Court poised to junk LA map, old map thinking

There is no doubt that Louisiana’s current congressional map that jackknifes into it two black majority-minority districts of six will disappear sooner than later, argumentation in front of the U.S. Supreme Court earlier today revealed, but just how little of a role race will play in apportionment going forward remains to be seen when the Court’s ruling on the consolidated Louisiana v. Callais and Robinson v. Callais comes out.

From the start, the Court majority, those justices picked by a Republican president, unambiguously signaled the current map soon would hit the ash heap, confirming lower court rulings, precisely because of the dominant role race played in its creation. GOP Gov. Jeff Landry successfully urged the Legislature to draw the current map after the Court refused to resolve the conflict between statute (Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act) and the Constitution (the Equal Protection Clause) as to how prominently race could be used to precent potential discrimination by race.

Too far, as the Louisiana case that the Court’s previous ruling impacted demonstrated. In that instance, for the first time ever a court ruled that, despite the actual wording of Section 2, that if a state had a discrete minority population of a certain proportion that the number of seats that were M/M roughly had to correspond to that. This was the logical extension of a bedrock assumption drawn into the jurisprudence of the VRA, that regarding race outcome mattered, not intent, when districts were drawn: if you could maximize the number of M/M or opportunity districts for a plenary body that avoided not having at least a poor argument justifying the ways in which it could violate traditional principles of map-drawing in order to cater to race, you had to maximize.

Edwards acknowledges reality, smacks Democrats

He may be out to lunch on desirable policy preferences and not exactly honest, but Democrat former Gov. John Bel Edwards knows how to spot whether a campaign is winnable, to the chagrin of Louisiana Democrats and perhaps the delight of Republican incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy.

Edwards bludgeoned the fantasies of some in his party when this week he declared he would not be a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2026. He was the last Democrat to win statewide office, leading to the wild hope that he would enter the race and, as in both his gubernatorial victories in 2015 and 2019, keep out of the way as internecine Republican battles could permit him to sneak into office.

That became a pipe dream when, during his second term, Edwards took off the mask and showed his true leftist ideologue self. He won twice because he was a fraud, trying to convey the impression he was some kind of centrist, even conservative (only in the context of the extremists controlling his party nationally) while governing from left-of-center to the far left, depending on the issue, carrying himself as a blank slate in his first campaign and in his first term keeping in the dark or fooling enough people who didn’t follow closely enough politics to narrowly gain reelection.

Don't sleep on Seabaugh DA victory chances

Don’t write off the chances of Republican state Sen. Alan Seabaugh to become the next First District Attorney in 2027.

This week, Seabaugh will announce formally that he will purse the job of Caddo Parish district attorney, despite the fact that incumbent Democrat James Stewart, even if getting a bit long in the tooth by the end of the term when he will be approaching 80, shows every sign of seeking reelection. The news was met by some disparaging his chances.

That may not be a good bet. The uphill road that Seabaugh, or any white Republican, has to face is the parish as of late has turned to electing black Democrats, given that voter registration totals in the parish show whites with a majority of about 500 out of nearly 145,000 registrants in he foreground of a history of little black crossover voting but greater, if still small, white crossover voting. Stewart gained the office in a special election in 2015 over a white Republican but was reelected even more comfortably in 2020 over a white Democrat, while the only other parish-wide office focusing on public safety, sheriff, saw in 2024 a narrow win by black Democrat Henry Whitehorn over white Republican John Nickelson.

LA can't guarantee new House map for 2026

Louisiana can increase its chances of having congressional elections occur under new rules for 2026, but there’s no way it can guarantee that given the jurisprudence and timing of elections.

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear whether statute and the Constitution conflict on drawing district boundaries. If so decided, that means the state can engage in a mid-cycle reapportionment to return the state to having only one of six majority-minority districts as opposed to two that the state felt forced to implement by previous judicial rulings for 2024.

To permit such a scenario for 2026 elections, the state must change its federal election dates. Already, petitioning for ballot access has begun for party primary elections scheduled Apr. 18, but unless the Court rules relatively quickly that would make changing boundaries to meet existing deadlines impossible. The deadline to turn in a petition to make a party primary ballot is four months prior to the election.

Sheriff's race aside, NO elections disappoint

Admittedly an extremely low bar to hurdle in terms of quality of governance, New Orleans possibly will be slightly better off after 2025 elections.

Maybe barely, by default, for the city’s head honcho. The dingbat Democrat LaToya Cantrell, under indictment, will give way to Democrat Councilor Helena Moreno, whose policy preferences are a mixture of anodyne appeals to better procedural execution of service delivery and wackiness by its nature that will overwhelm the former. For example, she’s all in on forcing more expensive renewable power onto Orleanians and talks of government pumping more regulation into housing provision, as if that already hasn’t left the city with a significant affordable housing shortage. It’s an agenda designed to drive even more people away and to put more into poverty, but at least the hope is she won’t be corrupt.

The incoming City Council may offer more hope. All the incumbents able to run won, and even the least awful of those who have served, District A Democrat Joe Giarusso, will be replaced by one of two of his former staffers who promise to be about as obnoxious in policy, although one, Democrat Aimee McCarron, in those terms might be a slight upgrade. And replacing Moreno for one of the two at-large posts, Democrat state Rep. Matthew Willard represents more of the same policy rubbish.

Arceneaux facing tough reelection road

Getting an early start, Republican Shreveport Mayor Tom Arceneaux formally announced his bid for reelection in 13 months, just as an example of controversy flared that will make a second term an uphill proposition.

History instructs and numbers don’t lie. Arceneaux, a white Republican in a jurisdiction then where over half the voters registered as Democrats and even a higher proportion were black, in an upset captured the office because he ran against an unpopular incumbent and entered the runoff against a longtime, controversial black Democrat who had made enemies within the black community. Now facing an electoral environment where currently 55 percent of the electorate is black and a half Democrats, if he faces off against a quality black Democrat without the baggage other such candidates carried in 2022, he will be an underdog.

To win, Arceneaux had to have a near-perfect mayoralty, and he has done well. Taking a much more grounded and serious approach than his predecessor, he has tried to solve street-level problems that tend to transcend partisan boundaries. The most recent example, and perhaps his most effective and popular, has been to aggressively go after blighted properties and some big ones at that to, at least, clear areas of them.

Past EPA politicized agenda now costing LA

That the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency seems a bit slow in doing its job in Louisiana is the wages of its now-excised obsession with conspiracy theories centered on race.

The EPA has come under criticism for a seemingly-slow response to an accident at Smitty’s Supply in Tangipahoa Parish, where an explosion and fire have spread chemical residue far and wide. Concerns have mounted about environmental contamination and both the EPA and Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, with the state response somewhat tethered to the EPA’s, have pledged and pointed to increased urgency in the cleanup.

Unrelated but another complaint about slowness in EPA response comes from researchers at Louisiana State University. They have developed an environmentally friendly and humane method to put to death outlaw quadrupeds of the porcine variety. Feral hogs do considerable damage to agriculture and even flood control efforts, and this method of scattering rubber ball-sized bait that seems to light up their taste buds but doesn’t harm other wildlife promises to be a much more effective tactic in population control than hunting. But the product isn’t in circulation because the EPA has to approve of it and the process is long and convoluted that with attention paid to it could be streamlined and hastened.

BC budget presents chance to reshape fiscal mgt

 Bossier City this year took a small step towards smarter fiscal management. Its 2026 budget reveals other opportunities where sweating other small stuff can add up to significant savings.

Tomorrow, the City Council takes up the separate budget ordinances, which largely reflect a measure of prudence. Typically, the city budgets conservatively which has paid off in recent years with a growing general fund balance – until the recently-exited long-in-the-tooth councilors concocted a city-wide pay raise built on political, not fiscal, reasons that promises to deplete that healthy surplus in a matter of years unless the city implements compensatory actions.

The Republican Mayor Tommy Chandler Administration has in a few ways, one of which was a nonstarter: property tax increases. But it did get Council approve to muscle through water and sanitation fee increases that were eating away at reserves, hopefully obviating the need for subsidization from general tax revenues. It also apparently has called a halt to the drunken sailor spending by the departed graybeards on shiny baubles that boosted egos but were fiscally imprudent for the general value they imparted to the citizenry, by making a verbal commitment to using one source of funding for these wasteful capital projects – a sales tax that dumps into the Parkway Capital Project Fund – for its legally-permissible alternative of funding city operating activities.

Still, the level at which the 2026 budget draws from this, about $10 million, isn’t sustainable as only $4 million is budgeted to replenish the $10 million remaining, so that can’t work in the long run. Another trick up the sleeve may try to ameliorate this: a proposal by the Chandler Administration to unlock, which would not happen next year but could be incorporated into the 2027 budget, the $18 million in the Public Safety and Health Trust Fund which would require voter approval. The idea would be to stake some of this as a reserve for paying out health benefits for city employees and retirees, preventing the need to dip into tax revenues.

Guard deployment must fit larger commitment

It’s as bogus, if not disingenuous, as it gets when Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s request for National Guard troops to be activated for use in crime-fighting efforts in Louisiana’s three largest cities is disparaged.

Last week, Landry asked for the state’s National Guard to be deployed by his administration in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Shreveport, at federal government expense. Other than that, plans are as yet indeterminate as to the details of the operation.

Some Democrat officeholders, predictably, have complained about this effort, where ironically enough the loudest at the local level seem to have come from those whose areas they represent have experienced for decades the worst amount of crime. They moan about militarization and sending a negative message, although perhaps what really concerns them the appearance of troops may highlight that politicians of their stripes have been in office forever with no improvement in crime reduction and that voters might catch on to this cross-generation failure.

Closed primaries: more accountability if fewer run

If you expect candidate choice to go down significantly as a result of Louisiana expanding its (semi-)closed primary election roster, you would be wrong. If you think it would increase accountability, you’d be right.

Starting next year, closed primary elections return for federal offices and will become implemented for Public Service Commission and Supreme Court seats. But along with that, qualification methods changed beyond what was necessary to create a primary system.

Until now, to qualify under the blanket primary system, candidates had two options: get up a petition turned in by a certain date with varying numbers of signatures and locations of signers depending upon the office, or just pay up a certain amount during qualification that varied in amount as to office and what category of political party, if any, in which the candidate would enroll where the two major parties had the highest fees. Both methods remain but now are very different.