Art Lentini

Arthur Joseph Lentini, known as Art Lentini (born March 23, 1953), is an attorney in Metairie in suburban New Orleans, Louisiana, who served from 1996 to 2008 as a Republican state senator for District 10 in Jefferson Parish.^[1] For eight years he was the Senate parliamentarian.^[2] He was term-limited in the nonpartisan blanket primary held on October 20, 2007.

Background[edit]

Lentini is the second of five children of United States Army Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Raymond "Tony" Lentini, Sr. ( 1924-2017), and the former Margaret Ellen Bahlar (1929-2007).^[3]

He graduated in 1971 from East Jefferson High School in Metairie and thereafter received his Bachelor of Arts and law degrees from Louisiana State University in the capital city of 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. From 1988 to 1992, he was the House District 79 member of the Republican State Central Committee. Lentini is a Roman Catholic. Married to the former Stephany Jones, he resides in Kenner, also in Jefferson Parish.

Career[edit]

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 Edward "Hank" Lauricella (1930-2014),^[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 served as 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. 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 and worked to 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 cloning for reproduction and 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, 60,887 (53.9 percent) to Lentini's 52,142 (46.1 percent).^{[12] [13]} However, Lentini withdrew from consideration, and the Moderate Republican Newell D. Normand won the race with 91 percent of the ballots. Normand had the support of the Lee family, which is otherwise staunchly Democrat.

In 2017, Sheriff Normand resigned his office to become a radio talk show host and was succeeded by the Republican former state Representative Joe Lopinto, a candidate in the March 24 special election to complete the remainder of Normand's term through July 2020.^[14]

References[edit]