to fulfill campaign promises

Congratulations to all the winners and my condolences to all the runners-up in Saturday's election.

Let's get to work.

I want each of you to pretend that all my fellow constituents and I wrote down every promise you made during the campaign. Don't think for a moment that we are

You've got your chance, your dream, and your time. Now please do something with it.

No more cronyism, no more wasteful spending, no more silly or stupid taxes. Pay more attention to our schools and roads and health issues and coastal erosion and the Huey P. Long Bridge.

Hurry the Huey, secure the funding to complete Interstate 49, take over the failing schools as we directed, sell the state to economic developers, pick up the trash, fix some potholes, clear up the backlog in our courts, don't reward your friends and please don't feel smug about your victories.

Please remember that we voters made this happen. It isn't about you; it's about us.

Keeping it about us will be one of your most difficult challenges.

As your session or term begins, a few constants must be considered. For one, regardless of the size of your district, special interest groups will hound you to try to push their agenda. Please keep things in perspective.

If you were elected to represent a parish council district or if we chose you to oversee insurance companies for the entire state, you have a job that will keep you busy. If done right, it will take too much time away from your family and friends. I'm truly sorry for that but you asked us to elect you because you understand the issues and the commitment it takes to do this job correctly.

So much for the admonitions. Let me now offer the help available from all my friends and neighbors to make your job easier.

We want to be involved. We hate closed doors and intricate mazes that isolate us from the political process. If you want to borrow my office or my house for regular meetings with your constituents, they are available.

It's a thrill for us voters to think that you know and care about us. That's astounding because it should be the natural outflow of the political process, but it isn't the case. More often than not, we voters don't have access to your time unless we have professional representation or a special relationship that supercedes bureaucratic channels. Or a profound problem.

If you wait to get to know us until we have profound problems, then in all likelihood you're not going to like us and we're not going to like you. That's because profound problems are hard enough to solve when you are dealing with friends; they become almost impossible when dealing with strangers.

These getting-to-know-me-and-my-friends meetings can also be as fun as they are informative.

I know because I took the advice of an old friend several years ago and make it a point to meet with 30 to 40 readers and advertisers each month.

When I first started these meetings, I didn't know what to expect, so I tried to set the agenda to sell my point of view. I thought I needed to convince them of how smart I was and that whatever it was that I was doing was best for them. That sentence is confusing and sets the tone for how not to communicate.

What I found out was that with regular, unregulated conversations with our readers and advertisers, we have the opportunity to do our job better. Better is always a good plan.

Regular, unregulated conversations with constituents is not accomplished with a letter home filled with undertakings and good deeds done on our behalf. Regular, unregulated conversations with constituents is accomplished by listening and asking questions. Meetings with editorial boards and reporters are important but they can never take the place of meetings with your customers.

You winners should feel good about yourselves. You've been chosen. You've been chosen to represent the rest of us and we've given you the authority to act on our behalf. That authority is not something we give away on a whim. It's also something that we can take back if we don't think you deserve to keep it.

Good luck and please stay in touch.