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September 1, 1945 – April 26, 2020

Elworth Joseph Petry Jr., known as; Popeye, Junior, Tetan, and Red, was born on September 1, 1945, in Abbeville, Louisiana. He passed away after a long battle with bladder cancer, on April 26, 2020, at his daughter’s home in Lafayette, LA, at the age of 74.
He attended Our Lady of Lourdes Elementary School and James A. Herod High School. He graduated from James A. Herod High and then served in the United States Army, during the Vietnam Era. He is a member of St Theresa Catholic Church and his favorite pastime was going to the race track and the casino. He worked at many places, among which are; the Pipeline Service, JeffersonIsland Salt Mine, and Avery Salt Mine. He also worked as a mechanic for Union Oil of California, Unocal, Hanover Compression, Exterrian, and Archrock. He worked at Archrock until he became ill.
He will always be remembered by his wife, Mary Eva McCowan Petry, four children; Stanley James Wright (Suzanne), and Eric Donyell Petry (Sabrina) of
Abbeville, Louisiana, Erica Deitra Trahan (Bryant) of Lafayette, Louisiana, and Gralon Keith Petry (Ida) of Colorado. Eleven grandchildren; LaShira Petry,
Shaquayla Darby (Roderick), Jhordi Henderson (Ebonie), and Jhorian Henderson of Abbeville, Louisiana, Bryant C.Trahan II and Asia Trahan of Lafayette, Matthias Petry and Jada Petry of St. Martinville, Louisiana, Kolby Petry and Tori Petry of Youngsville, Louisiana, and Akirah Petry of Monroe. Fifteen great grandchildren;Taya Lewis, Ty Petry, Tiranni Henderson, Roderick Darby Jr., Adelyn Darby, Aria Darby, Jhordi Henderson Jr., Jhace Henderson, Kamryn Henderson, Exzavion Thomas, Kayson Small, Jhaiden Papillion, all of Abbeville, Louisiana, Sydni Henderson of Lafayette, Louisiana, Analee Rose Guidry of Youngsville, Louisiana, and Khalon Mikkel Petry of Monroe, Louisiana.
He is also survived by his siblings; Claudette Simons, Inolia Senegal, and Alvin Petry of Lafayette, Louisiana, Leona Hillman, Lois Jordan (Eddie), Elsie Dora(Curtis), Mackolyne Petry (Victoria), and Teary Petry(Chong), of Abbeville, Louisiana, and Laurian Brailey (Michael) and Verna Petry of Houston, Texas, and Carolyn Lucas, of Fort Washington, Maryland, and two Godchildren, Mary Hill Landry, and Louis Boudreaux, and a host of nieces, nephews, other relatives and friends.
He was preceded in death by; his parents, Elworth and Laura Petry, two sisters, Mary Dozier and Linda Pillette, and one brother, Richard Petry.
Due to the Pandemic, there will not be a funeral service, and at Elworth’s request, he will be cremated. His final place of rest will be at St Paul’s Cemetery in Abbeville, Louisiana.
Elworth Petry, Jr. will be sadly missed and never forgotten.
Kinchen Funeral Home Inc., 1011 North Saint Antoine Street, Lafayette LA 70501 is in charge of arrangements.

About two weeks ago, certain businesses in Lafayette Parish opened their doors to a new way of doing things. They wear masks if interacting with customers. They established systems for spacing employees and customers six feet apart. They monitor employees’ health and don’t allow sick workers to report in. They keep to 25 percent of their fire marshal’s set capacity. And if they don’t, they risk fines and even having their utilities cut. It meant some adjustments, creativity and patience, but… they were back in business. Meeting their customers’ needs, providing paychecks for their employees and jump-starting a community’s economy – safely.
That’s because the leadership in that area listened to employers, consulted with health care experts, worked with economic development officials and came up with a creative solution for businesses that fall within the “gray area” of the governor’s “Stay at Home” order… they’re non-essential, but also non-prohibited. They trusted their people. It’s estimated in Lafayette Parish alone, that gray area covered roughly 60 percent of the parish’s businesses. And the governor confirmed that indeed, this “Safe Shop Policy” complied with his order, and these gray area businesses could have been open this whole time, with such safety measures in place. So, if this type of policy is deemed safe and smart for one community, why not for the rest of the state?
Governments don’t exist without taxpayers and taxpayers don’t exist without jobs. It’s time to start listening to employers on how best to put the pieces of our economy back together.
The best way to listen to employers is simply to pay attention to what is happening right now in towns across Louisiana. The businesses providing essential services, such as hardware stores, grocers, the maintenance and construction companies, have operated safely for weeks now. They are meeting the needs of the community, keeping their workers employed and taking smart steps to protect public health. They’ve shown us how to conduct ourselves, and in the meantime, the curve has indeed flattened.
There’s an all-too-prevalent but incorrect assumption that when anyone speaks about the need to open businesses back up, they’re putting the almighty dollar ahead of human lives. But that’s just not the case. That’s a political talking point. These are our neighbors, our friends, job-creators in our own communities who want to do the right thing. They just want to be allowed to do so.
We’ve all had to pivot in our personal lives. We’ve figured out video conferencing. We’ve adjusted to home school. We’ve altered our daily lives to meet our household needs with health at the forefront, and employers at essential businesses have done the same. When forced to adapt, these entrepreneurs, leaders, thinkers and doers have come up with innovative ways to serve, in a way that makes their clients and customers confident they’re entering a safe environment.
Since this crisis started, nearly 350,000 jobs have been lost. Each one of those represents a Louisiana family who is now desperately searching for stability and answers – for them, two weeks is too long a wait. Some projections put the state’s post COVID-19 unemployment rate near 22 percent, which would be the highest since the Great Depression.
At LABI, our more than 2,000 member businesses large and small collectively employ more than 320,000 Louisiana workers – including a significant number in the health care sector. We constantly seek their guidance and input, and have spent the past few weeks reaching out individually and in groups to understand what they need to bounce back from the effects of this shutdown. They’ve been specific in asking that certain regulations be lifted to allow operations, that incentives be tweaked to keep investment robust, and that laws – especially liability protection – be changed in the short term, so they can recover in the long-term. We look forward to releasing those policy recommendations in the coming weeks, but in the immediate future, we ask for something far simpler: It’s time for government to start trusting the people they represent again.
Everyone has learned a lot over the last month or so. We are all much wiser to the need to take smart, sanitary steps to protect ourselves, our family and our neighbors. People get it. Businesses get it, too. It’s time to let people start using that new knowledge and get back to work in a safe manner.
The legislature seems to get it. They have already stated they are ready to get back to work in a safe way and they seem ready to focus on steps to piece this broken economy back to together again. We commend them for that mindset and hope the governor will adopt the same goal soon.
Trust is a two-way street. The people of Louisiana trusted government weeks ago when they were told to sacrifice everything they had to stay home for the greater good. That trust has held firm for weeks now. Now, it is time for government to return that trust to them. The people have earned that right… by their commitment to social distancing, by their sacrifice of their jobs, by the health care providers who have fought courageously, by the employers who stayed open to serve and by the ones patiently begging and waiting for a chance to do the same. It’s time to get back to work. It’s time for government to return that trust.

Stephen Waguespack is President of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry.

Paige Daniel and Abigail Hendren
LSU Manship School
News Service

BATON ROUGE--Three blue states–Washington, Oregon and Colorado–conduct all of their elections through mail-in votes, and four red states--Wyoming, Montana, Utah and Alaska–are joining them this year in conducting their presidential primaries entirely through mail ballots.
Since the COVID-19 outbreak began, 28 other states have announced plans to increase access to absentee ballots or take other actions to keep voters from lining up at polling places.
Yet in deciding on Tuesday to delay Louisiana’s presidential primary to July 11, the Legislature insisted that state election officials scale back plans to rely less on in-person voting and more on mail voting to reduce the health risks.
Republican legislators expressed concern that more mail-in ballots could increase the potential for voter fraud. But national election experts say there have been few instances of fraud as other states have expanded voting by mail. And even once the risks from the virus ease, they say, Louisiana could increase voter turnout if it made greater use of alternative voting methods.
Voter turnout in governor’s races in Louisiana declined steadily for several decades, from 54% in 1979 to 31% in 2011 before rebounding to 51% last fall, according to the Louisiana Secretary of State’s office. Turnout in presidential elections in Louisiana has stayed higher, at 55% to 60% of eligible voters, though voting-rights advocates fear it could slip this year if voters do not feel safe.
Voting by mail is “something we’ve thought was important for a while now, but with the current state of the world, we now believe it is not only important, but essential to the democratic process,” Catherine McKinney, the director of the Louisiana Vote-by-Mail initiative, said.
“Now it is not only easier but imperative to keeping our poll workers and our voters safe from a global pandemic,” she said.
Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin, a Republican, and Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, had agreed on an emergency election plan that would have made mail-in absentee ballots available in the presidential primary to anyone affected by the coronavirus or who did not want to vote in person for fear of catching it.
Sen. Barry Milligan, R-Shreveport, helped shoot down that plan at a hearing on April 15, saying it was “extremely broad and basically covers everyone in Louisiana.”
“There is not an election cycle that goes through that we wake up to the news that votes are found in somebody’s garage or somebody’s truck,” Milligan said.
Milligan’s comments echoed concerns expressed by President Donald Trump, who claimed recently that “mail ballots are a very dangerous thing for this country, because they’re cheaters.”
He also maintained that if vote-by-mail were expanded, “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”
Numerous studies show, however, that mail-ballot fraud is very rare. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, a non-partisan institute in New York, none of the states that hold their elections by mail have had any voter fraud scandals. In fact, the most significant recent instance of voter fraud was committed by a Republican operative in North Carolina, who illegally collected and filled in absentee ballots.
Under a compromise approved by the Legislature, Louisiana residents who are already allowed to mail in absentee ballots, such as those age 65 and older, will be able to vote by mail in the presidential primary and in state elections in August. Because of the threat from the virus, people with serious medical conditions or those who are quarantined or taking care of someone quarantined also will be able to mail ballots.
But lawmakers blocked other proposals by Ardoin to temporarily allow voting by mail for people between ages 60 and 65 or those caring for a child whose school was closed. They also rejected his plan to extend early voting in person to 13 days from seven. No changes have been considered for the presidential election in November.
Colorado, Oregon and Washington were voting entirely by mail long before the COVID-19 outbreak.
Colorado implemented mail-in ballots in 2013. Its voter turnout rate was 51.7%. in 2010, but in its 2018 gubernatorial election, nearly 62% of eligible voters mailed in ballots.
Voter turnout in Washington is typically around 70% of registered voters with all-mail voting. At least 60% of people in Washington chose the option to vote by mail before the state switched to sending mail-in ballots to all registered voters.
Even though it was at the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, Washington had a 50% turnout rate for its presidential primary in March, thanks to its focus on mail voting. Louisiana’s voter turnout in the 2016 presidential primary was only 28% of registered voters.
Before the pandemic, Louisiana was one of only 16 states that required voters to submit a valid excuse to obtain an absentee. In the 2016 general election, only 1.8% of Louisiana’s registered voters cast absentee ballots.
Ardoin and legislators from both parties say they want to avoid a situation like Wisconsin just went through in its presidential primary on April 7.
Republican leaders there rejected proposals to loosen restrictions on voting because of the virus, and they were backed by the U.S. Supreme Court. Long lines ensued, and 52 Wisconsin voters and poll workers have since been diagnosed with COVID-19, though it is unclear where their exposures occurred.
Given the health risks, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo canceled the state’s Democratic primary altogether. Ohio, a key swing state, was one of the first states to move forward with a last-minute plan to vote by mail. Results of that change were mixed in its primary on Tuesday, with many citizens failing to receive an absentee ballot in time to cast their vote.
Besides vote-by-mail, some states have implemented other alternative voting methods--either before the COVID-19 outbreak or since--to make voting more accessible and increase turnout.
These include same-day registration, in which people can register online or at the polls on election days, and holidays from work for voting. Georgia and Colorado, both states with average turnout rates over 50%, have holidays on election days, while Louisiana does not.
Early, in-person voting has expanded in Louisiana, with 33% of those who cast ballots in the 2019 gubernatorial election voting early.
But “if you want to vote early, you have to go to a central location,” said Dr. Brian Brox, a Tulane University professor specializing in. Other states have implemented early voting that actually incorporates satellite early voting, where they basically have more places in the county, rather than having to go to the courthouse.”
Virginia and Maryland are among the states that have lifted restrictions on voting since the COVID-19 outbreak. Virginia removed its excuse requirement for absentee ballots, loosened voter identification laws and expanded its early-voting period. It also made election day a holiday.
Brox contends that lawmakers in Louisiana have not been interested in removing more of the barriers because the voters who manage to overcome them are the ones who put them in office.
“There needs to be a way to kind of get around the gatekeepers, who are basically the legislators,” he said.
Lawmakers, of course, disagree. “I’m not going to spend the thousand hours of effort to come up with good solutions to these problems,” Rep. Barry Ivey, R-Central, said in an interview on this subject last year. “I do not feel that as a state our voting opportunities in the aggregate are subpar. I believe we’re probably above average in that category.”
But in the congressional election in November 2018, Louisiana ranked 45 out of 50 states and the District of Columbia in the percentage of voters who turned out, according to data compiled by Dr. Michael McDonald at the University of Florida.
Republican strategists fear that expanding the use of mail ballots would increase voter turnout among poorer people who would not vote for them. But greater use of mail ballots also could help Republicans, especially if Louisiana gets a second wave of COVID-19 in the fall and older voters are reluctant to go to the polls.
If the virus ramps up again then, McKinney said, “Under no circumstances should the state of Louisiana put our poll workers or our voters in harm’s way when such a simple solution is available like vote-by-mail.”

After a weekend that started with a show of American strength and unity with B-52 flybys, Saturday ended with the largest display of disunity so far against the quarantine as nearly 300 shouted at Louisiana’s Executive Mansion for Governor John Bel Edwards to reopen business immediately.  Monday morning on WWL Newsradio in New Orleans, Jefferson Parish Councilmember Jennifer Van Vrancken said her district, one of the hottest of the original COVID hotspots, was now ready to reopen.  “I know the Governor is thinking of things statewide,” she said, “but we’re not going to Shreveport or Monroe on an average weekend. Jefferson is ready to reopen.  We are hoping the governor will let regions of the state get back to business.”

So far, the governor has said it’s all or nothing in reopening the state.  Before his first press conference in the Capitol since March, Governor Edwards said he joined nearly every other governor on a conference call with Vice President Mike Pence.  They discussed how to achieve the White House mandate of 14-straight days of declining COVID cases.  Nine of those governors are reopening their states without having met that criteria.

“Look,” answered Governor Edwards, “I don’t second guess that other governors do.  They have their own considerations.  Here in Louisiana, to the extent that we can, we’re going to abide by the guidelines [from the Trump administration and CDC] because we think they make sense.”

Downstairs in the House and Senate, some lawmakers don’t agree.  Under protest from many of their colleagues, Senate President Paige Cortez and House Speaker Clay Schexnayder forced reconvening.  They said they have to hammer out a budget in just four weeks.  Those who protested said they feared for their health after COVID took the life of Rep. Reggie Bagala of Lafourche Parish last month. Baton Rouge Representative Ted James also was hospitalized for days, and even Senate President Cortez himself took days to recover from COVID-19.  

Schexnayder and Cortez say the governor did not include them in his decision to extend the stay-at-home order to May 15.  Edwards says he did conference with the two and told them he was following guidance from President Trump to secure the $1.8 billion in federal aid.

Many returning legislatures are likewise meeting with disharmony.  In Michigan, frustration over the quarantine spilled into the Michigan Senate Thursday where some rioters brandished assault rifles, causing senators to scramble for bulletproof vests. 

Governor Edwards says no provision to beef up capitol security has been made or is necessary.  “I don’t think Louisianans will do that,” he said, reiterating that if Louisiana experiences any violence or any spike in COVID cases, that news would streak across the nation and kill Louisiana tourism.  In 2018, over 51 million visitors spent $19 billion in Louisiana, according to Lt. Governor Billy Nungesser.  Those tourists paid almost $2 billion in state and local taxes.

“And I would remind you,” continued the governor, “that we did not at the outset close a lot of the things in Louisiana that were closed elsewhere.  I read as other states come back online that they are restarting construction.  Well, we never closed construction.  They’re opening up manufacturing.  We never closed manufacturing.  Every time CISA, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, has revised their guidelines to include more areas as critical infrastructure, we have embraced that completely.  So we’re on our third set of critical infrastructure now.  And yet, we’ve been able to reduce our [COVID] case growth and our numbers in a way that, quite frankly, is as impressive as any place in the country.”

The 2020 Louisiana Legislative session closes June 1 but most expect at least one special session during summer.  Louisiana’s fiscal year ends June 30.  If a budget is not passed by then, state government could freeze, said the governor.  Adding to the tension, losses in state revenue from the Coronavirus shutdown combined with plummeting oil prices range from $500 million to a possible drop of $1 billion.