10/14 Primary Preview
laissez les bons votes rouler
The first round of Louisiana’s jungle primary is today. The governor’s race is taking up much of the oxygen, but the entire state legislature is on the ballot as well. (Louisianans only get to vote for their state legislators once every four years; the current legislature was elected in 2019.) Louisiana’s jungle primary works like an all-party top-two contest, except candidates who achieve majorities in Round 1 are elected without runoffs.
SD-39 (Shreveport)
Cedric Glover vs. Samuel Jenkins Jr. vs. Barbara Norton vs. James Slagle [GOP]
Shreveport’s sole Democratic Senate district is opening up, resulting in a clash of titans. State Rep. Cedric Glover has, at various points since his first election win in 1990, served as a city councilor, mayor, and state rep. He’s up against state Rep. Sam Jenkins, a former Caddo Parish Commissioner and Shreveport city councilor who chaired the city council in Glover’s final years as mayor, and former state Rep. Barbara Norton, who tried running against state Sen. Greg Tarver in 2019 only to be disqualified by a court for not living in the district. Glover and Jenkins have both voted against recent socially conservative bills like the state’s 2019 heartbeat bill abortion ban and its more recent bans on gender-affirming medical care and trans students in school sports, while Norton was one of a few Democratic legislators who gained notice for skipping votes on abortion rather than making her stance known. (When asked about it, she said she didn’t know how she would’ve voted on a 15-week abortion ban.) So…zero points for political courage there, though we will credit her for leading efforts to ban corporal punishment in Louisiana public schools. (While her bill didn’t become law, a later, weaker version of a corporal punishment ban became law earlier this year.) All three candidates are running fairly parochial campaigns about bringing jobs and resources back to Shreveport, and Jenkins has the support of Tarver, who is termed out.
HD-02 (Central Shreveport)
Steven Jackson vs. Terence Vinson
School board President Terence Vinson is the county party-endorsed choice for this contest. While we're wary of trusting any arm of the Louisiana Democratic Party, we think they made the right choice in picking him over City Councilmember Steven Jackson, a car dealership owner who recently pleaded guilty to impersonating a police officer and who's currently outspending Vinson on the strength of business and landlord contributions.
HD-04 (West Shreveport)
Jasmine Green vs. Lyndon B. Johnson vs. Joy Walters
Louisiana Democratic Party State Central Committee Member Daryl Joy Walters narrowly lost the HD-03 contest in 2019, but was dealt a second chance when redistricting put her into an open district once again. She’s backed by charter schools and does big money industry fundraisers, so let’s hope this time goes as well as the first. Lyndon B. Johnson is a Caddo Parish Commissioner representing part of Shreveport (quite funny in light of how much the president who shares his name hated the city). He’s a big tent kind of guy—supported by both teachers unions and literal “Louisiana Oil And Gas PAC”. Finally, Shreveport school board member Jasmine Green is a moderate, low-key kind of legislator.
HD-21 (Mississippi River Delta)
C. Travis Johnson (i) vs. James Davis Jr. vs. Clark White Jr.
We opted not to cover the Mississippi primaries because of how bad the news desert is in the state, and while Louisiana is generally better, it isn’t uniformly better, and this rural district sits in the most Mississippi-like part of Louisiana. An incumbent, conservative C. Travis Johnson, faces two challengers, and our knowledge of who those challengers are boils down to:
Election results that show James Davis Jr. often goes by “Jamie lil Stump” and lost a race for police jury (county council) 185 votes to 159 in 2019, and that was possibly a contest for reelection on his part
A random twitter video from last year that suggests James Davis Jr is a farmer
Clark White Jr. owns a furniture store and got a small PPP loan
Clark White Jr. appears to be raising almost no money
That’s all we got.
HD-23 (Mid-City New Orleans)
Bryan Jefferson vs. Shaun Mena vs. Pearl Ricks vs. Tammy Savoie
The New Orleans political establishment is trying to push through lawyer Shaun Mena in this newly created New Orleans district. His platform is vague, and his record nonexistent, but his supporters speak volumes: the moderate Troy Carter wing of the Democratic party, the city party itself, and, of course, charter schools. Mena is a strong favorite, but progressives intend to go down swinging with a candidate they can believe in—Pearl Ricks, the director of the Reproduction Justice Action Collective, has put together a surprisingly strong campaign. She has the DSA’s recommendation and the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund’s outright support, and is generally being boosted by progressive groups in the city. Also running are lawyer Bryan Jefferson and veteran Tammy Savoie, both of whom have poorly defined centrist messages.
HD-26 (Alexandria)
Ed Larvadain III (i) vs. Sandra Franklin vs. Reddex Washington
Rapides Parish School Board member Sandra Franklin is running in this district against incumbent Ed Larvadain III for the third time in a row. She lost both previous elections by wide margins, and we hope that losing streak that continues given that Larvadain is a standard liberal Democrat and Franklin supports corporal punishment for children in public school. Complicating this race is the presence of City Councilmember Reddex Washington, running a mostly self-funded campaign on a vague platform of being more involved than the incumbent.
HD-34 (Lake Charles)
Wilford Carter Sr. (i) vs. Kevin Guidry vs. Franklin Lewis Sr.
Wilford Carter is a mostly reliable Democrat who inexplicably voted for the Republican legislative gerrymander, and is now fighting for his political life in a rematch with the man he beat in 2019—longtime police jurist Kevin Guidry. Guidry was the charter school candidate in that race, and his biggest priority is getting people out of apartments, so we don’t think it’s worth getting rid of Carter if it means Guidry takes over instead. Mortician Franklin Lewis Sr. is the definitive third wheel here.
HD-40 (Opelousas)
Dustin Miller (i) vs. Allen Guillory
Dustin Miller’s going to win reelection easily because his only opponent is Allen Guillory, a perennial candidate who ran in his last few elections as a Republican.
HD-44 (Lafayette)
Tehmi Chassion vs. Patrick Lewis vs. Ravis Martinez
Lafayette’s lone Democratic house seat is picking a new representative this year. In the mix are Lafayette Parish School Board member Tehmi Chassion, who has been endorsed by teachers unions but who has a reputation for abrasive behavior and political retaliation, and Lafayette City Councilmember Patrick Lewis, who is currently trying to ban AirBnb from the city. Rounding out the field is Ravis Martinez, a corporate executive and former Marine, backed by charter school money.
HD-57 (LaPlace)
Shane Bailey vs. Albert Burl III vs. Rodney Nicholas vs. Larry Sorapuru Jr. vs. Michelle Sweeney vs. Sylvia Taylor vs. Russell Wise vs. Shondrell Perrilloux [GOP]
While this does seem like an intimidating number of candidates, Shondrell Perrilloux is a Republican, Albert Burl III admits he doesn’t live in the district and wouldn’t be on the ballot if any of his opponents thought getting rid of him was worth the paperwork, and neither Shane Bailey nor community college professor Rodney Nicholas appear to be raising any money. That leaves the field at a more manageable four candidates. Larry Sorapuru was elected to St. John the Baptist Parish Council in 2015 and narrowly lost the race for reelection in 2019. He seems like a normal guy. Michelle Sweeney is a paralegal who spends a lot of time on Twitter talking about how great Elon Musk is. Retired workers compensation judge Sylvia Taylor seems vaguely progressive and is running a self-funded campaign. Finally, former journalist Russell Wise is the boring, moderate kind of independent, not the fun, anti-system kind.
HD-62 (Baton Rouge suburbs and rural Florida Parishes)
Roy Daryl Adams (i) vs. Daniel Banguel vs. Dadrius Lanus
In 2019, Roy Daryl Adams won a special election in a GOP-leaning district as an independent, and then won a full term later that year as the same. He's a Democrat now because redistricting cut his rural district in half and affixed it to a few precincts in the city of Baton Rouge, and the independent shtick won't be appreciated nearly as much. He can run from his old party label, but not from his conservative voting record, which even includes providing the deciding vote to overturn Gov. Jon Bel Edward's veto of the GOP Congressional gerrymander. While that single vote demonstrates better than any other why Democrats would be foolish to trust him on any level, it's important to remember that he's also consistently opposed abortion, gun control, trans childrens' happiness, and criminal justice reform.
Thankfully, the Democrats seem to realize Adams shouldn't be trusted, because one of his two opponents is Daniel Banguel, a Baton Rouge political consultant and Vice Chairman of the Louisiana Democratic Party, while his other, Dadrius Lanus, is not just a member of the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board, but was made president by the other (Democratic) members. If the party had any desire at all to protect Adams, party leaders wouldn't be running against him. While either would be a massive improvement over Adams, Lanus was elected to the school board with the help of charter school money flooding the race, and previously suggested known failed "solutions" like ShotSpotter to the high crime rate in the city, so it's Banguel who is preferable here.
HD-63 (Northern Baton Rouge area)
Barbara West Carpenter (i) vs. Chauna Banks vs. Christopher Lemoine [GOP]
Barbara West Carpenter is running for her third term in the house. While she had been a mostly mediocre, but dependable, Democrat, her decision to side with Republicans on much of the state’s COVID response has drawn some eyebrows. While Baton Rouge could trade West Carpenter in for someone better, City Council member Chauna Banks is not that upgrade. Banks once emailed a Council colleague, “if your son wasn’t buying weed, he’d be walking around today”, referencing the shooting that paralyzed that colleague's son for life. She once stopped a Council meeting to give a prepared presentation complaining that they weren’t voting for enough of her bills. At another meeting she tried to argue with the Council’s expert on redistricting about what the Voting Rights Act required based on what appeared to have been her first reading of the law. And yes, she’s also taking charter school money, but so is West Carpenter.
HD-72 (Rural Florida Parishes)
Robby Carter (i) vs. Roderick "Devon" Matthews
Robby Carter is running for his third consecutive and sixth non-consecutive term in the state house. That means he started his career in politics in the mid 90s, and he's everything you'd expect a white rural Democrat from Louisiana in that era to be: anti-abortion, pro-gun, anti-LGBTQ, and set in his ways about all of it. He's one of the most conservative members of the state house, and it's hard not to suspect he'd have joined his ideological companions in decamping for the GOP if his district wasn't so solidly Democratic. We actually don't know much about St. Helena Parish Director of the Office of Emergency Management Roderick Matthews, because this part of the state is a news desert, but there's basically no room available for him to be worse than Carter, and we suspect in fact that he'll be considerably more liberal that Carter if he makes it to the state house.
HD-87 (Southern New Orleans suburbs)
Rodney Lyons Sr. (i) vs. Trent Mackey Jr.
Charter school principal Trent Mackey is challenging two term incumbent Rodney Lyons. Since the candidates themselves can't seem to find much difference between them, we're not too concerned with this race either. While Mackey's charter school career is a red flag, so is Mackey's early support of Troy Carter's Congressional campaign. Lyons may wind up being a better choice simply because he's term-limited, so his reelection would mean a single term of a representative whose voting record is a known quantity, and then the seat opens up.
HD-91 (Downtown New Orleans)
Mandie Landry (i) vs. Edward Carlson vs. Madison O'Malley
The South is undeniably not the friendliest place for progressive politics, but it’s not devoid of it. New Orleans state Rep. Mandie Landry has been a lonely voice against Louisiana Democrats’ often-conservative leadership, criticizing them for meddling in intraparty contests on behalf of more conservative candidates (including in a state Senate race in which she lost to the party-backed conservative choice) and generally being one of very few Democrats who consistently votes like a Democrat in the legislature; anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ Democrats are a dying breed elsewhere, but still going strong in Louisiana. Her dissatisfaction with the state party led her to become an independent for a few months before rejoining the Democratic caucus. Now, those conservative Democrats want payback; prominent party insiders including anti-abortion Gov. John Bel Edwards are supporting business owner Madison O’Malley, who promises to be a unifier. (Unifying around abortion bans and state-mandated harassment of LGBTQ people, we can only presume.) And indeed, there’s unity around O’Malley—among conservatives. Not just conservative Democrats, but Republicans too: the Greater New Orleans Republican PAC, an unofficial-official arm of the New Orleans GOP, is backing O’Malley in her attempt to unseat Landry. A runoff is possible thanks to Edward Carlson, the CEO of a substance abuse treatment and prevention nonprofit.
Board of Education District 8 (Baton Rouge)
Preston Castille (i) vs. Dolores "DeeDee" Cormier-Zenon
Over in Baton Rouge, where public schools haven’t been outlawed yet, lawyer Preston Castille is running for another term. The parish Democratic party has endorsed Dolores Cormier-Zenon, perhaps because Castille literally runs a charter school network. At the very least that explains why the AFT has endorsed her. Castille is still outspending Cormier-Zenon, with more than a little help from charter school interests.
Judge, Criminal District Court, Section I (New Orleans)
Leon Roché vs. Melanie Talia
In contrast to some of the murkier contests New Orleans has to decide on, we’re finishing on something with excruciatingly clear stakes, because one of the two candidates running is Melanie Talia. Who is Melanie Talia? We think she explained her outlook best at a city council meeting:
“If we could remove that very small nine or ten percent from our community, those who are driving the most violent offenses, we will have a safer community.”
- Melanie Talia, requesting the city council lock up 34,000-38,000 residents of New Orleans and increase the city’s prison population by a factor of seven.
Talia is a longtime prosecutor-turned-New Orleans Police and Justice Foundation president with a downright fascistic outlook on crime. She brags about her support from both police unions and the literal, official Republican Party. She also appears to be submitting fraudulent campaign finance documents.
Leon Roché is a criminal defense attorney, and he’s fine. He seems fine, at least. Basically every Democrat in the city has endorsed him, and it’s mostly because whatever his deal is, he’s got to be better than Talia.