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.

From an overview of parish numbers compared to 2022 five percent higher turnout apparently – official numbers won’t come out until after certification – among blacks and lower among whites in the electorate apparently helped his cause. The expected lower Republican result came from some hard feelings from supporters of the two quality GOP opponents she defeated to win the party’s nomination and that she wasn’t all that good of a candidate or campaigner to rally them.

Yet she still won, demonstrating the near-impossible chances Democrats have to win statewide in Louisiana, even when they have a good environment and lackluster Republican opponent. This likely was their best chance to come around for some time and they missed, which cannot be an inspiring thought.

The two competitive House contests also produced uninspiring results for Democrats. In each of the Fifth and Sixth District contests, the prominent Democrat in each, state Rep. Pat Moore in the former and former Baton Rouge Metro Councilor Chauna Banks, each led coming out of the runoff – but barely in each case, even though Banks faced two quality Republican elected officials and Moore tangled with three plus the chairwoman of the Board of Regents that would split the vote and should have meant they would have larger leads. Although the districts’ demographics position the second-place Republicans who made the runoffs as big favorites for the Dec. 12 election – respectively state Rep. Gabe Firment and state Sen. Blake Miguez – Moore and Banks didn’t do as early as well because political rookie Democrats captured significant portions of the vote.

With Banks, she claimed she didn’t raise or spend more than $5,000, while the two rookies took in $250,000 (neither did the party endorse her). Concerning Moore (who was endorsed), her two unknowns took in $200,000, while she raised fewer than $25,000.

In short, party leaders had difficulty in pushing forward preferred candidates, who in the case of the Fifth underperformed and in the Sixth fell short. While they should not expect to defeat whichever Republicans emerged, they have no chance of changing that situation in the future unless they can achieve party unity as in the case of Davis. Ironically, a closed primary, which gave that to Davis, may have helped in these cases.

As for the Republicans, in the Fifth speculation focused on GOP state Rep. Mike Echols as the favorite to emerge as he raised and significantly spent more on this campaign than did Firment or the other two competitive Republicans, raising $3 million. Even as four-fifths of that was self-funded, it was believed that in a contest over a large geographic area with many competitive candidates that such spending would give him a leg up.

Instead, the dynamic that appeared to work was far simpler. Echols shared the Monroe base of the district with the other two quality Republicans, while Firment, who comes from near the Alexandira southern anchor of the district, had that area to himself. Splitting the northeast vote empowered whoever could capture the state’s center as did Firment, who otherwise fared poorly in the northeast and Florida Parishes.

Unlike with Echols, for Miguez his own money did appear to make the difference. He far outspent anybody else in the contest, burning through $3.5 million of his own money. But he did raise that again and a bit more from contributors, and it was enough to create the separation from Republican state Sen. Rick Edmonds, who trailed closely behind.

Which means, in the final analysis, in these two contests Democrats nearly were shut out of a runoff. That dynamic will become irrelevant now that all federal elections in Louisiana permanently go to semi-closed primaries in 2028, but it does suggest a state party that had it been more together it might not be facing a shutout in these three races.