By KEVIN BLANCHARD

Acadiana bureau

LAFAYETTE -- A political dispute that's been brewing behind the scenes for months has hit the Internet in the form of a Web site that says Lafayette's two black city-parish councilmen have alienated their white counterparts and become ineffective.

The Web site -- http://www.lafayettepublicpolicy.com/ -- is owned and operated by Lafayette Planning Commissioner Fred Prejean.

One article takes Councilmen Chris Williams and Louis Benjamin to task for their actions during their several failed attempts to have the name of a major road changed to Martin Luther King Drive.

The issue has stalled -- with votes failing three times along racial lines -- though a meeting scheduled for Jan. 17 is likely to address the issue again.

Prejean, who is also black, said the two councilmen's tactics aren't working and should be dropped.

"Repeatedly playing the race card has reduced the effectiveness of Williams and Benjamin as representatives of District 3 and 4," an article on the site reads. "Direct confrontation appears to be the only method of politics you gentlemen know or care to use."

The two councilmen have also led the charge against what they see as an historic neglect of north Lafayette and the issues that effect that community -- like infrastructure and recognition of King.

Prejean also operates http://www.fredprejean.com, a site that supports his campaign for state House of Representatives District 44, which will be vacated in 2007 by State Rep. Wilfred Pierre because of legislative term limits. The two sites link to each other.

Benjamin and Prejean are former political allies -- Prejean helped manage Benjamin's previous campaigns and Benjamin was an early supporter of Prejean's House campaign, both men said.

After being informed of the site after Tuesday night's Lafayette City-Parish Council meeting, Benjamin said he was going to move to have Prejean removed from the Planning Commission.

Benjamin said he would not be supporting Prejean anymore. "He can put that on the Internet," Benjamin said. "But I'm going to deal with him when he comes to my community." Benjamin declined further comment Wednesday.

Williams said Wednesday that he views Prejean's article as a "one-man editorial," and though he doesn't take it personally, he won't comment on editorials.

Williams said his successful elections since 1992 speak for themselves.

Prejean said the split happened in early December after he began working with a group of ministers to try to convince the other seven councilmen to compromise on the roads issue.

Prejean said he thinks the two councilmen resented him getting involved -- and while they might be harboring personal ill will for him for speaking out, he sees the problem as having different political opinions and approaches.

"It's not personal. It's politics, strictly politics," Prejean said. "They're not being constructive right now. They're not looking for solutions."

While Benjamin deferred a fourth measure to let the ministers work, he also said that Prejean didn't speak for him and later made references in council meetings to political games being played with the issue.

While the Lafayette Public Policy site has been up since the Spring, Prejean posted in late December an article called "Benjamin and Williams embarrass constituents."

In that article, Prejean writes that Williams' and Benjamin's sometimes confrontational manner at council meetings is "calculated and premeditated" -- not to produce results, but to deliberately lose votes along racial lines in an attempt to prove the council is racist.

Benjamin has said before that he was considering asking the U.S. Department of Justice to look into the issue of racially split votes on the council resulting in civil rights violations.

Prejean said the Lafayette Public Policy site is not the beginning of his political campaign for the House -- but that it is the beginning of a campaign to "stand up to Louis and Chris."

Prejean said he expects others to begin standing up also.

Benjamin and Williams should stop their "vindictiveness" and "stop trying to blame white councilmen" when they lose an issue. Prejean said he's been labeled by Benjamin and Williams as a "spook by the door" -- a black person who spies on other black people to inform white people.

Benjamin has made vague references at council meetings about people who "dance on the porch" while someone else "drinks mint juleps," an apparent reference to house slaves.

"It is this type of delirious thinking that obstructs racial tolerance and personal growth and community empowerment," the article says.

And Williams, who has a close political relationship with Raymond Blanco from his days working for the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, shouldn't be accusing others of what he is guilty of -- "serving his own white political handler," Prejean writes.

Williams also dropped his support of long-time ally Don Cravins, a black man, to back Willie Mount, a white woman, when those two squared off in the 2004 Congressional race.

Williams denied that report in a May article of the Independent Weekly, though he declined totalk about the allegation for this story.

During an informal meeting with the media Wednesday morning called to talk about various issues, City-Parish President Joey Durel said he thought that the "Northside-Southside" division was "artificially perpetuated by people for their own personal issues."

"When politicians tell you every day that your life is miserable, then you start believing it," Durel said, without naming the politicians.

He said the Northside needs better leadership from "people who aren't angry and bitter."

The Martin Luther King Drive issue could be settled by "people who are sincere," said Durel, who has supported the idea of changing the name if more than half of the property owners along a given road agree to the change.

"Politics, I was told years ago, is the art of compromise and that's one of the things I hope to see come out of this," Durel said.

Durel's photo and that of City-Parish Chief Administrative Officer Dee Stanley appear on the Lafayette Public Policy Web site, with links to their biographies on the official city-parish site.

Durel said after the meeting Wednesday that he was not aware of the site until Wednesday morning, and that the presence of his picture did not constitute an endorsement.

In March, Benjamin said that he hoped for a reasonable debate on the Martin Luther King Drive issue. I just don't want this to become an emotional issue and people get out there 'rah-rahing,'" Benjamin said then.

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