Kenneth Boudreaux Has Turned Mardi Gras into a Political Circus

We just finished telling our families the same thing many of you probably did: “No politics at the Thanksgiving table.” Holidays are supposed to be breaks from the political circus rather than extensions of it. But apparently someone forgot to extend the usual holiday memo to Kenneth Boudreaux: “No politics at Mardi Gras!”

Somehow, in 2025, we’ve reached the low point where the parade route — the one civic tradition that has united every corner of Lafayette for nearly a century — is now being needlessly dragged into a political turf war. While most of us were looking forward to catching beads, sharing king cake, and watching our kids’ faces light up as the floats rolled by, the Lafayette City Council had something entirely different in mind.

Instead of “Throw me something, Mister!” Lafayette has been gifted with hours-long scolding sessions from the ever-bloviating Councilman Kenneth “Comedy Hour” Boudreaux. For the last month, he’s been treating the public to a series of rambling monologues about how Mardi Gras is—somehow, in his telling—rooted in racism, exclusion, privilege, oppression, trauma, and whatever else he could throw together.

Insert eye-roll here

We love laughing at Kenneth’s antics, but they’re only funny from a distance. When a Republican majority votes to hand the gavel (and a timer-free microphone) to an otherwise powerless Democrat with a big mouth, the torturous hours-long meetings aren’t funny at all.

In this case, what began as a simple, safety-driven update to Lafayette’s Mardi Gras parade route has been inflated into a cultural crisis — complete with wild claims (including Boudreaux’s phony “200 phone calls”), historical revisionism, and a full-court press that threatens to drag one of Lafayette’s most cherished, family-friendly traditions into a mudslinging political battle. And for what?

The Boring, Non-Conspiratorial Reality

Here’s what really happened, and it’s not nearly as dramatic as Kenneth Boudreaux wants everyone to believe. For the last year and a half, Mardi Gras organizers, Lafayette Police, Fire & EMS, Public Works, and the Mayor-President’s office have been doing what they always do: planning a safe and fun Mardi Gras season.

• They reviewed choke points.
• They mapped emergency access.
• They tested traffic flow.
• They analyzed crowd loads.
• They accounted for construction zones.
• They looked at barricade compatibility.
• They ran countless volunteers through a live walk-through.

The resulting 2026 route is straighter, safer, easier to secure, and aligned with current road conditions. Nothing mysterious, political, or personal. Just logistics. Meanwhile, the 2025 route still lives on in the memories of many — winding down Vermilion Street and passing directly in front of two venues owned by Kenneth’s most vocal supporter.

So yes: one map increased public safety; the other increased private foot traffic. It’s not hard to see why this suddenly became a battlefield.

How This Became Political

The political drama did not come from the Mayor, the Lafayette Police Department, or the Greater Southwest Louisiana Mardi Gras Association. It didn’t come from the krewes or the public. It came from one person: Councilman Kenneth Boudreaux, who blindsided the November 4 meeting by demanding the parade be rerouted through the corridor he (and at least one of his supporters) preferred.

And once he was challenged, he needed a justification — a big, dramatic one. So he conjured one out of thin air. That’s how we ended up with his bizarre, half-hour online sermon declaring Mardi Gras a story of racism, trauma, privilege, and “people who are not like us.” At one point, he even claimed — with great indignation — to have received 200 phone calls about the route.

200 Phone Calls?

Wow, I thought. That’s a lot of calls. I wondered if it was one person 200 times or 200 different people. So we sent a public records request to find out. Guess how many calls Kenneth received?

Not 200.
Not 20.
Not 2.
Zero.

There are no logs, no voicemails, no documentation — nothing to back up his story. The dude was so desperate to manufacture momentum that he just started making things up, hoping nobody would check. You’d think he’d know better by now.

Which brings me to a funny historical footnote. Do you remember when then–Council Clerk Veronica Williams helped fabricate a fake Pride proclamation? Boudreaux took out his selfie cam and called us liars for pointing it out. So we pulled the documents and proved him wrong.

And here we are again — and once more, the documents prove exactly who’s telling the truth. And, once again, it’s not Kenneth Boudreaux. You’re surprised, I can tell.

As Usual, We Have More Details Than Everyone Else Combined

If you only followed the social media spin, you’d think Lafayette woke up one morning to a secret, unilateral parade route change with no notice, no process, and no public input.

The actual record tells a different story.

• The Mayor’s office and public safety teams had been discussing a route update for well over a year.
• Police, Fire, EMS, Public Works, and parade organizers participated.
• A public Mardi Gras safety meeting was scheduled and publicly advertised.
• The new route was tested in real time with volunteers and filmed.
• The City Council was not “cut out”; they were simply not given veto power over logistics they’ve never controlled (or cared about) before.

Then came the council meetings.

On November 4, Boudreaux himself raised the parade as a racial issue and floated his own alternative route idea. That’s the actual starting point of the political fight — not some shadowy plot in the Mayor’s office. Then, on November 18, the now-infamous ordinance CO-138-2025 was introduced. By then, Boudreaux had already been busy on social media and in the sort-of-press, framing this as an existential crisis.

So when columnists and commentators later parachuted in and tried to portray all of this as a “Boulet vs. the people” drama, they either didn’t know the timeline or hoped you wouldn’t.

Enter Geoff Daily, Stage Left

Into this circus wades Geoff Daily, who somehow manages to write 1,500 words about the parade route while avoiding the single most glaring fact in the entire debacle: the conflict didn’t begin with the Mayor — it started with Kenneth.

Daily, who supported Boulet right up until — now, I guess — rushed to declare her a “decider in chief.” It’s obvious that he hadn’t even skimmed the minutes, maps, or safety memos. As usual, his column reads like someone pontificating over a football game after only watching the last 30 seconds. It’s classic Geoff: confidently wrong, deeply incurious, and blissfully unaware of the details.

The irony? Even Geoff’s narrative collapses once you read the November 4 minutes, where Boudreaux himself ignited the fight long before the ordinance or editorial spin ever entered the picture.

What CO-138-2025 Actually Does

By this point, you may be wondering: What’s actually in this ordinance Kenneth and Andy Naquin authored? Good question — and as usual, we’re the only ones providing you with details. CO-138-2025 is not just about a parade route. It does two very serious things:

1. It injects political appointees into a process that has operated smoothly for 90 years.

The Mardi Gras Advisory Committee would expand from 3 to 9 members, with the City Council appointing several of them. That means long-standing Mardi Gras organizers and public safety professionals would be outnumbered by political hacks chosen by the likes of Kenneth Boudreaux. Translation: Mardi Gras becomes a political committee instead of a professional one.

2. It gives the City Council veto power over nearly every single Mardi Gras operational decision.

Parade routes, start times, event changes, permits, carnival operations — maybe even band lineups. Future Mardi Gras modifications would all require Council approval by formal resolution. That has never been the case in the entire history of Lafayette Mardi Gras. This ordinance would put politicians — not safety experts, not krewes, not GSW, not Lafayette Police — in charge of the most time-sensitive, logistics-heavy operation of the year. And for what?

Who Actually Runs Mardi Gras (And Why Politicians Shouldn’t)

For decades, Lafayette’s Mardi Gras has been run by:

• Greater Southwest Louisiana Mardi Gras Association
• Lafayette Mardi Gras Festival Association
• More than 20 krewes
• Thousands of volunteers
• Lafayette Police Department
• Fire & EMS
• Public Works and traffic control
• Event safety and crowd-flow planners

The result?

• The safest Mardi Gras in Louisiana.
• The most family-friendly Mardi Gras in Louisiana.
• A reported $150+ million annual economic impact.
• A unified, multi-racial, multi-generational tradition cherished by the entire region.

The City Council’s historical role has been simple: support it, help resource it, and don’t screw it up. That system works well because it’s not political. But CO-138-2025 would turn Mardi Gras into a de facto department under Lafayette Consolidated Government. It would no longer be focused on family fun but would be twisted to personal advantage by future Council majorities, political alliances, election cycles, and personality clashes.

If this passes, the 2026 parade route becomes a political negotiation. The 2027 route becomes a bargaining chip for donors. Then the 2028 season becomes a campaign issue while Mardi Gras itself slides into a ditch.

We don’t need political Mardi Gras. We need Mardi Gras Mardi Gras.

Let Mardi Gras Be Mardi Gras

This wasn’t about race, privilege, history, “the people,” transparency, process, the Northside, the Southside, krewes, or lack of consultation. It was about one thing only: Kenneth Boudreaux grasping for relevance. Everything else — the emotional monologue, the made-up phone calls, the grievance rhetoric, the manufactured crisis, the sudden resurrection of a dead ordinance, even the cheering from a sympathetic business owner was all window dressing.

Once you strip away the theatrics, you’re left with the simplest story of all: Mardi Gras organizers want to make Lafayette’s festivities safe and memorable. A politician tried to make it about himself. And now the entire city is being dragged into a mud wrestling match.

Mardi Gras belongs to the people — not the politicians. And if the last few weeks have shown us anything, it’s this: Adding politics to Mardi Gras has definitely not made it better. Tomorrow night, the City Council has an opportunity to let Mardi Gras continue being Mardi Gras. Everyone’s watching.

###