Interesting dynamics behind Caddo justice races

In contests dealing with the criminal justice system, Caddo Parish voters didn’t see any surprise winners, although how the contests turned out may not have been anticipated.

There wasn’t a whole lot of action for voters. Not atypically, only one district judgeship in the 1^st District was contested, and that took some special circumstances. In one of the two majority white registrant special election sections in the 1^st (another is majority black), veteran prosecutor Republican Hugo Holland, who is white, secured the Division F (Section 3) seat over local attorney Democrat Treneisha Jackson Hill, who is black, by two percentage points.

That was closer than might be anticipated given a district about even in partisan terms, but where white registrants outnumbered black ones about 3:2. All other judges in the section are white Republicans. Also, Holland would build a significant advantage over Hill in money, with his campaign committee raising $82,000 compared to her $18,000, although she started late in the campaign.

Dynamics suggest Arceneaux repeat win of 2022

Incumbent Shreveport Mayor Tom Arceneaux, a white Republican, remains the favorite to win reelection in a city with a majority black electorate and a near-majority of black Democrats, results from last week’s election show.

Arceneaux led the field with 36 percent of the vote. Perhaps mildly surprising, Democrat Caddo Parish Commissioner Stormy Gage-Watts barged her way into the runoff with 23 percent, followed by fellow Commissioner Republican John-Paul Young with 18 percent and then 16 percent for Democrat state Rep. Tammy Phelps, with three minor candidates splitting the remaining 7 percent. Conventional wisdom had it that one of the two elected black Democrats would make the runoff.

With her broader political experience and higher profile, it was believed by many that Phelps would outlast Gage-Watts, especially with endorsements from prominent establishment politicians like Democrats state Sen. Sam Jenkins and former Mayor Keith Higtower. Further, her geographic base took in much more of Shreveport than did Gage-Watts’.

LA Democrats set to overplay their losing hand

It didn’t take long for at least one now-prominent Louisiana Democrat to misinterpret 2026 midterm election results, especially his own, which by doing so will make any such gains made by the party disappear like a sand castle at high tide.

Shortly after it became clear that Republican Rep. Julia Letlow would defeat Senate Democrat nominee Jamie Davis, hubris got the best of him when he hinted that he might run for governor next year against incumbent GOP Gov. Jeff Landry. To that, Landry basically begged Davis to run against him.

As he should. Davis’ increased stature in the party doesn’t have much to do with him but mostly does have to do with the deviant nature of this campaign cycle and the shortcomings of his opponent. As previously noted, in the most favorable environment Democrats nationally have had for at least two decades and against an opponent who’s not a compelling candidate and who ran a lackluster campaign at best for an open seat after a bruising primary season, the party still couldn’t get a win with Davis as the front man.

Not such big election night for LA Democrats

While Democrats had a good election night generally, in Louisiana, not so much as elsewhere, which demonstrates the structural problems the party faces.

As election day approached, party activists began to get ahead of themselves and dream that their Senate nominee, former Tensas Parish Police Juror Jamie Davis, actually could pull a huge upset by defeating Republican Rep. Julia Letlow. Reality intruded when Letlow won although only by about two percentage points.

That created a glass half-empty/half-full scenario. The comparative result was the best the party had achieved since Democrat former Sen. Mary Landieu won in 2008, the last time they won a Senate seat, and Letlow was held over 100,000 votes fewer than the GOP’s Sen. John Kennedy received in 2022.

Stewart reelection worries behind dirty trick

Democrat First District Attorney James Stewart must be getting very nervous about his reelection chances against Republican state Sen. Alan Seabaugh.

Demographics favor him. Registration totals that made the books for the election next week show only several more black registrants than white out of over 150,000 on the rolls (Stewart is black, Seabaugh white), but Democrats outnumber Republicans 3:2.

However, Seabaugh, who resides in Caddo Parish although his senate district also encompasses Bossier Parish and smaller-populated parts of others, is a superb campaigner who has stumped with a disciplined message about Stewart’s laxness on holding criminals accountable (with data that back up that contention) and has utilized plenty of resources to spread that message. While chipping in $115,000 of his own resources, he also has raised a couple of hundred thousand bucks to go along with an existing $400,000 campaign kitty and spent through the middle of October this year nearly $200,000, main on eye-level and electronic media.

BC balanced budget to shore up future prospects

The significance of the Bossier City Council’s passing a balanced budget this week lies more in the fact of what ideally it should signal for the future.

When originally introduced, the general fund portion tapped into a small number of reserves, projections of revenues looked a bit optimistic, and the separate enterprise funds showed future strains ahead. The version passed this week had a few tweaks, but most prominently wiped out the dipping into general fund reserves.

This matters because it shows the Council and city taking responsibility to not unduly erode a margin of error in uncertain fiscal times. The general fund has plenty of reserves, mainly due to knock-on effects from massive federal government spending in the pandemic period that increased government revenue collection, causing the reserve to about triple from $23 million in 2019 to $66 million in 2025, so a hit of nearly $2 million wouldn’t have broken the bank.

N LA cases to provide property rights tests

Louisiana is reaching a point where it must affirm private property rights in dealing with private company’s abilities to expropriate property.

Owners of land in north Louisiana face a couple of challenges on this issue. In northeast Louisiana, in response to the Hyperion data center project that promises to infuse $50 billion into the economy and create hundreds of well-paying jobs, the large power needs have put landowners on alert that the electric utility Entergy, and to a much smaller extent the electric cooperative Northeast Louisiana Power Coop, shows signs they will pursue expropriation of land to provide the transmission line infrastructure to send power to Hyperion.

The Louisiana Constitution permits this, but only for a “public purpose” as outlined where whether that qualifies is justiciable. Some landowners think these transmission lines don’t qualify as these primarily, they argue, would help Hyperion.

Bad LA censorship law degrades election process

As election season winds down, maybe this will be the last conducted under an odious Louisiana law that chills free speech and degrades election decision-making.

Federal constitutional law sets only the most obvious and basic parameters regarding campaign communications. Basically, only the standards governing defamation apply: i.e., a public figure such as a contestant for office can have any expression made against him except those that are patently untrue and done with malice. And there’s no constitutional prohibition against making whatever claims about a candidate’s self, regardless of their veracity.

Just so. Except in those intentional defamatory cases, the political process should be allowed to play out to separate the wheat from the chaff, especially when this deals with claims made by a candidate about himself. If outright lies about past behavior or statements are made, electioneering by opposing forces quite often uncovers the falsity.

LA early voting doesn’t portend Democrat upsets

It’s madness to try to figure out election day results from early voting in Louisiana, but the best that can be derived is that Democrats won’t be as far behind as Republicans in the bellwether Senate race as has become typical.

Coming to this conclusion starts from a rough foundation. Early voting ended earlier this week, with final relevant numbers of whites casting 321,333 ballots to blacks logging 180,219, and Democrats having 222,806 voters to Republicans’ 206,278. As reference there were 1,854,793 white and 933,052 black voters registered, with 1,060,252 Democrats and 1,067,827 Republicans.

These results should start from the baseline of the last non-presidential election that featured a Senate race, 2022. Note, however, two important changes occurred between these dates. First, whereas then all elections on the ballot came as part of a general election under a blanket primary system, this time a few, most principally the presumed biggest draw the Senate contest, will feature the general election without possibility of runoff.

Build on upgrade by following reforms through

As Louisiana’s economic fortunes under Republican Gov. Jeff Landry continue to improve, it can’t rob Peter to pay Paul if it expects the progress to continue.

With the Legislature endorsing overall tax cuts and the Landry Administration hustling that grabbed hundreds of billions of dollars in new economic development, Fitch Ratings noticed and upgraded the state’s general obligation bond debt (it also recently has upgraded several other kinds of state issuances). That means in the constant revolving door of debt that state issues will come at lower interest rates, saving taxpayer dollars.

This will provide some minor relief from projected budget deficits beginning next fiscal year, which the state pegs will grow from $541 million next year to $1.23 billion by fiscal year 2030. Another debt-related maneuver that could ease the burden somewhat also would be to take the bulk of the recently-forecast surplus and pay down debt.