225BatonRouge.com

Jean Armstrong’s message to voters has been persistent and not overly dramatic: Pay attention, get informed, and most important, just vote.

She invites candidates to monthly no-nonsense luncheons with the League of Women Voters, where members ask nuts-and-bolts questions and can look decision makers square in the eye while they answer.

But this election season, Armstrong’s message comes with a warning.

“This is probably the most important election this state has seen since the Civil War,” Armstrong says. “We are a state in crisis. People should vote like their future depends on it—because it does.”

The unique Oct. 20 election, which combines a raft of new faces as well as a key race for governor, is the kind of democratic drama Armstrong and the League live for.

Her commitment to the cause—helping to inform voters and make politicians accountable—has helped make her a celebrity of sorts around the State Capitol. During our one-hour interview, holed up at a small table in the basement of Huey’s monument, no less than eight people wave, call hello or address her by name. And with political aplomb, she calls them all by name, too.

A native of Arkansas, Armstrong calls herself a resident of Louisiana by choice, and speaks about this state with passion. Her love affair with Louisiana began at age 3, or so she has been told. Her father was a railroad man and the family often took the train into New Orleans.

“From the time the train hit Baton Rouge you could smell the coffee roasting,” she recalls. “The smell was so vibrant. There was a brackishness about the marsh, then as you got closer to New Orleans the cars would start up the big Huey P. Long Bridge, and that was just mind-boggling. At that time the train station was on Annunciation Street, and my parents would get off in the market on Canal Street. And at Tchoupitoulas there was a fruit stand that had guava and mango; those things that never made it up to us in Arkansas, so the smells were phenomenal. And then you’d go down into the Quarter to the French Market, and there would be fish and shrimp and crabs—things I never saw back home. People spoke in different languages. You couldn’t help but fall in love.”

It was this love that turned Armstrong into a full-time resident in 1964, holding a number of positions in the state Office of Economic Development. Her greatest challenge was the ever-rocky political climate and overwhelming corruption. She learned quickly there must be a “balancing act between the needs and the greeds of the community for the benefit of all.”

She once proposed having her own job in the Department of Economic Development abolished while working in state government, saying she would never do anything that wasted the taxpayers’ money.

It was precisely that sort of objective moxie that made her a perfect candidate for president of the Baton League of Women Voters, a position she’s held since April 14, 1995. In fact, her ascent with the local League was meteoric.

She attended her first League reception at the request of a friend in November 1994. Impressed by the organization’s founding principles, she wrote a check and joined that evening. It wasn’t until four months later she got a call from then-League president Judy Harper. Armstrong met with Harper and nominating chair Peggy Russell, who offered her the presidency.

“I was astounded,” she says. “I had just joined the previous November, hadn’t heard from anyone for months and all of a sudden they want me to be their president. I got the sense that this was a local league that was very challenged.”

But, it was a challenge Armstrong couldn’t turn down. She’s not only president of the League of Women Voters of Baton Rouge, but since 2003 she’s also been president of the League of Women Voters of Louisiana.

“Jean Armstrong has done a great job keeping the League alive,” political columnist John Maginnis says. “I think the League’s greatest relevance is focusing on issues and issues alone. I think that gives them tremendous weight when quoted in the newspapers.”

Armstrong has made it her mission to turn the once-troubled organization into one that commands respect and remains relevant, despite the changing Louisiana political arena. She has grown the local League from 47 dues-paying members in 1995 to 225, although the hurricanes have reduced those numbers. Armstrong’s particularly proud the League is representative of Baton Rouge, both in ethnicity and gender, with a 42% male membership. Men were invited to join the League nationally in 1973.

“I had always heard about the League and knew they were about good government,” she says. “But, when I saw their vision, mission and goals, I was taken aback. It was everything I believed in. This was an organization that was nonpartisan, was very politically active in providing information and services to the citizens and encouraged all citizens to get involved with government’s processes.”

The League’s bread-and-butter recruiting tool is its monthly Lunch With the League program, where party labels are shed at the door.

“We look for solutions,” she says “I don’t really care what your title is. If you come to one of our monthly lunches you will be asked to leave it at the door. Whether it’s governor or judge. You are simply Kathleen, Bob, Ted, Carol, Alice—whatever—because we want your ideas to be heard on the basis of the idea. We don’t want them propped up on anything. They should stand on their own.”

When Jim Nickel, a political consultant with Courson Nickel, was elected in 1995 to serve as chairman of the Louisiana Democratic Party, there were few organizations promoting an active democracy or an educated electorate until Jean Armstrong was elected to her post that same year.

“Jean basically created that organization whole cloth,” Nickel says. “When she took over, all of a sudden you saw public forums being held for local and statewide races, there were policy lunches scheduled after the sessions. Overall, I think the League has been fairly effective in promoting participation in our democracy. Could they do more? Sure, with more funding and larger numbers they could hold more voter registration drives and things like that, but I certainly think they fill the vacuum here, particularly in Baton Rouge.”

The League aims to present all points of view, encouraging members make up their own minds. Through its strict nonpartisan foundation the League has truly become a trusted political facilitator in this community.

Their role may never be more important than right now.

Term limits are finally prying steadfast fixtures from the Legislature, replacing them with a new generation of candidates seeking almost every seat in the House and Senate, not to mention lieutenant governor, secretary of state, attorney general, treasurer, commissioner of agriculture, commissioner of insurance, plus members of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. And then there are a number of constitutional amendments, propositions and local elections.

“We are in the middle of a great awakening,” Armstrong says. “People are starting to question the way things have always been, but until we demand more from our elected officials, the only thing term limits can do is save us from ourselves—save us from electing the same people into power. Stop looking back and start looking forward. Let’s hold our public officials accountable. We can do better.”

Also adding to the Oct. 20 election stakes is the cumulative effects of Katrina and Rita.

“We have been devastated, and this state has got to learn to pull together,” she says. “We’ve got to put our regional differences aside. And for us to live up to our potential we have got to stop looking at the potholes and start looking at the blessings. This goes for everyone in Louisiana.”