Cloture Motion

Floor Speech

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Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I would like to take a few minutes to talk about two prominent Louisianans who are either transitioning or have transitioned into new ways to serve our State.

And I am not unbiased about these individuals, as you will shortly be able to tell. But I think most Louisianans who are fairminded will agree with what I am about to say.

The first person I want to talk about--and I have known both of these folks for a long time--is Rolfe McCollister.

Rolfe did own--he has sold a number of his companies. What did he do? Well, let me just say generally, first, Rolfe is a very astute and successful business person. He is one of the most prominent, if not the most prominent, publisher in Louisiana.

He started from scratch a periodical called the Baton Rouge Business Report, and from that, Rolfe expanded. I mean, the list of his publications is very impressive. He started with the Baton Rouge Business Report. He publishes 10/12 Industry Report, 225 Magazine, inRegister, Daily Report, 225 Dine, Best of 225 This Week.

He also started a very important tradition, which is looked forward to in my State, called the Business Awards and Hall of Fame.

He started the influential Women in Business, and he started the Top 40 Under 40 list, to recognize some of our younger citizens.

Rolfe is retiring effective at the first of the year, and despite all of Rolfe's success in the business world--he is also a banker and he does other things, all self-made. Aside from his success in the world of publishing and journalism, the most important thing Rolfe McCollister has is his passion.

Now, he is smart. He is very intelligent, a graduate of LSU, extraordinary character, very dependable. If you need something done, you go to Rolfe. Trustworthy. But it is his passion that has most impressed me about Rolfe McCollister.

I first met Rolfe in 1987. I knew of him, but I met him. Louisiana had elected a brand-new reform Governor, a former Congressman by the name of Governor Buddy Roemer.

Like many of our reform Governors, Buddy was to serve one term. And when Governor Roemer took over, gosh, the State was a mess. We had, I think it was, a $7 or $8 billion budget. We had a $1.1 billion structural deficit. When Governor Roemer became Governor, we couldn't make payroll. Our schools were a mess. We had no charter schools in Louisiana. Our universities were floundering. And when you don't have adequate funding, universities tend to cannibalize each other. They were all competing for the dollars. It was like Lebanon; you didn't know which faction was going to be the winner today.

Our campaign finance in Louisiana was a mess. At that time, it was legal, and not out of the ordinary, for somebody to put $200,000 cash in a suitcase and take it to a political candidate, and it was perfectly legal for that candidate to take it and perfectly legal for that donor to give it.

Governor Roemer set out to try to fix some of these problems, and by his side was Rolfe McCollister, not in a paid position.

I was working for Governor Roemer then as his lawyer. Rolfe just spent all his time helping, and we needed him, because Governor Roemer would listen to him, and Rolfe was there every step of the way.

And after Governor Roemer got beat, Rolfe didn't stop. He has never stopped. He has been a leader in the charter school movement in Louisiana for as long as I can remember. He believes that competition makes all of us better, and it will make our public schools better.

He did a stint on the LSU board of supervisors, which runs our flagship university, LSU. Rolfe didn't ever hold back. I mean, he said exactly what he thought about what was working at LSU and what wasn't working, and Rolfe made a lot of people mad.

But Rolfe always believed, as did Governor Roemer, and, frankly, as do I--I learned a lot from both of them--that if you make the right people mad, you are doing your job. And this was all because of his passion, because he cared so much about Louisiana, to make it better. He didn't make any money off of it; it cost him money. And I am sure his family said: Hey, Rolfe, you know, can you come home a little earlier tonight, you know?

But Rolfe is just a fine person, and I am very proud to have him in Louisiana. When I count my blessings, I count Rolfe twice, and he is transitioning to a new role. He sold his company to his partner, who is another great guy, Julio Melara. But Rolfe is going to still be involved in my State, and I just want to thank him. Tribute to Melinda Deslatte

Mr. President, the second person I want to mention briefly--totally different in terms of the way she contributes to our State--her name is Melinda Deslatte.

Melinda is the new--I want to get her title right--research director, which is the No. 2 position at the Public Affairs Research Council.

The Public Affairs Research Council is a big deal in Louisiana. I think it is our oldest think tank. It is one of the premier think tanks. They are not Republicans; they are not Democrats. I don't know what they are, except smart and straightforward.

They periodically publish white papers, exhaustively researched, about issues like the environment, fiscal policy, education. Every year when we amend our constitution--and, unfortunately, we amend our State constitution just about every year--PAR puts out a publication explaining--not advocating for or against, but explaining--the amendments. I read their white papers and their writings like clockwork.

The No. 2 position there is research director. So it is important. Melinda Deslatte is the new research director. I think Melinda has taken over the Public Affairs Research Council, and I am bittersweet about it. I am very happy for PAR because they got one of our best and our brightest, but I am really sad for journalism.

Melinda ran the Associated Press in Baton Rouge for 22 years--22 years. And, for me, the three things that you have to have to be a respected journalist are, first, you have got to have brains. Melinda has brains aplenty. I am not saying she is the smartest person I have ever met, but to paraphrase Coach Bum Phillips, the list she is on, it doesn't take long to call the roll.

You have got to be willing to work very hard to be a successful journalist, and, boy, Melinda has a work ethic. But you have also got to be fair, and Melinda Deslatte was--she is now at PAR--the fairest journalist I have ever dealt with.

I don't know what her politics are. I never asked her. I don't even know if she is in a party. And I have been on the long end and the short end of some of her pieces.

She was unspinnable. By that, I mean it is not that she wouldn't listen. You could call Melinda. She was a great listener. You could sit there and talk to her and give her your speech for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, and if she wasn't on deadline, she would listen to you. But I always got the impression it didn't do any good because she was so smart and so hard-working and so dedicated to her profession that she was just going to call it like she saw it, and she did. She did.

She was not an agenda journalist. She was a real journalist. And I know, you know, that Melinda is probably not going to like me saying this. Melinda is the kind of journalist that if a politician praised her, you know, it is like: I must be doing something wrong here. You know, you don't want too much praise from politicians.

But she has left her job. So I feel like I can do it. And she has gone on to another way of helping our State.

I wish all of our journalists were Melinda Deslatte. I wish all of them were Melinda Deslatte.

But, anyway, thank you, Rolfe. Thank you, Melinda. Thank you both for giving so much to Louisiana.

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