December 1, 2003 PAGE ONE
Louisiana Lobbyist Keeps State Laws
On Drinking Loose

METAIRIE, La. -- Business was brisk at Bayou Daiquiri's drive-through window on a recent Friday night, as cars lined up four deep to buy vodka-laced frozen drinks in 32 flavors. A young woman with two children in the back seat bought a large strawberry margarita in a styrofoam cup, then weaved one-handed back onto the busy highway.

She can thank George Brown, executive director of the Beer League of Louisiana, the industry's powerful trade group. A state law passed three years ago forbids drivers to carry open containers of alcohol, but there's a line buried in the law exempting "any amount of frozen alcoholic beverage" in a cup, as long as a straw isn't stuck through the lid. Mr. Brown doesn't mind taking credit. "We did it for one of our friends" in the daiquiri business, he says.

In Louisiana, cans of beer packed in ice beckon from gas-station bins, grocery stores sell liquor 24 hours a day and many bars never close their doors. Taxes on beer are so low that a 16-ounce Busch "tall boy" sells for as little as 89 cents, less than the same amount of milk or apple juice. Unlike in most other states, bars are explicitly shielded by state law for whatever drunk patrons do once they walk out the door. Louisiana was one of the last states to raise its drinking age to 21, and among the last to set tougher blood-alcohol limits for drunk drivers.

A big reason: the Beer League's Mr. Brown, who at 80 years old remains Louisiana's most powerful lobbyist, and one of the nation's most effective advocates for the alcohol industry. While the industry elsewhere has given up ground in battles with legislators, regulators and advocacy groups, Mr. Brown and the Beer League have held the line with campaign contributions, longstanding friendships and aggressive tactics. They've also exploited Louisiana's freewheeling drinking culture, where Bourbon Street bars sell "go-cups" for revelers and state lawmakers defend citizens' right to have a beer while driving to college football games.

Mr. Brown's success shows the lingering power of personality and politics in shaping life-and-death policy debates. His lobbying efforts are remarkable given a broad national shift in public opinion away from his industry in favor of tough regulation of alcohol sales, drinking and driving.

In the past year alone, Mr. Brown has helped block bills intended to keep underage drinkers out of bars, to crack down on repeat offenders of the state's weak drunken-driving laws and to tighten a vehicle open-container law that police say is nearly unenforceable. State excise taxes on beer haven't risen here since 1948, the year before Mr. Brown became a lobbyist. His streak has remained unbroken even as other states faced rising pressure to boost taxes amid deepening budget deficits and new research suggesting that higher prices curb underage drinking.

Mr. Brown says he's merely safeguarding "the freedoms that Louisianians have always enjoyed" while protecting a vital sector of the state economy from what he calls "neo-prohibitionists." He says he opposes drunken driving and has supported alcohol-control measures, citing a bill this year requiring retailers to keep a record of a beer barrel's serial number, to help crack down on the sale of kegs for high-school parties.

"It's unfortunately true that some people abuse alcohol, but people abuse fast cars, too, and sometimes they get themselves killed," he says. "I just don't believe we should be passing laws telling people how to live."

Alcohol-related highway deaths nationwide have risen for a third consecutive year, and Louisiana ranks second in alcohol-related traffic fatalities per mile traveled, after South Carolina, federal statistics show. Nearly half of the state's 875 traffic deaths in 2002 were alcohol-related; only six states had a higher percentage. Underage drinking is common. This fall a Louisiana State University student died after downing a bottle of Bacardi rum. Fire investigators now believe that a second student burned to death in bed after a night of drinking.

"Alcohol is placed prominently in our stores, and advertised heavily to our young people, and almost every bill that would make it harder for youth to buy alcohol, or make our drunk-driving laws stronger, George Brown and his cronies can kill," says James Champagne, chief of the Highway Safety Commission and a retired colonel in the state police.

"Mr. Brown is a real gentleman, but he doesn't understand the blood he has on his hands," says Samantha Hope-Atkins, a recovering alcoholic who has testified for legislation opposed by the Beer League.

The stout, silver-haired lobbyist works from a modest one-story brick building in Baton Rouge, near the state capitol. The Beer League's 41 members include every beer distributor in the state, including licensees of Anheuser-Busch Cos., Coors Brewing Co. and Miller Brewing Co. He also directs the Louisiana Wine and Spirits Foundation, representing liquor distributors.

Mr. Brown -- who won't disclose his salary -- reported a relatively modest $63,000 in contributions to state legislators so far this year. He also advises wealthy beer and liquor distributors on how to direct their contributions to lawmakers and works closely with lobbyists for Louisiana retailers, restaurants and gas stations. He gives away hundreds of cases of beer each year for campaign events and parties.

Building Relationships

Other industries may contribute more cash, but few have more clout. "Money is important in politics, but with George, it's the force of his personality. People like him, and he's built relationships over the years," says Hank Braden, a New Orleans lobbyist and former state senator. The league's offices have long been a social hangout for lawmakers and staff, who often drop by for a cold beer or a steak grilled in the parking lot out back. Mr. Brown presides from his cluttered desk, fielding calls from elected officials, dispensing campaign advice and scheduling fund-raisers.

The speaker pro tem of the Senate, Emile "Peppi" Bruneau, dropped by one afternoon to give Mr. Brown a bottle of his homemade "cherry bounce," a potent dark-purple fermentation of local fruit. The speaker of the House, Charlie DeWitt, was a surprise guest another night. He promised to cook up his famous mustard greens and bring them next time.

During a recent Beer League fund-raiser, Insurance Commissioner Robert Wooley stopped by. Asked why Louisiana's auto-insurance rates are the highest of any southern state -- and eighth in the nation -- he said, "Our roads are in terrible shape, for one thing. And we don't wear our seatbelts." Mr. Brown interrupts: "And we stop at bars too damn much."

Mr. Brown, born in the north Louisiana woods, attended college on a violin scholarship and then volunteered for the Army. After World War II, he enrolled at LSU, but dropped out in 1949 for a job with the U.S. Brewers Foundation, a national group lobbying in the state capital. In 1960, he joined the Louisiana League for Moderation and Regulation, an industry group created to open up the state's "dry" parishes to alcohol sales.

Named director the next year, Mr. Brown changed its name to the Beer League, as public attitudes toward alcohol began to ease. Over the next decade, the industry began to change, too, and Louisiana's independent brewers -- Falstaff, Dixie and Regal, to name a few -- came under pressure from big national brands such as Budweiser and Miller. Mr. Brown, then a fierce advocate for the local brewers, came up with a legislative lifesaver.

To help the brewers and save jobs, Mr. Brown says he persuaded legislators to exempt Louisiana brewers from their first $150,000 in taxes. The bill was signed in 1974 by Gov. Edwin Edwards.

After the bill passed, Mr. Brown says he was asked by a lawmaker to approach the brewers and demand $15,000. In secret grand jury testimony reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, a Dixie manager said he met Mr. Brown at the Beer League and gave him an envelope stuffed with $20 bills.

Federal prosecutors, tipped off to the scheme, pursued Mr. Brown for public corruption. But he refused to say what happened to the cash, and elected officials who took the stand in Mr. Brown's 1977 trial -- including Gov. Edwards -- denied they took the money. So prosecutors charged Mr. Brown with failing to pay taxes on the alleged bribes. In 1981, he was sentenced to six months in prison in Texas.

It made his career. Word spread among lawmakers that he'd gone to jail rather than rat one of them out. The Beer League's membership embraced him as a hero. Today, he admits that he gave the cash to a lawmaker, but still won't name him, and says that the payments were campaign contributions, not bribes.

Mr. Brown returned to Louisiana as the alcohol-control movement was gaining strength nationwide. Lawmakers and groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving were winning new laws limiting alcohol sales, raising the drinking age to 21 and toughening drunken-driving rules.

'Federal Blackmail'

Mr. Brown battled the 21-year-old drinking age, which by then was being adopted across the country, and railed against "federal blackmail" when the government began cutting off highway funds to states that failed to comply. Fearing the loss of money, Louisiana's legislature raised the drinking age in 1987. But the Beer lobby won a version that made it illegal for those under 21 to drink but didn't explicitly prohibit the sale of alcohol to those under 21 until 1995.

Mr. Brown also killed a bill banning 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds from entering bars. That makes it almost impossible to curb underage drinking, police say.

Late one recent night at Daiquiri Bay, a bar in Slidell, La., a bouncer at the door checked ID's but made no effort to distinguish those under 21. The bartender, asked how he checks for underage drinkers, shrugged and shouted over the din, "I don't." Later, officers handcuffed a 19-year-old woman spotted drinking beer from a pitcher. Two girls in the pleated-plaid skirts of a local Catholic high school were stopped too, but they produced ID showing they were 19. "It's a leaky boat," says Lt. Lee Dresselhaus of the Slidell police. "We can't do anything if we don't see them drinking."

Many of the bills Mr. Brown opposes are killed in the House Judiciary Committee. Richard Scribner, a professor of alcohol and drug studies at LSU medical center, says he was denied a chance to testify at a hearing there in 2001, where Mr. Brown was "a larger-than-life presence ... sitting in the center of the aisle as though directing the members of an orchestra -- his orchestra." Mr. Brown makes campaign contributions to several committee members, and its chairman, Joseph Toomey, whose family owns a truck stop, beer retailer and roadside gambling casino. Mr. Toomey, who says his family business interests don't affect his votes, doesn't recall blocking Mr. Scribner's testimony and says he always ensures that "both sides have the chance to present their case."

Mr. Brown is unsparing with enemies, as Mr. Champagne, the Highway Safety Commission chief, can attest. In 1998, lawmakers named him to a state panel created to train bartenders how to curb underage and excessive drinking. But by error or design -- no one will say -- a bill authorizing the panel assigned a seat to the "Highway Safety Council," not Mr. Champagne's commission. After it passed, Mr. Brown quietly incorporated a private Highway Safety Council and then demanded that his own nominee, a beer distributor, replace Mr. Champagne. A state judge kicked Mr. Champagne off the panel. "I had fun with that one," Mr. Brown says. "We s-d him pretty good."

His hardball tactics sometimes land him in trouble. In 2000, Cathy Childers, state director of MADD, thought that a measure to lower the state's blood-alcohol limit for drivers to .08 blood-alcohol from .10 would finally pass until one member switched his vote. "I cried in the stairwell after that," she says. "But I was determined to find out how they did it."

Poring over campaign-finance records, she saw that the lawmaker who'd changed his vote had just gotten $2,000 from the Business Affairs Research Council, which she'd never heard of. The group hadn't registered as a political committee but listed the same address as the Beer League. Mr. Brown had created the fund-raising arm without registering it or reporting its contributions, as required by law.

Ms. Childers complained to the state ethics commission, which found that Mr. Brown used the council for $200,000 in unreported contributions over three years. He agreed to pay a $10,000 fine and abide by state campaign-finance laws. Mr. Brown says he still doesn't think he did anything wrong.

In 2001, with the state facing a loss of $10 million in federal funds, Mr. Brown finally backed down on .08. But he got its effective date delayed until Sept. 30 of this year, the last day before states would lose funding. In the coming year, officials say the state will lose another $10 million in U.S. highway funds for failing to pass a comprehensive open-container law.

Mr. Brown makes no apologies for his opposition. "The mothers come in and cry and bring pictures of their dead children ... and I feel sad about that," he says. "But our argument was more reasonable -- that open containers in cars don't kill people, it's people driving drunk who kill."

Mr. Brown's opponents say that his power has begun to ebb, despite his legislative successes again this year. Ten years ago, Mr. Brown could play the legislature like a fiddle, signaling "thumbs up or down" from the back of the committee room, MADD's Ms. Childers says. Now, she says, "he actually has to work for it, and he knows that if some of these bills could get out of committee onto the House floor, they would pass."

If Mr. Brown's influence is receding, there was no sign of it last month at a lavish 80th birthday party at the governor's mansion, paid for by beer and liquor distributors. Kegs from each of the major beer labels flowed in a tent outside, and the governor mingled with guests. A band played in the ornate front hall, fried catfish was served, and Mr. Brown was toasted as "the king" over a giant birthday cake shaped like the violin he once played.