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This is our third look at Louisiana’s gubernatorial contenders and their platforms , this time featuring John Schroder, Sharon Hewitt and Richard Nelson. They have three things in common: They’re Republicans, they’ve been state legislators and they reside in St. Tammany Parish.

On John Schroder’s website ( johnschroder.com ), he points out that “leading Louisiana toward prosperity is going to take experience and hard work,” and says he’s “exactly the right conservative to do it.” Schroder is the current state treasurer, a small-business owner and former narcotics detective.

On schools, Schroder says, “We need to reform our public education to ensure control is at the local level.” On crime, he supports closing “loopholes that allow violent criminals and drug dealers to walk free.” On corruption, he proposes reforming Louisiana’s “national reputation,” taking on “cronyism” and “backroom deals.”

On economic development, Schroder bemoans “overbearing governmental regulations” and pinpoints the need for “talent development,” including educating and training “our workforce for the jobs of the 21st century.” On taxes, Schroder proposes a 10-year phase-in of “tax reform for companies and the elimination of personal income tax.” He wants to do this “gradually to prevent a major deficit in the budget.” Schroder’s positions may be politically safe, but lack coherence and depth.

If elected, state Sen. Sharon Hewitt would become the first Republican woman governor of Louisiana. Her website ( sharonhewitt.com ) has a robust new issues section.

As an executive at Shell, Hewitt’s biography points out, she worked to cut company inefficiencies and waste. As a legislator, she’s advocated for “smaller government, better jobs and lower taxes.” She recently sponsored the “fortified roof” bill, aimed at lowering insurance rates, and has pushed legislation to crack down on clandestine labs that unlawfully manufacture fentanyl and carfentanil.

On education, Hewitt has worked for improved literacy and “back to the basics” teaching. She believes the state is already making progress and pledges as governor to support STEM education, TOPS, TOPS Tech and the Foster Promise Program.

To grow the economy, Hewitt cites what other “booming” Southern states have done that Louisiana hasn’t, including a “zero state income tax, a less litigious legal climate, and a more business-friendly environment.” She favors investment in a “reliable and affordable energy grid” and creation of a “regional port commission to allow our ports collectively to dominate ports in neighboring states.” She will pause state lawsuits “against 200 oil and gas companies with unsubstantiated claims of them violating their coastal zone permits.”

On Louisiana’s low workforce participation rate, she proposes to be “responsive to today’s quickly-evolving job market through dual-enrollment, apprenticeships, and industry-based certifications while in high school.” Hewitt is pro-life and pro-Second Amendment.

State Rep. Richard Nelson, the youngest candidate at 37, coined the best sound bite so far: “If Louisiana were just average in the country, we’d all live 4 years longer and get a 33% raise. That’s what bad government is costing us.” Throughout his website ( nelsonforla.com ), Nelson promises big ideas, and delivers.

Nelson wants to repeal the state income tax. How? By restructuring “the tax code, eliminating many loopholes and exemptions.” But filling that $2.7 billion hole in state revenues would be no easy task; it’s a complex challenge not fully explained.

Another Nelson idea is funding new infrastructure projects by lowering interest payments on state debt, including pension debt. Interesting, but how and when would the debt be reduced?

Nelson also talks about “keeping tax dollars in local communities” and “allowing local communities to invest in their roads, police, and schools.” On crime, he wants to “empower local governments to raise police pay, put more officers on the street, and invest in improving morale to recruit and retain police officers.” On education, he proposes raising teacher pay above the regional average.

Most of Nelson’s ideas point to fundamental reform of state and local governments, their basic functions and taxing powers. It’s a meaty topic that calls for more thought and discussion.

There you have it, the candidates and their platforms. Before we send one of them to the governor’s mansion, we need to know where they’ll take Louisiana in the years ahead.

Ron Faucheux is a nonpartisan political analyst, pollster and writer based in Louisiana. He publishes LunchtimePolitics.com , a nationwide newsletter on polls and public opinion.

“Florida Man” is a popular internet meme from the 2010s. It’s a viral riff on the large number of newspaper headlines about wild Floridian males doing crazy stuff. “Florida Man threw live alligator in Wendy’s drive-thru window,” is one. “Florida man attempting to time travel crashes into strip mall,” is another.

These stories speak to the patronising way many Americans still think about the Sunshine State. Florida residents are thought to be past their prime, sun struck, high on drugs and more than a little mentally unwell.

“I like Florida,” said the great New York comedian George Carlin. “Everything is in the ’80s. The temperatures, the ages, and the IQs.”

In truth, however, it’s the joke that is getting old. Florida, America’s third most populous state, is increasingly rich and dynamic. It’s not just a sunny place for retirees: in recent years, hundreds of thousands of Americans of all ages have moved to Florida, often to escape the high-taxes, expensive housing and the suffocating progressivism of other states.

Americans take seriously their constitutionally enshrined right to pursue “life, liberty and happiness” – and Florida now has a reputation as being the place to do that.

But Florida is, like America, complicated. It has a huge Hispanic immigrant population – 5.5 million according to the latest census figures – and a lot of poverty as well as wealth.

Philip Bump, author of The Aftermath: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America , says that Florida’s racial diversity, warming climate, and ageing population make it “the state that looks most like most like what we’d expect the United States to look like in 2060.”

Florida is politically polarised, too, and therefore a key battleground in the nation’s all-consuming culture wars. And that’s why two Florida Men, Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis , are the front-runners to be the Republican Party’s nominee in the presidential election next year. As one Republican consultant puts it, “2020 was, because of the pandemic, the Covid election. 2024 is shaping up, at least on the Republican side, to be the Florida election.”

Donald Trump is a New Yorker, but his spiritual home is his comedy mansion in Mar a Lago on the southern end of the Sunshine State . His famously orange 76-year-old face has a certain Floridian quality, too.

Ron DeSantis has been the Governor of Florida since 2018.

After months of anticipation, DeSantis announced his candidacy with Elon Musk on Twitter this week, and it all went disastrously wrong because the tech kept glitching.  “Florida man wrecks presidential campaign in epic social media fail,” jokes one political insider.

Humour aside, the very fact that DeSantis is now mounting a credible challenge to Donald Trump – one backed by powerful figures such as Rupert Murdoch and Musk – speaks to his role in Florida’s transformation. Florida is traditionally a swing state in American elections.

In November, however, DeSantis won his gubernatorial re-election by a whopping 20 percentage points. Under DeSantis’s governorship, and in the age of Trump, the Grand Old Party has started to win in formerly Democratic Floridian strongholds such as Miami-Dade and Palm Beach.

“This is a very substantial development,” says Roger Stone, the famous ‘dark arts’ political consultant and Trump confidant . “And it’s not just, as people like to say, because of conservative Cuban Hispanics. The Republican Party has made significant gains among Mexican Hispanics, Puerto Ricans and Venezuelan Hispanics.”

Who can be credited for Florida’s rightward shift – Trump or DeSantis? That answer to that question may decide who ends up on the Republican presidential ticket in 2024.

DeSantis became Florida’s Governor in large part thanks to the power of Trump. He courted Trump’s endorsement by sucking up to him on Fox News. He even did a campaign advertisement in which he read Trump’s Art of the Deal book to his baby (“Then Mr Trump said, “You’re fired!”).

What DeSantis understood is that, for Floridians especially, Trump’s willingness to stick two fingers up to established Washington norms made him attractive.

Once installed as Governor, he made a global name for himself as a leader on the Right who wouldn’t back down when it came to culture war issues. “He doesn’t just talk the Trumpy talk,” says one Republican strategist. “He walks the walk. At 46, he’s also Trump but you get two terms.”

DeSantis distinguished himself most of all among liberty lovers during the pandemic. He was the first and most prominent state governor to buck the scientific orthodoxy on Covid and allow Floridian businesses and society to open again. This was a boon to Florida’s economy and enhanced its reputation as a state where freedom thrives.

He dared to pick a fight with Disney, the corporate monolith , over his Parental Rights in Education Act, which banned Floridian school teachers from discussing their sexuality with pupils. A number of employees at Disney, which owns a massive and extremely profitable theme-park in Florida, were disgusted by what was dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay Bill.”

The corporation duly released a statement calling “for this law to be repealed by the legislature or struck down in the courts.” DeSantis responded by passing another law terminating Disney World’s ‘special district’ tax status in Florida.

Some right-wing Republicans squealed at the escalation, because free-market Republicans aren’t meant to use state power to intimidate private companies. It’s un-American. But DeSantis has continued to fight Disney through Florida’s courts.

DeSantis has also challenged progressive Floridian school boards – banning mathematics textbooks which promote Critical Race Theory, among other moves. He’s signed a bill forbidding transgender athletes from women and girls’ school teams. He’s signed a bill banning abortions after six weeks.

These moves provoke howls of outrage from the left-liberal media, yet that only increases his standing in the wider electorate. “We have battled the woke elites in Florida,” DeSantis writes in his flagrantly political memoir The Courage to Be Free. “And we have won, time and again.” One of his mantras is that Florida is “the place where woke goes to die”.

Roger Stone, a fierce Trump loyalist, argues that DeSantis’s popularity as a culture warrior is much exaggerated. “He’s been very aggressive on cultural issues and that has had a polarising effect in Florida. In fact I would say that, although people talk about Florida as a Republican red state, it is in fact a purple state — meaning it’s still in play.”

Stone says that DeSantis’s backers have misunderstood the more “populist aspects of Trump’s appeal.” He points out that Trump has always mixed his culture warring with economic policies that appeal to working-class voters.

One of the Trump campaign’s already established attack lines is to put out that the Floridian Governor wants to cut social security and Medicare, government welfare policies that benefit America’s lower-income and older voters most.

“Ron DeSantis loves sticking his fingers where they don’t belong,” says one bizarrely nasty Trumpian video advertisement, which mocks DeSantis over a silly story that he ate a chocolate pudding on a plane with his hands in 2019. “DeSantis has his dirty fingers all over senior entitlements.”

DeSantis has said that, as Governor of Florida, “I have more seniors here than just about anyone” and denies he has any plans to cut their entitlements. But his voting record shows he has supported reforms to social security and the dirty fingers line might stick — not just in Florida but across America, and especially in the early primary voting states of Iowa, South Carolina, Nevada and New Hampshire.

The argument for DeSantis is that he could be a Floridian version of Ronald Reagan, who went from being a sunny governor of California to one of the most loved Republican presidents.

The argument against DeSantis is that he’s more likely to be the next Jeb Bush, another successful Floridian Governor who big donors backed to win the Republican nomination in 2016 — only for him to be monstered by Donald Trump in the primaries.

DeSantis, whose mother was a nurse, is a much grittier politician than Jeb Bush, whose father was a president. He understands that Republican politics is now geared towards the working class.

But he could have a personality problem. He’s gauche in interviews and awkward in public. A video of him fake laughing in Iowa last week went viral, as commenters compared him to a “faulty robot.” He doesn’t have the presidential magic touch with people — which other governors-turned-Presidents, such as Bill Clinton or Reagan or even Jimmy Carter possessed. Or, as Stone puts it, “I knew Ronald Reagan. I worked for Ronald Reagan. Ron DeSantis is no Ronald Reagan.”

DeSantis’s polls ratings have been sliding in recent weeks. It turns out that his much hailed “Florida blueprint” — Make America Florida, it’s been called — isn’t what all Americans want.

Arguably the strongest case against DeSantis’s candidacy is that, even in his home state, the polls suggest he’ll lose to Trump. “Orange Florida Man Beats Robot Florida Governor In Backyard” — that could be the Republican headline for 2024.

Bus drives through the abandoned village of Imber (Image: PA)

Ghost village Imber, Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire

Four years into the Second World War, the residents of this remote Wiltshire village were given just days to evacuate their homes so it could be used by American troops practising for the D-Day invasion of Normandy in June 1944.

In the late 19th Century, the Government began buying land on Salisbury Plain for military use.

By the outbreak of war, almost all the land in and around Imber village belonged to the Ministry of War.

On November 1, 1943, villagers were called to a meeting and given 47 days’ notice to leave their homes.

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Peter Boizot, founder of Pizza Express (Image: Mike Floyd/ANL/REX/Shutterstock)

Compensation for the upheaval was limited, and the occupants of one farm were forcibly evicted by the Army.

Albert Nash, who had been the village’s blacksmith for more than 40 years, was so distraught he was found sobbing over

The promise that they would be allowed to return to their homes after the war proved to be an empty one.

In January 1961, their patience tested, around 2,000 villagers held a rally, demanding Imber be returned to its rightful owners.

Eventually, an agreement was reached that the village would be opened three days a year for people to visit their abandoned homes, while the church would be maintained and opened for worship on one day a year.

To this day the village is open to visitors on certain bank Holidays and around the Christmas period.

Elvis Presley ’s only UK appearance Prestwick Airport, Ayrshire

Now renamed Glasgow Prestwick International Airport, this is the only spot in the entire UK where The King set foot.

Having been demobbed from the US Army in West Germany on March 2, 1960, Sergeant Presley stopped off in Prestwick for two hours so his plane could refuel.

While waiting, he chatted to surprised fans through the wire fence.

The first Pizza Express 29 Wardour Street, London

It was here, in London’s West End, that the very first Pizza Express restaurant opened on March 27, 1965.

Founder Peter Boizot had returned from Italy desperate for somewhere to buy a proper Italian-style pizza.

Failing to find a restaurant, he decided to create his own. His first move was to order a large pizza oven, but when it arrived he discovered it wouldn’t fit through the door.

So he and his staff had to smash a hole through the front wall.

The first day of business was hardly successful – just £3 (£62 at today’s values) went into the till.

The original pizzas were square, as were the slices. They sold for two shillings each and were served on greaseproof paper with plastic cutlery and coffee in paper cups.

When the heat of the cheese melted the plastic, stainless steel cutlery was provided instead. Boizot sourced mozzarella cheese from the only producer in London and was the first man to import Peroni beer to the UK. The second Pizza Express opened on London’s Coptic Street, next to the British Museum, in 1967. Peter Boizot died in 2018.

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Elvis Presley (Image: Getty)

First traffic lights Parliament Square, London

The UK’s first traffic lights in Britain began operating in Parliament Square on December 10, 1868 – a manually operated revolving lantern with red and green lights but no amber.

They were invented by railway engineer JP Knight, although of fairly crude construction, as evidenced when the contraption exploded a few weeks later, injuring the policeman operating it.

The one-armed drummer Ladybower Reservoir Bridge, Sheffield

On the A57 outside Sheffield on New Year’s Eve 1984, Def Leppard drummer Rick Allen crashed his Corvette Stingray.

His left arm was torn off at the shoulder and had to be amputated.

Refusing to give up his career despite his injury, he carried on providing rhythm for the band.

First KFC 92 Fishergate, Preston, Lancashire

The first Kentucky Fried Chicken opened in Britain in Preston in May 1965, with a cardboard cut-out of Colonel Sanders welcoming customers.

The restaurant – which predated McDonald’s and Burger King – was set up by business partners Harry Latham and Raymond Allen. They soon expanded nationwide.

Borley Rectory Hall Road, Borley, Essex

Often labelled “the most haunted house in England”, this rectory was built in 1863, on the site of an old Benedictine monastery near the River Stour.

Over the years, all sorts of shenanigans, including phantom footsteps, ghostly nuns, doorbells ringing of their own accord and unexplained stone-throwing have been reported.

In 1930, the Foyster family moved in and later claimed to

In 1939 the rectory was completely gutted by fire, and it was finally demolished in 1944.

Experts have subsequently claimed all the happenings were the result of misinterpreted natural occurrences, hoaxing, hearsay and damp and shoddy workmanship when the house was originally built.

Camelot Castle Hotel in Cornwall, which was used as the asylum in Dracula (Image: Getty)

Britain’s first cashpoint 20 The Town, Enfield, London

The UK’s first cashpoint, or ATM, opened at a branch of Barclays Bank in Enfield on Tuesday June 27, 1967.

The late Reg Varney, famous for playing Stan Butler in the sitcom On The Buses, was the first customer.

It was all very different to the cashpoints we use today.

Customers had to buy a punched card in advance for £10, which was then inserted into the machine. The inventor of the machine was John Shepherd-Barron.

Other early cashpoints were installed in Hove, Ipswich, Luton, Peterborough and Southend-on-Sea.

Beware Doodlebug! Grove Road, Mile End, London

The first V1, or Doodlebug as the Nazi weapons were known, fell on London next to a railway bridge on Grove Road, east London, 4.25am on Tuesday June 13, 1944.

It was part of a wave of ten V1s, but five crash-landed after take-off in France. One went missing en route and four reached England – three falling short of their targets.This one killed six Londoners and badly injured another 30, as well as leaving around 200 people homeless.

The first ASBO Taunton Deane Shopping Centre

It was in 2004 that the first Asbo was issued in the UK. Taunton Deane Magistrates’ Court ordered a 38-year-old not to loiter within 50 yards of any school in England and Wales after he was arrested for exposing himself in the town centre

The Notorious Guide To Britain by Paul Donnelley is out now (Image: )

Kidnapped estate agent 37 Shorrolds Road, Fulham

It was outside this Fulham house on July 28, 1986, that 25-year-old estate agent Suzy Lamplugh arranged to meet the mysterious Mr Kipper ostensibly to show him around the property.

Lamplugh drove from her nearby office and was never seen again.

Her car was discovered at 10pm outside a house a mile-and-a-half away. In 1994, Suzy Lamplugh was declared legally dead.

The chief suspect is a convicted killer called John Cannan, although he has consistently denied having anything to do with the abduction.

The Cornish Dracula King Arthur’s Castle Hotel, Tintagel, Cornwall

The 1979 film version of the famous vampire tale starred US actor Frank Langella, in the title role, Laurence Olivier as Van Helsing and Donald Pleasence as Dr Jack Steward.

Directed by John Badham, the film was set in 1913 as Count Dracula arrives in Whitby, Yorkshire, from Transylvania aboard the ship Demeter on a stormy night. Langella only agreed to the role as long as he would not have to do any promotional work as Dracula.

King Arthur’s Castle Hotel stood in for the asylum from the original story. Still there today, it’s now the Camelot Castle Hotel.

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