With Louisiana state elections complete for the next four years (outside of rolling Public Service Commission contests), state government partisan balance changed in just one significant way, but the political dynamics transformed a lot.
That’s as Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry last month won the governorship, flipping the post from term-limited Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards. This had the additional impact of assuring essentially a 9-2 advantage on the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, as the governor appoints three members to it, along with election results that returned a 6-2 GOP advantage.
This means the slim majority held by reformers becomes quite safe, in that with the elections of Republicans Stacey Melerine and Kevin Berken this added two more to their ranks. One consequence will be substantial change to a policy just implemented, where a term-limited Republican defector was the deciding vote in putting through a weak and subjective appeal mechanism to the requirement of low standardized test scores to graduate. Expect that soon to be tossed out, or at least toughened into something meaningful.
Republicans also swept easily the remaining three statewide offices, Nancy Landry for secretary of state, Liz Murrill for attorney general, and John Fleming for treasurer. Actually, Landry’s and Murrill’s ascensions are promotions from within, and Fleming has extensive government experience from time in Congress and the White House.
After the dust settled, Republicans ended up adding a seat-holder in each chamber of the Legislature, flipping the only interparty-competitive seat in the House (there had been one picked up with independent state Rep. Joe Marino’s retirement decided last month, and no interparty-competitive seats in the Senate). That makes for final totals of 73-32 in the House and 28-11 in the Senate, with GOP supermajorities in both instances. Within those are 34 newcomers in the House and 10 in the Senate, although only two were true rookies who hadn’t served in the House this term (in fact, two-thirds of senators have preceded Senate seats with House service). In all, of incumbents who ran only a couple of House incumbents and one from the Senate lost.
The House will see a slightly more conservative body, through the defeat of Democrat Mack Cormier by Republican Jacob Braud, Marino replaced by Republican Vincent Cox, and Republican Mary DuBuisson losing to Republican Brian Glorioso. The Senate will see more change towards conservatism, with term-limited Democrat Gary Smith replaced by Republican Gregory Miller and four other conservative Republicans defeating more moderate Republicans for open seats.
And that trend towards more conservatism likely will continue if the Legislature pursues a course many of its members and Landry have supported: instituting closed primary elections. The blanket primary system now disproportionately assists moderates such as recent GOP convert Jeremy LaCombe, who switched from Democrat as an electoral aid without showing any real ideological change in floor voting but who managed as a result to win reelection against a more conservative challenger. By creating primary elections limited to party registrants, in districts where a Republican will win Democrats and other non-party members won’t be able to influence which GOP candidate comes out on top.
With the more moderate contingent of Republicans who would resist this having dwindled further as a result of these elections, and with a governor who won’t veto such a measure, the votes likely are there not only to make federal, local, and PSC elections subject to closed primaries for 2026, but also including all state elections for 2027. There’s much pent-up demand for not only conservative policies but also for excising embedded liberal policies that Edwards as governor served as a regressive force against, that Landry and the Legislature will tackle over the next four years, but beyond that they may wish to set the stage to prevent the wasted last eight years ever from occurring again by reforming the primary process.
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