Arceneaux cracked black solidarity to triumph

In understanding the Shreveport mayor’s election, the 2006 contest wasn’t the proper benchmark to explain Republican Tom Arceneaux’s upset victory over Democrat state Sen. Greg Tarver, it was Monroe’s 2020 race, thereby providing a model for potential future GOP wins.

Despite a black majority electorate and a majority of Democrats in it, Arceneaux not only defeated Tarver, he won going away with 56 percent of the vote. It marks the first time since 2006 the city had a white mayor and only its third Republican ever, the first since 1998.

That 2006 election provided a cautionary lesson why this triumph seemed so unlikely. Back then, in the general election Republican Jerry Jones plus two other Republicans gained 45 percent of the vote, leaving black Democrat Cedric Glover at 32 percent, and white Democrat Liz Swaine got 13 percent. That math should have given Jones a close victory in an electorate then barely majority white.

Instead, during the runoff Glover increased his turnout three percent more than did Jones in close-to-monoracial precincts, plus saw almost entirely monoracial black voting in his favor while pulling roughly 15 percent of white votes to secure the win. In 2022, given the composition of the electorate, the same dynamics (where in this case Tarver didn’t lose as much rather than didn’t gain more in turnout; in those days the general election was prior to the runoff on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November whereas more recently it has been the general election on that date and the runoff afterwards) easily would have secured the win for Tarver. Even a small change wouldn’t have cost him.

But the dynamics shifted significantly. Not in turnout, which did act typically, where turnout decreased less the higher the proportion of black Democrats a precinct had. The appeals that Tarver campaign surrogates made about getting out to vote in order to safeguard black interests worked.

His campaign’s problem came from a significant dilution of that black voting solidarity so counted upon. The nature of racial identifying information about precincts has changed since 2006 with a surge in registrants identifying their race as “other,” but a rough distinction of favorable precincts for each candidate can come by reviewing those with at least 70 percent black Democrat registrations as favorable to Tarver and 50 percent at least Republican and other party registrations as favorable to Arceneaux. The latter’s projected ceiling under the 2006 dynamics in total, assuming he received most of no party Caddo Commissioner Mario Chavez’s general election vote and a smattering of black Democrat City Councilor LeVette Fuller’s and Democrat Mayor Adrian Perkins’ (who endorsed him) votes, his ceiling was 46 percent.

In favorable districts, given past dynamics Tarver should have done about three percent better in vote increase compared to Arceneaux over the general election. Instead, while he pulled about 24 percent better over the general election, Arceneaux improved by 34 percent, which indicates a significant portion of black Democrats who had voted in the general election didn’t push the button for Tarver. Some probably didn’t show up but, more significantly, Arceneaux increased his vote proportion over the general election an average of 11 percent in favorable Tarver precincts, well above historical norms of hardly anything in black Democrat vs. white Republican matchups. More stunningly, Tarver received in precincts favorable to Arceneaux a mean just five percent more (and even had a lower proportion in two precincts), well below historical norms of at least that much again. Plus, in all other (non-favorable to either) precincts, or those with a mix of races and partisanships, Arceneaux scored 11 points better in the runoff than did Tarver.

It's tough to tease out to what extent black Democrats who voted for Fuller or Perkins voted for Arceneaux or whether they didn’t vote in the runoff contributed to his surprising performance in Tarver-favorable precincts, but Tarver certainly underperformed when comparing his total to that of black Democrat Councilor Alan Jackson, running for reelection against Republican School Board member Tony Nations. Jackson won with 53 percent despite a controversial short tenure on the Council (he was appointed about a year ago) and in a district with a slightly lower proportion of black and Democrat registrants than city-wide.

In the ten unsplit precincts in that District E, Tarver lost with about 47 percent of the vote, a full 10 points, or in raw terms 86 votes, behind Jackson, despite the fact mayoral turnout was almost that many votes more than for the Council contest. This suggests an interactive effect, where not only did black Democrats disproportionately vote for a white Republican over a black Democrat compared to historical norms, but that they also were less likely not to sit out the runoff compounded the impact of that discrepancy against Tarver’s chances.

That being the case, this election resembled much more the 2020 Monroe mayor’s race, when independent Friday Ellis defeated long-time incumbent Democrat Mayor Jamie Mayo. In retrospect, the 2022 Shreveport runoff had much in common with the 2020 Monroe general election: a controversial black Democrat long on the political scene with (by the time of the Shreveport runoff) only a white non-Democrat meaningfully opposing him. In that election, Ellis received an unusually high proportion of the black vote, just as apparently Arceneaux did.

In both cases, eroded black solidarity behind a black Democrat gave a white non-Democrat the win. And it probably wasn’t so much campaign events such as black former mayors endorsing Arceneaux or advertising that highlighted contentious past marital history that caused this; rather, these were symptoms of an underlying disease of unease in the black community with Tarver. For going on four decades politics in that community have revolved around him, where political combatants either were with him or against him. The division surrounding him for some simply was too much: they didn’t want to see four years or more of the Tarver crowd in power with them picking up scraps. To them, it wouldn’t be at all different from having the other party in power, and this is what they as opinion leaders communicated to those who depend upon them in the mass public for political information to make their voting decisions.

Arceneaux campaigned really well in turning a somewhat of a long shot into victory, which now provides a model for Republicans wishing to do win in black Democrat majority cities: if you’re a quality candidate, you can triumph if you can maneuver a matchup between you and a controversial black Democrat, because the controversy that breeds enemies can crack enough the historical solidarity of black voters.