Many Louisiana residents love their politics like their rice. Dirty.
But Louisiana politics was not dirty enough to top a newly released survey on public corruption.
The survey, “Public Corruption in the United States,” was compiled by Corporate Crime Reporter, a Washington, D.C. based newsletter.
The survey compared the states based on their individual corruption rates, which were each states’ total number of federal public corruption convictions per 100,000 residents from 1993-2002.
Mississippi finished first in the survey with a rating of 7.48 corruption convictions per 100,000 residents, while Louisiana finished third with a rating of 7.05.
According to the survey, the top 10 most corrupt states were Mississippi, North Dakota, Louisiana, Alaska, Illinois, Montana, South Dakota, Kentucky, Florida and New York.
The least corrupt state in the survey was Nebraska, which had a rating of 0.59.
Russell Mokhiber, editor of Corporate Crime Reporter, said that the survey is not completely accurate because it does not include public officials who never were caught breaking the law.
Mokhiber said the purpose of the survey was to bring attention to public corruption in the United States.
Louisiana’s colorful political history has given some people mixed feelings about corruption in the state today.
Wayne Parent, interim associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, said the decrease in Louisiana’s corruption is largely due to the price of oil and gas dropping in the early 1980s.
“Before oil and gas prices went through the floor there was a lot of money in this state that no one was watching or keeping track of,” Parent said. “The excess of money made it possible for people to accept and ignore corruption, but when the money left, people started to care a lot more about corruption.”
As for Louisiana’s reputation as a corrupt state, Parent said he thinks perceptions are changing.
“Even without tables, scales and statistics, I think people can tell Louisiana’s corruption is decreasing,” Parent said.
Joshua Grigg, a history junior, was surprised that Louisiana was so high on the list.
“I thought we’d be a lot further down the list, like around 20th, not third,” Grigg said. “People stereotype Louisiana as a corrupt state because of our history. We may never grow out of it.”
Politicians in Louisiana who are currently serving time in prison include former Governor Edwin Edwards, former State Rep. David Duke, former Elections Commissioner Jerry Fowler, former State Senate President Michael O’Keefe and the past three insurance commissioners.
Edwin Edwards is serving 10 years in a Texas prison after being convicted on 17 counts of fraud and racketeering.
David Duke, a former gubernatorial candidate and grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, is considering a run for Congress after he finishes serving prison time for mail and tax fraud.
Duke ran for Governor in 1992, but lost to Edwards.
Corporate Crime Reporter obtained the information for this survey from the Federal Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, which releases an annual report containing the number of prosecutions and convictions of individuals involved in public corruption investigations.
The Justice Department’s 2002 report compiled all public corruption convictions from 1993-2002 and Corporate Crime Reporter used this period as the time frame for their survey.