Victory: Lafayette Library Board appoints another Conservative

Boards are supposed to be made up of regular citizens who simply want the best for their own community. Previously, a number of boards in Lafayette had been overrun with liberal-progressive political activists. Because their agenda is not popular locally, it’s tough to get private funding for their social justice campaigns. Enter public boards and their nearly unlimited tax dollars.

Way back in 2018, we saw attempts by the previous Lafayette library director (Teresa Elberson) to use tax dollars to thrust drag queens on three-year-olds. Not since “no French in schools” had Lafayette’s government made such a concerted effort to change the local culture. Some media outlets with short memories have even suggested that the event took place. It didn’t. Our team, along with a coalition of pastors, churches, and various political parties, conservative and / or Christian groups successfully prevented your tax dollars from being used for such a blatant social justice campaign.

However, we knew that this event showing up in the single most conservative city in the entire United States was a sign of a deeper problem. It was that moment that we realized that somebody had better do something; and so we did. Systematically, we worked to remake the Lafayette Public Library’s Board of Control. Every single one of its members had to go. They all stood by and said nothing when their woke director decided to sexualize children using the public treasury. Today, of the eight, all have been replaced but one who had just been reappointed at the time. That term expires early next year.

The Left is relentless

On October 4, 2022, of the ten library board of control applicants, Lafayette’s Parish Council appointed Erasto Padron. Aside from being a very decorated veteran, he is also the first hispanic appointment to any of Lafayette’s boards that we can find. One might expect the “diversity” crowd to be celebrating such a great victory. However, that’s not been the case. In fact, as usual, they’re pretty angry about it.

All of the public comment appeared to instead suggest that Dr. Christie Maloyed would have been a better choice. We’ve been receiving numerous questions from our own members, the press, and the public at large about the other individual who was nominated. Normally, the victorious party gets all of the attention. However, because our friends at the Louisiana Illuminator discovered that Dr. Christie Maloyed plans to continue submitting her application for any future opening, we decided the public should finally know what we know.

History and Associations

Let’s review page three (3) of the October 4, 2022, Parish Council meeting minutes. That’s where all of the public comments in favor of Dr. Maloyed (or alluding to her by way of qualifications) can be found. Every person who spoke (save the Library Director) appears in our meticulously kept records of Lafayette area progressive political activists. Following are a few highlights.

1. Lafayette Library Director Danny Gillane. It’s odd that the sitting director, and top employee for the Library, would be attempting to intervene in the process of choosing a board member to which he would report. Mr. Gillane has done a fairly good job, especially when compared with his political activist predecessor, Teresa Elberson. He specifically asked for Dr. Maloyed to be appointed.
2. Kenneth Broussard asked the council to support an “open minded” board member. However our research indicates he appears to be one of those leftist nuts, the likes of which we worked to get off of the Bayou Vermilion District board. In June of 2020, he spoke at the Lafayette Parish Council meeting against systemic racism and police brutality. A regular reader might remember that’s at about the same time the Bayou Vermilion District issued an eerily similar statement. Since then, we worked diligently to replace the BVD board. In the clean sweep, the new board successfully pressured the director into resigning some time back.
3. Mary Lib Guercio is a former School Board member who started showing up to Library meetings in 2021. She’s one of several women who spoke out in favor of leaving an erotic and pornographic book in the Library children’s section. Everyone has a “right to enjoy” the material that the “professional librarians” are putting in front of our children. She has also strongly supported building yet another library branch without the due diligence of a case or market study. At the July, 2022, library board meeting, she made statements in support of the library’s insubordinate employee, Cara Chance. If your memory if hazy, it was Chance who defied a direct order to not use library resources to promote a personal political agenda. She did it anyway.
4. Ola Prejean, said she wanted someone who did not “support censorship.” That’s the buzzword they’ve been using lately for re-shelving pornographic materials away from the library children’s section. Last time anyone had heard from her was 2015, when she self-identified as the vice president of the liberal-progressive League of Women Voters. Way back in 2006, she was also the President of the Lafayette Commission on the needs of Women. As far as we can tell, she’s never visited a Lafayette Library Board of Control meeting.
5. Lynette Mejia said she wanted a “non-partisan” appointment (Dr. Christie Maloyed is registered as “no-party”). Like Ms. Guercio, Ms. Mejia also started showing up at Library Board of Control meetings in 2021. She’s been a belligerent critic of the library’s new conservative board. It’s believed she (perhaps along with Library employee Cara Chance) is the person who coordinates getting hard-left activists to show up, turning the library’s previously mild meetings into quite the circus. It was Lynette Mejia who hopped in her black Chevy Tahoe (vanity plate “Wicked”) and drove Cara Chance all the way to Livingston Parish to support librarian Amanda Jones’ failed lawsuit against Citizens for a New Louisiana.
6. Melanie Brevis started showing up as a passionate drainage activist shortly after the 2016 flood. However, she quickly shifted to social justice issues in late 2018. It was then that she spoke in favor of the library’s proposed taxpayer funded drag show for three-year-olds. In January of 2019, Ms. Brevis made a very odd about-face. She opposed the creation of the Stormwater Management Fund. That fund was intended to help resolve the same drainage issues that were the catalyst for her political involvement in the first place! In 2021, she supported the one-sided “voter suppression” lecture that then Director Teresa Elberson unsuccessfully tried to implement. In March, she showed up at the Library Board meeting to demand that the board members resign! In April, “it isn’t the responsibility of the library or librarians to monitor what a child is looking at.” In August, she inexplicably accused the Library board of weaponizing civility.
7. Hannah Guillory started getting active just a few months ago. It was July of 2022 when she spoke out on the Cara Chance issue at a Library Board of Control meeting. That appears to be the first time she’s ever been involved locally. At the council meeting, she asked directly for the Parish Council to appoint Dr. Christie Maloyed.

Earlier support for Dr. Christie Maloyed

Dr. Maloyed has twice applied to be on the library board. The previous attempt was on February 9th, 2021, as an alternative to Robert Judge. Judge now sits as President of the Library Board of Control. Similar to October 4 of this year, February of last year also provided Dr. Maloyed with an assortment of leftist-progressive support.

1. Out-of-parish library provocateur, and 2018 Democratic Party State Senate candidate, Jean Menard, vocalized support for Dr. Maloyed’s appointment. In March of 2022, she spoke twice against removing pornographic materials from the library children’s section. In 2021, she supported the library hiring an analytics company to promote a tax election to favorable voters. She also suggested that the library appoint Jamal Taylor to the library director search committee. More on Jamal later.
2. Jared Eubanks appeared before the City-Parish Council and the Library Board of Control in September of 2018 to support the toddler drag event. He financially supported Carlee’s “Fix the Charter” experiment. Eubanks was a notable activist and donor for Carlee Alm-LaBar’s campaign for mayor. He opposed disciplining library employee Cara Chance for insubordination (previously mentioned). Demanded that the Lafayette government should take a favorable position on his personal social justice issue. Supported the failed Lafayette city “mask mandate,” which would have inflicted stiff financial penalties on area businesses who allowed anyone to not wear a mask. Supported creating the “save the city [from Josh Guillory]” committee. In 2020, he echoed the Bayou Vermilion District’s “systemic racism and police brutality” policy. Opposed the creation of the Stormwater Management Fund. His file in particular goes on and on with this kind of stuff.
3. Jamal Taylor alluded to Dr. Maloyed when he said “the people appointed to the Library Board should understand the responsibility and follow the policies of the Library Board which has been an issue recently.” If his name is somewhat familiar, it’s because he was an aggressive activist protesting systemic racism and police brutality in Lafayette in 2020. He is a former member of the Lafayette Library Board of Control, but resigned in June of 2016. He spoke in favor of the toddler drag event in 2018, and in favor of that one-sided “voter suppression” lecture in 2021.

Dr. Christie Maloyed herself

On page nineteen (19) of the resumes list, Dr. Maloyed says she’s a member of the liberal-progressive League of Women Voters. The League of Women Voters is the same group that has recently partnered up with the NAACP to host a “forum” focused on the selection of the next City of Lafayette Police Chief. Her list of credentials include being a political science professor at University, and a book co-authored by the very liberal University Professor, Pearson Cross.

As with several of the aforementioned leftist-progressive activists, Dr. Maloyed also opposed the creation of the Stormwater Management Fund in January of 2019. In 2018, she financially supported Carlee’s “Fix the Charter” experiment. In an article she wrote for the Current in 2018, she berated Citizens for a New Louisiana. “The gist” of the article (as the Current would say) was to warn local government against “holding local elections off-cycle.”

It’s quite humorous that, after reading that very compelling article, we reached out to her about the Downtown Development Authority’s off-cycle tax renewal. That one was put on the same day as Festival International. Exactly seventy (70) voters turned out for that election. We haven’t been able to find a single election cycle in Lafayette with an election-day turnout that low. However, Dr. Maloyed didn’t return our calls or denounce DDA for using the “off-cycle” practice.

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