Blanco trying to save state, career with trip
BYLINE: John Hill
BATON ROUGE Gov. Kathleen Blanco is getting criticized for going on a two-week trip to Japan, China, Taiwan and Kuwait shopping for industrial investment in Louisiana.
A decade ago, Gov. Mike Foster was criticized for rarely leaving southeastern Louisiana.
The state of Louisiana did not even know that Nissan was searching the South for a site for an auto manufacturing plant that has set the economy of Canton, Miss., and Jackson on fire over the past three years.
The Foster administration was late to get into the game of modern economic development.
Blanco has been just the opposite. The day after her 2004 inauguration, she flew to Shreveport to join the Chamber of Commerce and local economic development officials to woo an industrial prospect. She went to the international oil exhibition in Houston. She's been to New York to talk to Wall Street investors.
Not since former Gov. Buddy Roemer's trip back in 1988 has a Louisiana governor gone to Asia to try to sell Louisiana. While former Gov. Edwin Edwards concentrated on gambling and Mike Foster didn't pay attention to economic development until his last two years, other Southern states went on the offensive, landing major investments from Asian and European corporations.
Japan is saturated and looking for investment externally. China has the fastest-growing economy in the world. Most economic publications believe China's economy will be the world's largest in the 21st century. In a global economy, it's only logical to aggressively try to sell Louisiana in Asia.
Blanco and Louisiana Economic Development Secretary Michael Olivier, Assistant LED Secretary Don Pierson and a handful of Louisianians in her entourage attended the Japan External Trade Organization, toured a silicon semiconductor plant in Shirakawa and met with the top decision-makers of Toyota in Tokyo to discuss the state's industrial megasite in Richland Parish.
In Shanghai, the provincial vice governor and other high officials met Blanco's party at the airport. She met with the company that will construct the modular pieces of a $5 billion Ascension Parish synthetic fuels plant, Synfuel Inc., and attended a signing ceremony between Synfuel and Chemtura, the chemical giant, in which Chemtura agreed to buy from the new plant.
"Paul" Hsin Liu of Westbury, N.Y., who holds a doctorate in plasma physics and is the prime moving force behind Synfuel, paved Blanco's way in China.
Next weekend, it's on to Kuwait, where the governor and the emir will sign an agreement to do due diligence on the feasibility of an $8 billion to $10 billion refinery to be built on the Mississippi River, up higher than the hurricane-prone areas.
The Shaw Group, a Baton Rouge-based company that builds petrochemical and power plants around the world, helped develop the Kuwait project at considerable expense. Jim Bernhard, a Lafayette native who is a cofounder of Shaw, deserves a lot of credit for developing the lead. Shaw, Olivier said, is willing to help finance and build the refinery.
The Asia trip is not designed to come home with signed commitments for new factories, Olivier said during a news conference phone call from Shanghai.
"Come on, guys, you don't ever come home with a project from one of these trips," Olivier said. "It's about building relationships."
The governor explained it as a fishing trip.
"If you don't go fishing, you don't catch a fish," she said.
Olivier, noting it had been more than a decade since a governor has tried to sell Louisiana to Asia, said it was important to have a continued presence in the superheated economies of Japan, China and Taiwan.
This is a trip that was planned for fall 2005 before the hurricanes derailed it and sent Blanco's poll numbers down.
Survey USA, which tracks governors in all states, pegged Blanco's approval rating on Aug. 15, 2005, at 50 percent, with a negative rating of 43 percent. That was after her failed proposed cigarette tax to give teachers a pay raise. (The raises were granted this year with no tax increases, due to the post-hurricane booming economy).
Survey USA put Blanco's numbers this past Oct. 16 at 41 percent approval and 57 percent disapproval.
Blanco's goal is to bring home some major industrial announcements, to remind voters that she has made economic development her top priority and reverse those negative numbers. To be a viable re-election candidate, she's got to announce a series of major agreements.
"This is why Blanco was elected in the first place, because she proposed to be a go-getter when it came to economic development," said Pearson Cross, a University of Louisiana-Lafayette political scientist.
"If Blanco is going to restore her reputation and position herself to win re-election in 2007, these are the kinds of actions she needs to be taking," Cross said. "And nothing would be bigger than landing a multi-billion-dollar refinery."