The Caddo Parish sheriff’s contest looms as the highest-profile this election cycle among the chief law enforcement officers and tax collectors of Louisiana, while also serving as a barometer of political change.
All but Orleans Parish will vote on these offices this fall, although the new terms won’t begin until the middle of 2024. The most populous, East Baton Rouge, finds Democrat long-tine Sheriff Sid Gautreaux at this point without competition, as occurred last time. But the next highest-populated, Caddo will welcome a newcomer with the deferral of Republican even longer-time Sheriff Steve Prator to attempt a seventh term.
At the beginning of June, Prator was all ready to go for that, but by the end of the month opted out after he evaluated his health as more tenuous than he had realized and decided to retire. Not long after he had announced he would run for reelection, Democrat Henry Whitehorn said he would entering the race, although claiming it wasn’t as a mission to oppose Prator. Republican Eric Hatfield, a perennial candidate with an extremely checkered past of legal problems and controversy over a stint as a constable that led to his defeat also has said he will run.
Who will not be the guy area Republicans want to try to retain the office. Prator has said he will return all donations to his campaign but also said he would steer donors towards candidates he finds acceptable. He has named none as yet.
Gautreaux and Prator remain anachronisms in that both are white yet serve majority-minority populations (Caddo barely, East Baton Rouge a little more so). In terms of the Caddo electorate, whites actually have a bare plurality although census data suggest there may be more registrants with some black ancestry than white. But, given their lengthy times in office, both first elected when their electorates had white majorities, good reviews by constituents have led to their continued reelections against no or token opposition.
Without a candidate of Prator’s record of incumbency around, this suggests that Whitehorn, who not only would benefit from a Democrat label as most blacks vote for Democrats but also is black, may have an edge over any white Republican. Buttressing this view is that the same electorate in 2015, then with a white majority, elected black Democrat James Stewart as First District Attorney with a comfortable 55 percent of the vote.
Then again, even as Whitehorn has a lengthy career in law enforcement capped with a couple of years as Shreveport’s chief administrative officer under Democrat former Mayor Adrian Perkins, it hasn’t been all skittles and beer. Long ago head of the Louisiana State Police, that agency continues to take a public relations beating, then and now, for questionable trooper actions. His term as Shreveport police chief was unremarkable, but weighing most heavily on his candidacy is that most recent stint as CAO, where he took arrows for a number of controversial, if not unpopular or even smacking of insider politics, decisions made by Perkins (for example, a change in health plans for city employees and retirees attenuating choices if not increasing costs) that ultimately led to his defeat months ago that sent Whitehorn into retirement.
Still, given the electoral environment Republicans would have to come up with a pretty good candidate whose chances would be maximized by having some law enforcement background to offset Whitehorn’s. Time is running out to find such a competitor with qualifying just about a month away for a contest soliciting from over 150,000 voters that just can’t be thrown together overnight to be effective.
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