Elliott Stonecipher

Elliott Bond Stonecipher
Born (1951-07-13) July 13, 1951
Shreveport, Caddo Parish
Louisiana, USA
Residence Shreveport, Louisiana
Alma mater

C.E. Byrd High School
Louisiana Tech University

Louisiana State University
Occupation Demographer, political consultant; pollster; political pundit
Political party Nonpartisan[1]
Spouse(s) Divorced from Shari Robertson Stonecipher, now Shari Norberg
Children Ryan Lindsey Stonecipher
Parent(s) R. L. and Elizabeth Jo Ann Holcombe Stonecipher

Elliott Bond Stonecipher (born July 13, 1951) is a demographer, pollster, political pundit, civic activist, and public speaker from his native Shreveport, Louisiana. In 1980, he founded his company, Evets Management Services, Inc., which does polling person-to-person, by telephone, or mail on political, commercial, and public-policy subjects.[2]

Background

Stonecipher is one of four children born to R. L. Stonecipher (1923-1973), a postal clerk who served in the United States Navy during World War II, and the former Elizabeth Jo Ann Holcombe (born 1925). In 1969, Stonecipher graduated from C. E. Byrd High School in Shreveport.[3] While a student at Byrd, he competed in the "Boy of the Year" contest sponsored by the Boys Clubs of America. As a national finalist, he spoke to a live radio audience in Macon, Georgia, where he met the insurance magnate W. Clement Stone of Chicago, Illinois, a member of the national board of the Boys Clubs, now the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. The meeting resulted in Stonecipher's receipt of the W. Clement and Jesse V. Stone Foundation full undergraduate college scholarship.[4] Stonecipher attended Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, from which in 1973, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. In 1975, he procured a master's degree from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.[5]

Briefly a schoolteacher, Stonecipher at the age of twenty-five took a position in Baton Rouge with the Louisiana Department of Education during the first term of superintendent J. Kelly Nix, in whose campaign Stonecipher had worked actively. He was director of the state teacher certification.[6] After three years with Nix, Stonecipher left state employment to become a campaign consultant and to conduct public opinion polling. His firm specializes in demographic analyses for clients in the financial services industry. Stonecipher and his company provide research in regard to change-of-venue studies in criminal cases, particularly those involving capital murder.[5]

In 1981, Stonecipher was selected as "Small Businessman of the Year" by the Shreveport Chamber of Commerce. In 1987, he was named "Rising Young Business Leader" by the Shreveport Leadership Council.[2]

Demographer and analyst

Stonecipher was a consultant to Governor Buddy Roemer, a Democrat-turned-Republican who served from 1988 to 1992[7] and ran for President of the United States in 2012 but lacked national name identification.[8]

For a time, Stonecipher worked for Roemer's Innovative Data Systems computer company. Early in 1980, Stonecipher explained the loyalty of northwest Louisiana voters to the Democratic Party despite the region having flirted with Republicans in state and national elections in 1964. Even as most of the state began to swing Republican in the early 21st century, Caddo Parish remained one of the large Democratic outposts across the state.

The lower- to middle-class voter looks across the spectrum, and he sees a candidate at least rhetorically tied to the 'little guy,' the blue collar worker. He looks the other way and sees a candidate supported by rich business and by what is called the country-club set. He's paying $1.20 a gallon for gasoline [then considered excessive by many] and reading about huge profits for the oil companies. One candidate has his children in public school, like he does, while the other one is paying hundreds of dollars a month to keep his children in private schools. ... In the emotional turmoil, the voter realizes there are the 'haves' and the 'have-nots', and he knows which one he is, and they feel drawn to stick with their own kind. ... It's not the individual candidates or what they believe, but the perception of the candidate the voters get - and that's based on the media representations of the candidates. Truth doesn't enter into it anymore.[9]

For years Stonecipher has warned Louisiana officials of the problem of out-migration. Since the inauguration of Republican David C. Treen as governor in 1980, Louisiana's total population increase has been 9.4 percent, far below the national average of 38.6 percent. The state has lost two congressional districts during this time, and the 2010 census was again discouraging to Louisiana. "Even more startling is our comparison ... to other states in the South," said Stonecipher in regard to out-migration.[10] Stonecipher criticized the Bobby Jindal administration for having misunderstood the impact of out-migration: They "cherry-picked estimates from federal surveys that ignore inconvenient details and disregard methodologies. They go dumpster-diving for talking points. Get you a stat [statistic] that you like that fits with your narrative and don't ever look back.”[7]

In 2002, Stonecipher co-authored the final report of a government study into possible bio-terrorism attacks in the United States in the aftermath of 9-11. The study was published in Emerging Infectious Diseases magazine of the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia. Since Hurricane Katrina, Stonecipher has performed extensive pro bono work in regard to "good government" reforms and political ethics.[5]

Stonecipher criticized the Jindal administration regarding the 2013 decision to turn over management of the LSU Medical Center in Shreveport, renamed University Health in 2013, and the E.A. Conway Medical Center in Monroe to the Biomedical Research Foundation of Northwest Louisiana, which has no experience in hospital management. The president and CEO of the Biomedical Foundation, Dr. John Fisher George (born 1959), is a Jindal appointee to the LSU Board of Supervisors and contributed $10,000 to Jindal campaigns.[11] Among the Biomedical Research Foundation trustees and a past chairman of the organization is industrialist Don Jones, who was from 1984 to 1989 the mayor of Bossier City.[12] Stonecipher termed the transfer of the two hospitals to the supervision of the Biomedical Foundation as secretive and politically-tinged: "There is no transparency. None. Everything that's being done is being done in secret. That's not a way to build public confidence."[11]

In 2012, Stonecipher penned a column on continued public corruption in the decades since the legally unsolved murder in Baton Rouge of his friend, Shreveport public relations executive Jim Leslie, who worked to secure passage in 1976 of the state right-to-work law. Stonecipher said that he never doubted that the murder was a hit ordered by the then Shreveport Public Safety Commissioner George W. D'Artois, who died during heart surgery in 1977 and never faced trial in the still legally unresolved case.[6]

In 2013, Stonecipher characterized Shreveport as "a far less vibrant community" than neighboring Bossier City because many lower-income Shreveport residents who pay no property taxes are heavily dependent on public services, a situation less common in Bossier City. Stonecipher said that Bossier City economically resembles East Texas, more than Shreveport, which has the highest property taxes in the state.[13]

Stonecipher sometimes appears as a guest on the Monroe-based statewide radio talk show, The Moon Griffon Show. He has also been featured on National Public Radio, Garland Robinette's Think Tank program on WWL (AM) in New Orleans, and WJBO radio in Baton Rouge. His work has been published in The Forum Newsweekly in Shreveport. American Banker,[5] and the Wall Street Journal, and he has appeared on CNN and the Fox News Channel.[14]

Personal life

Stonecipher is divorced from the former Shari Robertson (born 1949), the daughter of Billy Bob Robertson of Shreveport and the former Betty Ferguson (1927-2013). Shari subsequently married Darrel Felix Norberg (1943-2011), a consulting engineer in Shreveport originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the widower of Sharon Hager Norberg.[15] Stonecipher has a son from the marriage to Shari, Ryan Lindsey Stonecipher[16] (born 1977), a database inventor employed by Microsoft[17] who was living in 2013 with his wife, the former Carly Seawel, in Carnation near Seattle in King County, Washington.[18]

His brother, Alan Wayne Stonecipher (born 1950), is a public policy analyst in Tallahassee, Florida, who is director of communications for the think tank, the Florida Center for Fiscal and Economic Policy. A Democrat,[19] he was a member of the staff of Democratic former Governor Bob Graham and communications director for the Florida Board of Regents. A former newspaper reporter for the since defunct Shreveport Journal and press secretary to Democratic former U.S. Representative Jerry Huckaby of Louisiana's 5th congressional district,[20] Alan Stonecipher received bachelor's and master's degrees, respectively, from the University of Louisiana at Monroe and Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York.[21]

He has two other siblings, Philip Ross Stonecipher (born 1957), a journalism graduate of Louisiana Tech and a resident of Grapevine near Fort Worth, Texas, and Norma Lynne Stonecipher Wood of Fredericksburg, Virginia.

In 2013, Stonecipher was inducted into the C. E. Byrd High School Hall of Fame, an honor awarded to only 135 of the thus far more than 35,000 graduates of the institution, which opened in 1925 and is named for the educator Clifton Ellis Byrd, Sr., who was also briefly a president of Stonecipher's alma mater, Louisiana Tech.

References

  1. ↑ "Elliott Bond Stonecipher". voterportal.sos.la.gov. Retrieved October 9, 2013.
  2. 1 2 "Predicting the Outcome of Elections using Actuarial Science". Louisiana State University in Shreveport. Retrieved September 27, 2013.
  3. ↑ "Elliott Stonecipher". newsle.com. Retrieved September 28, 2013.
  4. ↑ Statement of Elliott Bond Stonecipher, Shreveport, Louisiana, October 2, 2013
  5. 1 2 3 4 "A Better Shreveport". abettershreveport.blogspot.com. Retrieved September 27, 2013.
  6. 1 2 Elliott Stonecipher (July 5, 2012). "Lessons from the Murder of Jim Leslie". forward-now.com. Retrieved July 26, 2014.
  7. 1 2 "Mark Ballard, Political Horizons: Impact of statistical spin, September 21, 2013". Baton Rouge Morning Advocate. Retrieved September 27, 2013.
  8. ↑ Linkins, Jason (May 31, 2012). "Buddy Roemer Quits Presidential Race, May 31, 2012". Huffington Post. Retrieved September 28, 2013.
  9. ↑ Minden Press-Herald, February 22, 1980, p. 1
  10. ↑ "Statement from Elliott Stonecipher, January 11, 2013". businessreport.com. Retrieved September 27, 2013.
  11. 1 2 "Melinda Deslatte, Privatization deal set for north La. LSU hospitals involves foundation without hospital experience, August 6, 2013". finance.yahoo.com. Retrieved September 27, 2013.
  12. ↑ "13 members selected for the University Health Board of Directors". KTBS-TV. November 21, 2013. Retrieved January 12, 2015.
  13. ↑ "Dennis Foley, "Stonecipher: Shreveport Is A Far Less Vibrant Community Than Bossier, East Texas Cities", July 11, 2013". KEEL Radio. Retrieved July 15, 2013.
  14. ↑ "LSU Medical School deal: Beware toxic politics". npaper-wehaa.com. Retrieved September 28, 2013.
  15. ↑ "Darrel Norberg". legacy.com. Retrieved September 27, 2013.
  16. ↑ "Betty Ferguson Robertson". meaningfulfunerals.net. Retrieved September 27, 2013.
  17. ↑ "Optimizations for a background database consistency check". google.com/patents. Retrieved September 28, 2013.
  18. ↑ "Ryan L. Stonecipher". usa-people-search.com. Retrieved September 27, 2013.
  19. ↑ "Alan Wayne Stonecipher". flvoters.com. Retrieved September 28, 2013.
  20. ↑ "Wiley Hilburn, Book Speaks to Travesty of Justice, January 10, 2005". Shreveport Times. Retrieved September 27, 2013.
  21. ↑ "Florida Center for Fiscal and Economic Policy". fcfep.org. Retrieved September 27, 2013.
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