A 35-year political career is ending. Jay Dardenne who has served in the East Baton Rouge Metro Council, state senate, Secretary of State, Lt Governor, and Commissioner of Administration, is retiring from politics. The 69-year-old started in state government when elected to the state senate in 1991. He served in the upper chamber until 2006 and helped craft several significant pieces of legislation.
“Funding for DNA testing, being able to charge 17-year-olds as adults were big in the criminal area, authored the bill creating the community college system, term limits which has been an interesting and controversial subject,” said Dardenne.
Dardenne left the Senate in 2006 to be Secretary of State after the death of Fox McKeithen. He was elected as Lt. Governor in 2010 and helped come up with the Pick Your Passion marketing campaign.
“Pick Your Passion was a great campaign and it worked out very well for us as we had four consecutive years of increases in tourism and rebuilt international tourism after Katrina,” said Dardenne.
In 2015, Dardenne ran unsuccessfully for governor. However, on the campaign trail, he connected with John Bel Edwards. After Edwards was elected, he chose Dardenne as his Commissioner of Administration, putting him in charge of state finances. He says the challenges of the job began on day one.
“John Bel and I both thought we had a billion-dollar shortfall during the campaign, we were both talking about what we would do to address a billion-dollar challenge, and all of sudden we get there and we realize this is a two-billion dollar problem,” said Dardenne.
It took a couple of years to put an end to budget deficits, but the challenges didn’t stop as the state was also hit with major hurricanes, civil unrest after the Alton Sterling police shooting, and the COVID pandemic.
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