Perhaps the most surprising, and
deviant, results from Louisiana’s round of state and local elections in 2015
came in the northwest part of the state – where big money outside of the area
appears to have played significant roles in these contests.
In one instance, that accrued to
the advantage of conservative political elements. Republican businessman Tony
Davis narrowly defeated appointed incumbent Republican educator Mary Harris for
the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education District 4 seat. Davis entered
late, backing the Common Core for State Standards Initiative and worked to
expand school choice, while Harris opposed both.
Aided by large spending on his
behalf by political action committees that favored education reform, Davis
overcame a 43-36 percent deficit coming out of the general election, where the
opponent who did not make the runoff sounded more like Harris than he. Possibly
a change in rhetoric by Davis, from supporting Common Core to stating a desire
to “scrap” it and to “revise and replace Common Core with our own Louisiana standards”
– in other words, follow
the current process taking place under the auspices of the Department of
Education and Legislature – may have helped win over some voters.
But less conservative candidates
prospered in the area’s other controversial races. Retired judge Democrat James
Stewart and assistant district attorney Republican Dhu Thompson by the demographics
seemed locked in a tight battle, but Stewart won without a lot of difficulty
in gathering 55 percent of the vote. Rolling up around 97 percent of the vote
in precincts with 95 percent or better black registration helped, but crucially
he drew around 15 percent of the vote in precincts where at least 95 percent of
voters were white.
Stewart benefitted from enormous spending
on his behalf, with well over $600,000 raised either by his campaign or by the
donations from liberal financier George Soros to a PAC run by local Democrat elites
on Stewart’s behalf. That likely induced greater black turnout, which appeared
to increase at twice the rate of white turnout with the overall turnout in the
runoff up almost 20 percent, giving Stewart a comfortable margin.
The closest predicted, and thus
perhaps the least surprising of these results, came in the Senate District 36
contest, where erstwhile House candidate and trial lawyer Republican Ryan Gatti
slipped past Republican state Rep. Henry Burns by
just over 300 votes out of nearly 28,000 cast. But it did prove very surprising
in how he got there.
Even though Gatti has served in parish
Republican Party machinery and claims he is a conservative, it appears that the
liberal issue preferences that he espoused, against genuine school choice and tort
reform, pushed him across the finish line first. A friend and backer of Democrat
incoming Gov. John
Bel Edwards, Democrats disproportionately appeared to turn to him in the
runoff rather than former Democrat Burns, aided
by over $50,000 in donations from trial lawyers, the most that any
legislative candidate received.
This created interesting dynamics,
where analysis of precincts with at least 60 percent registered Republicans
gave him around 58 percent of the vote, but in those with at least 95 percent of
registrants being black 70 percent voted for him; Burns did best in precincts
with at least 95 percent registered whites where he garnered 52 percent of the
vote. With Edwards as governor, the question now is whether Gatti will abandon his
conservative district’s majority interests by voting often for the largely
liberal articulated agenda of Edwards.
Trial lawyer money also played a
part in the biggest surprise of the cycle, the Senate District 38 contest,
where trial lawyer Democrat John Milkovich, like Gatti a previous candidate for
another office performed poorly in that contest, edged out Republican state
Rep. Richie
Burford by about 1,400 votes out of nearly 30,000 – in a district that had
not elected a Democrat in 28 years.
Undoubtedly Burford’s roots in the
smaller-populated part of the district Desoto Parish, as opposed to Milkovich’s
Caddo homestead that makes up almost four-fifths of the district’s electorate, did
not help the GOP legislator in terms of numbers. But in a district with almost
as many registered Republicans as black non-Republicans, it seemed a stretch
that Milkovich could obtain close to half of the votes of white Democrats needed
to win. His receiving over $45,000 from trial lawyers, the third most of any legislative
candidate, as in Gatti’s case may have made the difference between winning and
losing.
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