It’s really more spite than serious victory chances with Republican Caddo Parish Commissioner John-Paul Young’s announced entry into the Shreveport mayor’s race.
Young declared himself a candidate after months of speculation and a year’s worth of sniping on his part directed towards GOP Shreveport Mayor Tom Arceneaux. Most of his criticism, which included a lawsuit about a year ago concerning the then-language of laws dealing with squatters, has focused on property standards. Whether that made a difference, Arceneaux in short order worked with the City Council to clarify the legal standard for blight enforcement and launched a campaign to crack down on it. He then amped up the effort with his Block by Block initiative that has made significant inroads into cleaning up derelict properties.
This didn’t seem to satisfy Young, who kept complaining while Arceneaux disputed his assertions. Less in dispute is the practical impact of Young’s entrance, where he won’t win but he could help to deprive Arceneaux of a second term.
Recall that this isn’t Young’s first crack at the mayoralty. In 2018, running as no party, he announced entry into the race, only to bail on it not long after qualifying. He then threw his support behind a candidate already becoming well-known for his verbal diarrhea and confrontational tactics while on the Commission, Democrat Steven Jackson. In the following years, Jackson also distinguished himself by being convicted for impersonating a police officer and, most recently, paying fines for being a serial ethics violator. (Yet he snuck into a seat in the Louisiana House of Representatives in 2023.)
Young then ran in 2019 as a Republican and managed election to the Commission, where he often breaks with Republicans on issues. He has joined Democrats to help them perpetrate a blatant gerrymander, waste tax dollars on a cash welfare scheme, oppose a legislative bill to curtail the unelected Port of Caddo-Bosier commissioners’ powers over local governments, and, most recently, with all Republicans except Chris Kracman voted to put taxpayers on the hook for $10 million dollars in a venture capital scheme concerning pickleball, about which he was perhaps the most vocal advocate. Young also supported at one point the Commission’s considering a change of its bylaws to criminalize dissent.
This guy is no conservative and, on a board that offers plenty of instances where its Republicans, with the exception of Kracman, roll over to the Democrats’ majority, he’s the best placed to be called a Republican-in-Name-Only. Still, he just might cost Arceneaux reelection.
As a RINO, Young could try to triangulate between Arceneaux and a liberal Democrat, of whom only one, fellow Commissioner Stormy Gage-Watts, has signed up to defeat both by claiming middle-of-the-road status. That could win votes from accommodationist Republicans who look at demographics – a city with 55 percent registered black voters the large majority of whom if seeing a quality Democrat will vote that way – and think Arceneaux can’t replicate his one-off win of 2022 but perhaps a white RINO like Young could, with the hope being he could win in a runoff against either.
That Young could win or even Arceneaux would lose to either challenger at this time is unlikely. With the incumbent sitting on about $550,000 in campaign cash, neither Young, who has run small campaigns, nor Gage-Watts, who has been elected without opposition, have the backing and experience to successfully contest him. (Another minor candidate barely would make a dent in this lineup.)
However, that all could change should a more formidable Democrat jump in. Politically-active Democrats can stomach Arceneaux, who has governed low-key ideologically and largely competently on a range of basic issues, if they can’t find a dynamic and seasoned (and preferably black, which would be given as no such white Democrats exist in the city who could be a quality) candidate. But if one emerges, Arceneaux would shed the most voters (Democrats who would have been waiting around for something better to come along) to the newcomer, possibly pushing Young into a runoff that he would lose.
In essence, were it just a two-up race between Arceneaux and a quality black Democrat, Arceneaux has a decent chance of hanging in there because of his campaign cash and incumbency. His chances become much smaller if he has such a Democrat and Young, siphoning both Republicans and Democrats from him, sniping at him. In this as-yet nonexistent scenario, even if he makes it to the runoff, he would be further damaged than had Young not entered.
Young comes not to bring unity to, but to destroy, the Shreveport Republican voting bloc. He can’t win, but he can help Arceneaux lose, and maybe that’s the point.
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