Elliott Stonecipher

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. 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.

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. 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.

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.

Demographer and analyst

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

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.

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. 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.”

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.

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. 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. 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."

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.

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.

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 American Banker, and the Wall Street Journal, and he has appeared on CNN and the Fox News Channel.

Personal life

Stonecipher is divorced from the former Shari Robertson. They couple have a son.

Stonecipher has two brothers and a sister.