New maps provide only Democrat electoral hopes

Although there might be a couple of interesting intraparty matchups ahead in Louisiana’s last round of blanket primary elections for Congress before 2026, the Public Service Commission, and the Supreme Court, partisan outcomes are almost certainly already secured after qualifying for these offices ended last week for the 2024 cycle.

With a new and almost certainly one-off congressional map for this cycle, all GOP incumbents will defeat, and handily, the political unknowns and lightweight retreads of all parties up against them. As testimony to the disarray state Democrats find their party, they couldn’t find someone of their label to run against Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, who drew only another of his party as an opponent. Typically, the party out of power in a chamber of Congress makes it a priority to run someone to run against the body’s leader of the other party just to create national talking points, but that didn’t work against Johnson (who at least this time will have competition, having run unopposed in 2022 before he became speaker).

The only serious competition will come in the new and transient Sixth District, whose boundaries were declared unconstitutionally gerrymandered to elect a black candidate by the federal judiciary, that to prevent election administration difficulties will be allowed to stand for this election. It spanning from Shreveport to Baton Rouge, Democrat state Sen. Cleo Fields hopes for the third time to win in an unconstitutional district – his previous two successful elections to Congress in 1992 and 1994 came under maps also declared unconstitutional – whose main challenger should prove to be GOP former state Sen. Elbert Guillory. Both are black.

Registration numbers favor a black Democrat, but with GOP presidential nominee former Pres. Donald Trump polling as high as 30 percent among intended black voters, there’s hope that Guillory, with Fields facing three other black Democrats, can push Fields into a runoff. Then, without a presidential election on the ballot, blacks disproportionately would roll off compared to whites who mostly would favor Guillory and snatch a victory.

The problem with that scenario is that Guillory never has shown much heft in running at a level higher than a legislative district. Since leaving the Legislature, he had a dig at lieutenant governor and then again eight years later or last year, and in 2016 against Johnson, every time finishing in the single digits in the general election. He’s also 80 years old, with advanced age being one reason Democrat Pres. Joe Biden, his senior by a couple of years, refused renomination. This suggests that while Guillory could finish second to Fields in the general election, he might not do well enough to hold Fields under 50 percent plus one of the vote, much less go over the top of him in a runoff.

Democrat weakness also became evident in the party’s fielding a political unknown in the District 2 PSC race against Republican state Sen. Jean-Paul Coussan and GOP former state Sen. Julie Quinn. Perhaps at the cajoling of party insiders, Democrat Nick Laborde went from an intended run for the Baton Rouge Metropolitan Council to sliding into the PSC contest so as the party wouldn’t face the embarrassment of not fielding a candidate. Politics may run in his family’s blood, but with zero campaign, much less elective, experience even with latent Democrat support he would make a runoff only if one of Coussan or Quinn don’t campaign well, and even if he did has pretty much zero chance of winning in a district with that demography.

While the intraparty battle between Coussan and Quinn will determine which Republican picks up the baton from the retiring Republican Craig Greene, an intraparty clash will determine who wins the new District 2 Supreme Court seat. Reapportioned to create a black-majority district – but not subject to constitutional concerns because judicial spots aren’t considered policy-making even if many of their decisions have that impact – three black Democrats signed up.

Appellate Judge John Michael Guidry, based in Baton Rouge, seems likely to advance to a runoff based upon a past competitive election he ran under the previous map. Based in Monroe, Appellate Judge Marcus Hunter also is a good bet to make it, after having built upon his father Willie’s legacy in the area, both having served in the Louisiana House. Given the lion’s share of the district’s population surrounds East Baton Rouge Parish, Guidry has the edge.