With a rerun of the 2023 Caddo Parish sheriff’s election now a virtual certainty, the question turns to whom seems the likely winner between Democrat former Shreveport chief administrative officer and police chief Henry Whitehorn and Republican former city councilor John Nickelson.
Today, retired and ad hoc judge Joseph Bleich ruled a new election would have to take place, which fulfilled as big a legal slam dunk as there ever was. The law is quite clear that if illegal votes were cast in a contest in numbers beyond the margin between one or more sets of candidates that, barring the highly unlikely chance that such votes for whom could be identified and their excision would change the outcome, a new election would be ordered, a circumstance that featured in this election which Bleich vetted thoroughly in his ruling.
Given that Whitehorn emerged after the election and machine recount with a single vote lead, the Nickelson campaign’s legal team thoroughly documented irregularities, finding at least 11 suspicious enough, that convinced Bleich to order a new election. In large part, this was the fault of the Caddo Parish Registrar’s Office, who disregarded procedures that could have removed those votes from being cast or counted. Still, with a single vote margin, it would have been difficult to avoid any slipup that could have triggered a new contest.
Bleich decimated Whitehorn’s legal team’s objections and because of Louisiana’s system of voting – where votes tabulated in a machine cannot be traced to individual voters, and once absentee votes are collected after verification of validity any identifying material linking voter to vote is separated making these also untraceable – with no way to determine for whom, if for anybody in the sheriff’s race, the defective votes were cast (made so by voting twice or from illegally registered voters or from improperly filled-out absentee ballot packages, known to be invalid even when separated from the identifying information which is retained because absentee ballot flaps with that information must be retained), a new election was the only legal option. Whitehorn is expected to appeal.
But the thoroughness of Bleich’s ruling that shows an overwhelming amount of evidence pointing to a new election with no sustainable objections to that makes it highly unlikely that, even if pursued to the Louisiana Supreme Court, this would be overruled. In that case, the new election will take place on Mar. 23, which features a scattering of local elections across the state but the main event of which is presidential preference primary elections, also with settling spots on local and state political party governing organs.
Had the rerun occurred on the Dec. 16 special election date, which had just two other local contests statewide, Nickelson would have been favored. His base fits the demographics better in a very low-stimulus race electorate, where low turnout would be caused by absence of other contests, a date during the major holiday season of the year (and on the day of the Independence Bowl), and being the third election in two months that fatigues voters, and therefore likely would have drawn less than a fifth of the electorate. Plus, he holds a significant fundraising advantage that is crucial in a compressed schedule.
However, these factors disappear with the spring date, in large part possible because Louisiana law leaves more than six months between the last possible regular election date for constitutionally-defined parish-wide offices and the start of the term for those election victors. Indeed, if the dynamics of the lower-stimulus Nov. 18 runoff replicate, it’s a tossup.
A review of these dynamics with those of the Oct. 14 general election showed Whitehorn’s base more likely to turn out in the runoff and Nickelson’s less so. The Mar. 23 contest will have the primary election as the headline, by which time over half of all convention delegates will have been allocated and with Democrat Pres. Joe Biden and Republican former Pres. Donald Trump leading handily polling for their respective parties’ nominations, chances are a nominee will have been decided by then, depressing turnout. Under similar circumstances in 2020 – actually somewhat different since government restrictions pushed forward voting until July which made Louisiana one of the last states to allocate – just over a fifth of voters participated. In 2016, an early March placement saw about a quarter of Democrats how up and 35 percent of Republicans, but at that point the GOP’s final selection was up in the air while the writing was on the wall for Democrats’ choice.
Thus, the upcoming contest in turnout likely will look more like the Nov. 18 rather than Oct. 14 race, and the dynamics suggest Whitehorn’s campaign does better in that environment. Plus, Whitehorn’s campaign relied more on a retail strategy that more effectively mobilizes in an environment where the highest-profile race imaginable, the presidential contest, will suck away a tremendous amount of attention.
To counter, Nickleson should increase the role that retail campaigning plays in his overall effort. He also may benefit from taking advantage of statute by having trained representatives available to observe the unpacking of absentee ballots and challenge these when necessary (trial evidence suggested an almost random treatment of absentee ballot validity, with some having the same disqualifying conditions as others that were rejected being accepted) for while about six percent fewer people voted in the runoff than general election, absentee ballots were down only about two percent and he saw a ten-point lead shrink to zero between the two.
Of course, both the registrar that deals with voting and the parish’s Board of Election Supervisors in counting can reduce the possibility something like this would happen again by paying scrupulous attention to statute in performing their duties. The Board is comprised of three Democrats and one Republican, and while its fifth member Registrar Dale Sibley is registered to vote without party, his former law partner and employer the Ron Christopher Stamps law firm outside of judicial candidates for local contests always has donated to Democrats and gave Whitehorn $1,500.
So, the decision correctly provided a judicial win for Nickelson that keeps his candidacy alive, but it doesn’t at all presage a victory at the ballot box for him next spring.
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