Having their poster child arrested on suspicion of drunk driving isn’t exactly what Louisiana Democrats wanted as a holiday present, and his continued controversial behavior threatens to wear out his welcome with party elites and voters.
Democrat Davante Lewis famously defeated long-time incumbent Democrat Lambert Boissiere for the District 3 seat on the Louisiana Public Service Commission in 2022, running an insurgency campaign. Despite starting only in the summer and spending about a quarter of Boissiere, Lewis positioned himself as a “progressive” Democrat and attracted huge out-of-state money to topple Boissiere both in overall fundraising and votes in the ordinarily low-stimulus race. In doing so, he became as well the highest-profile black elected official in state politics.
Lewis won while levying criticism against utilities, claiming his opponent and other PSC members were in the pockets of regulated utilities because they accepted contributions from them that contributed to higher rates, and spouting rhetoric against fossil fuel production over the myth of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. However, his 2023 campaign ethics annual report revealed donations from utilities outside of Louisiana and from entities in the renewable energy business (he has, in contravention with state law, yet to file a 2024 report).
But that by itself didn’t attract all his support. Lewis positioned himself as a far leftist on many issues, which encouraged both national donors and local far left organizations to contribute funds, favorable publicity, and volunteers on his behalf. He has continued to back publicly far leftist issues and politicians, earlier this year perhaps most notoriously on social media cursing Republican Gov. Jeff Landry over the issue of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services leadership.
In a social media post, Landry expressed satisfaction with the pick of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to lead the department, showing a picture of Kennedy along with one of the outgoing senior officials but with no other identifying information and terming this an “upgrade.” The picture, which likely few consumers of the post would have been able to identify, was of Rachel Levine, a man identifying as a woman, who had backed transgender policies harmful to minors.
This triggered Lewis into his boorish and immature response, which put him in hot water with his colleagues. Having recently made him vice chairman, the GOP majority revoked that, which he greeted with a rant about how he claimed affinity with the downtrodden and shouldn’t be reprimanded for standing up for them (basing this support on his identifying as homosexual, which was unknown to almost all voters prior to his election but which allies publicized afterwards).
That incident illustrates the volatility and lack of maturity inherent in Lewis – arrogating moral superiority and manufacturing outrage. That was again on full display at the most recent PSC meeting when a measure he advocated that disguised as a consumer protection directive a tactic to discourage fossil fuel use by complicating large power user petitioning of the PSC was thwarted, where he whined his fellow commissioners treating him unfairly, were all out to defeat his agenda, and kept trying to repeat his points after he was allowed extensive time to talk and the chairman said they were ready to move on.
This display of his general personality now appears highlighted by his arrest over the weekend of driving while intoxicated. He was pulled over by the Louisiana State Police in West Baton Rouge Parish (not his parish of residence) Saturday night for not having on headlights and apparently failed or didn’t consent to a field sobriety test. As the parish lockup has a policy of not incarcerating misdemeanor DWI (he was booked under first-time) arrestees, he was released.
LSP troopers generally have pretty good DWI training, and a well-known tipoff of high intoxication is failure to turn on headlights at night (indeed, the vast majority of vehicles have lights on as the default, so a driver must change that). Nonetheless, Lewis said he would contest the DWI and the world awaits his explanation why if he were sober that the lights were off.
A conviction would cause tremendous damage to his reelection chances, although Democrats can be awfully forgiving these days when an otherwise strong candidate of theirs commits a major indiscretion. And he has plenty of campaign funds to dip into to hire top notch legal assistance that might facilitate his beating the rap, so it may not come to that.
Still, quite possibly Democrats will be ready to abandon him in 2028 regardless given his penchant for drama as because of his office he’s the elected Democrat the media often come running to interview. Lewis actually is somewhat new to all of this, having not come through the typical party activist ranks and only ran for office once before in 2020 at age 28, finishing fourth in a Baton Rouge Metro Council race. Having just the right circumstances coalesce for him to upset Boissiere may have given him an inflated sense of self-worth and political skill that doesn’t discourage politically reckless actions.
His 2028 run will have to pass through a semi-closed primary held during presidential preference primaries. If a more stable black Democrat for the majority-black district can get some traction and the Democrats’ presidential candidate nomination hasn’t yet settled, Lewis could disappear as quickly as he burst onto the scene.
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