Art Lentini

Arthur J. "Art" Lentini (born March 23, 1953) is an attorney in Metairie, Louisiana, United States, who served from 1996 to 2008 as a Republican member of the Louisiana State Senate from District 10 in Jefferson Parish in the New Orleans suburbs.^[1] For eight years he was the Senate parliamentarian.^[2] He was term-limited in the nonpartisan blanket primary held on October 20, 2007, and hence ineligible to seek a fourth term in the Senate.

History

Lentini graduated in 1971 from East Jefferson High School in Metairie. He received his Bachelor of Arts and law degrees from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. He attended the United States Army infantry officer's school and was a member of the Army Reserve from 1974 to 1980. From 1978 to 1986, he was an assistant district attorney for Jefferson Parish. He served from 1988 to 1992 as the House District 79 member of the Republican State Central Committee. Lentini is Roman Catholic. His wife is the former Stephany Jones. The couple resides in Kenner.^[3]

Career

On his Senate retirement, the New Orleans Times-Picayune declared that Lentini

"wore the white hat...His most visible display of integrity came not in lecturing lawmakers via the news media on their shortcomings, but in his eight years as Senate parliamentarian. In the frenzy of lawmaking, he had to decide who was and was not following the rules of debate, without regard to whether their politics agreed with his. So straight was he that he demurred on parliamentary questions when the subject at hand was one of his own bills, instead deferring to the Senate president."^[4]

In his initial election for an open seat in 1995 created by the retirement of Democratic Senator Francis E. "Hank" Lauricella,^[1] a former professional football player. Lentini defeated fellow Republican Betty Bonura, 17,327 votes (53.6 percent) to 14,992 (46.4 percent).^[5] Bonura essentially did not live in the district.^[4] Lentini was unopposed in the 1999 primary. In 2003, he handily defeated fellow Republican Stephen Rue, 21,018 (71.3 percent) to 8,474 (28.7 percent).^[6] In the campaign, it was revealed that Rue was delinquent on the payment of $230,000 in federal payroll and income taxes.^[4]

Lentini was the chairman of the Judiciary "A" Committee and served on the Finance and Insurance committees and the Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget.^[2]

As his term wound down, Lentini again pushed successfully for the abolition of cockfighting in Louisiana. The issue was not new to the lawmakers. In 1990, state Representative Garey Forster, a New Orleans Republican, had introduced two bills, one to ban the practice outright and another to reclassify fowl as "animals" so that they could secure the protection of animal-cruelty laws.^[7] Upon his arrival in the Senate, Lentini sought to make gambling at cockfights a crime before he could finish Forster's work and obtain the legislative votes to outlaw the practice.^[8] Lentini called the practice "very bad for our image, and it's cruel to the animals."^[9] Louisiana was the last of the fifty states to ban cockfighting.^[10]

A pro-life advocate, Lentini was in 2004 a visible Senate critic of both reproductive cloning and cloning for research purposes. He sponsored a bill that would ban both types of cloning; however, the legislature decided to forbid reproductive cloning but allow research based on the possibility of finding cures for Parkinson's disease, juvenile diabetes, and other diseases.^[11]

In 2007, Lentini qualified to run for a second time as sheriff of Jefferson Parish on the death of the long-term Democratic incumbent Harry Lee. In 1987, Lee had defeated Lentini in the general election.^[12] However, Lentini withdrew from consideration, and the Republican Newell D. Normand won the race with 91 percent of the ballots. Normand had the support of the Lee family, which is staunchly Democratic.^[13] In the 1987 sheriff’s race, Lee polled 60,887 (53.9 percent) to Lentini's 52,142 (46.1 percent).^[14]

References