Lance Harris

John Lance Harris (born June 11, 1961) is a businessman, farmer, and cattleman from Alexandria, Louisiana, who is a Republican member of the Louisiana House of Representatives from District 25. Harris owns the Leebo's chain of convenience stores.^[1]

In the nonpartisan blanket primary held on October 22, 2011, Harris defeated his only opponent, fellow Republican Barett Byrd, a retired colonel in the United States Marine Corps from Woodworth.^[2] Harris succeeded Democratic Representative Chris Roy, Jr., of Alexandria, effective January 2012.^[3] Harris defeated Byrd, 7,577 votes (55.5 percent) to 6,088 (44.6 percent) to claim the position.^[4] Harris was elected chairman of the Louisiana Republican legislative delegation in December 2012. Since Republicans currently hold a majority in the House, Harris is hence the Majority Leader.

In 2013, Harris endorsed Governor Bobby Jindal's decision to withdraw a plan to increase sales taxes while at the same time repealing the state income tax. Jindal dropped the plan after opposition surfaced in public opinion polls and among legislators. "While repeal is off the table for this legislative session, we will continue to work on the issue so that we can craft a responsible way to achieve our objectives in reforming the tax code in the future," Harris said.^[5]

In 2015, Harris offered House Bill 672 to ease controversy arising from the Common Core State Standards Initiative, first proposed and subsequently opposed by Governor Bobby Jindal. The legislation would end Common Core standards and use temporarily the procedures from 2010 to 2011. "We're going back to 2010, where we were seeing increases in student involvement, our scores were going up. We're going to use that for one to one-and-a-half years until we have a system in place" with revised standards designed by educators and approved by the public, said Harris in a public forum in Alexandria.^[6]

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