The Man Who Would Be Speaker
They began praying without him. It was already 30 minutes past 7 a.m., when Jefferson Parish’s April prayer breakfast was scheduled to begin. More than 100 Louisianans had driven in for the event, filing into the room to a soundtrack of God bless yous and I’m so glad to see yous, women in Easter-egg-colored dresses and men in starched button-downs. The mood was buoyant until it wasn’t. They were there to eat and pray but after a half hour had done neither so decided maybe it was best just to go ahead and pray.
The attendees bowed their heads, and a political aide rubbed her temples. “Oh, God, Steve,” she whispered.
House Majority Whip Steve Scalise is chronically late. He’s constantly caught up in conversation—with anyone, really—while his aides wait like children whose parents have stumbled upon friends in the produce aisle. When he finally arrived to the prayer breakfast, flanked by his security detail, he beamed as though he’d never seen a place so special—this hairspray-scented ballroom in a two-star hotel below an overpass. He strode toward the makeshift stage, aided by two purple crutches, and suddenly all was forgiven. People stood and applauded, as though Scalise weren’t late, the rest of us just early.
Since joining Congress in 2008, Scalise, round-faced with thinning hair and moon-size eyes, has been something of a hometown hero. If pride in one’s roots is a virtue, then Scalise is the patron saint. He passes out multicolored beads and slices of King Cake to his colleagues every Mardi Gras. When the 52-year-old joined House leadership in 2014, Capitol Police code-named him “Tiger” after the mascot of Louisiana State University, his alma mater. It’s a Bayou-country devotion that borders on parody, and his constituents have long appreciated him for it.
But this, of course, was not why the crowd erupted in applause, or why, after the program, middle-aged women sandwiched Scalise for photos as though he were a young Rick Springfield. In the span of a year, Scalise has gone from being an otherwise nameless lawmaker to the Donald Trump-christened “Legend from Louisiana”—from a reliable booster of coastal restoration to someone who, his supporters now believe, is an essential component of God’s plan for America.
Last June, Scalise was standing near second base at a congressional baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia, when a gunman opened fire.
