During Louisiana’s recent redistricting session, Black Democrats sought time and time again to right the wrongs of the Jim Crow era by creating more winnable seats for Black candidates to Congress and the Legislature.
That continued a practice from past redistricting sessions, which has succeeded in expanding the ranks of Black Democrats in the Legislature over the past 30 years.
But creating safe seats for Black Democrats has also had a perverse effect: The redrawn district boundaries have squeezed out legislative districts that White Democrats once could win. With more and more White voters in Louisiana turning away from the Democratic Party, Republicans have seized control of the Legislature and seem virtually assured of maintaining the upper hand in the State Capitol for at least the next decade.
Some numbers put all of this into context.
In 2000, Democrats held a 70-35 advantage over Republicans in the 105-member state House and a 26-13 margin in the 39-member Senate.
The party breakdown has flipped over the past 20 years.
Today, Republicans hold 68 seats in the House compared to 33 Democrats, three political independents and one vacancy. In the Senate, Republicans hold 27 seats, compared to 12 for Democrats.
In 2000, the House had 21 Black members and the Senate had nine. This meant that about 30% of the 96 Democratic legislators then were Black.
Today, Black members hold 26 seats in the House and 10 in the Senate. This means that 80% of the 45 Democratic lawmakers today are Black.
“What’s left of the Democratic Party is people of color,” said Alex Keena, a political science professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who has written two books on gerrymandering. “This is happening all over the country, especially in Republican-dominated states.”
That’s particularly true in the Deep South.
The Mississippi Senate, for example, has gone from a 27-25 Democratic advantage in 2008 to a 36-16 Republican advantage now.
In 2008, 14 of the 27 Democrats were White and 13 were Black. Of the 16 Democrats today, 14 of them are Black.
In the 105-member Alabama House, Democrats held a 56-49 advantage in 2008. Today, Republicans hold a 77-28 margin.
In 2008, 26 of Alabama’s House Democrats were Black and 30 were White. Today, 27 of 28 are African-American.
“The Republican Party became the party of White conservatives,” said Paul Brace, a political science professor at Rice University. “Meanwhile, African-Americans became the Democratic Party.”
House Speaker Pro Tem Tanner Magee repeated variations of “We looked at all options and this is the approach we took” during Thursday’s debate…
More numbers show this for Louisiana.
In 2000, 61% of the state’s voters were registered Democrats, and 22% were Republicans.
Nearly 40% of the state’s voters are Democratic today, 33% are Republican and 27% are political independents.
While the GOP has nearly caught up with Democrats in party registration today, more tellingly, Republicans hold nearly all of the top elected jobs in Louisiana, an indication that many White Democrats no longer vote for their party’s candidates.
President Donald Trump carried Louisiana with 58% of the vote in 2020, for example, while U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy won re-election that year with 59%.
Over the past 20 years, the racial breakdown of Democratic voters has flipped.
Of registered Democrats in 2000, 59% were White and 39% were Black.
Today, 60% of Democratic voters are Black and 36% are White.
“The major problem faced by the Democrats is that White voters have left them,” said David Lublin, chair of the political science department at American University and the author of a book on redistricting.
There are a lot of reasons for the decline of White Democrats in Louisiana.
“I really felt like the Democratic Party had left me,” said former state Rep. Noble Ellington, explaining why he made history in 2010 by becoming a Republican after 22 years in the Legislature as a Democrat. The switch of Ellington, who is White, gave Republicans a majority in the House for the first time since the post-Civil War Reconstruction Era.
The Democratic Party, Ellington said, “had become much more liberal in lots of respects. One of the main issues was abortion.”
Democrats nationally increasingly favor abortion rights while Republicans oppose abortion. Gov. John Bel Edwards, a devout Catholic, is one of the few major Democrats nationally who does not support abortion.
The question of whether legislative districts are drawn to elect Whites or Blacks is especially important because it plays such a decisive role in determining the winner.
At the beginning of this year, Black legislators held 37 of the 40 seats drawn 10 years ago to elect Black candidates in Louisiana. The white Democrats holding the Black-majority seats are: Rep. Mandie Landry, of New Orleans; Rep. Robby Carter, D-Greensburg; and Sen. Jay Luneau, of Alexandria.
No Black candidate holds a seat that was not drawn to favor Black candidates.
“The combination of Black-majority districts and a racially polarized voting has created more opportunities to elect Republicans,” said John Couvillon, a Baton Rouge-based pollster and demographer who helped draw maps during the redistricting session.
Lublin said that beginning in 1990, the GOP concentrated on electing more Republicans throughout the country, often in a strange-bedfellows alliance with Black lawmakers.
When Louisiana redrew its lines in 1991, then-Rep. Emile “Peppi” Bruneau, a White Republican from New Orleans, worked with then-Rep. Sherman Copelin, a Black Democrat from New Orleans, to create more Republican and Black Democratic seats.
In 2008, Jim Tucker, a Republican representative from Algiers, was elected speaker of the House with support from the Legislative Black Caucus, in part because he supported the selection of then-Rep. Karen Carter Peterson, a Black Democrat from New Orleans, to become the speaker pro tem.
When Tucker and other legislative leaders began drawing new lines in 2011, the Justice Department under President Barack Obama was pushing to create more Black-majority seats in Louisiana. Under Tucker’s direction, the Legislature approved four more Black-majority seats in the House. But those gains were achieved by packing Black voters into those districts, which helped set the stage for Republicans to win seats once held by White Democrats.
Republicans have gone from 53 votes in the House with Noble Ellington’s switch in 2010 to 68 today.
“By systematically drawing more majority Black districts, you eliminated the most fertile grounds for White Democrats,” said Lublin. “You create an incentive system for White politicians to run as Republicans. White people can become Republicans, but they can’t become African-Americans.”
Term limits and other factors have thinned the ranks of White Democrats.
Edwards appointed then-Rep. Jack Montoucet, D-Scott, to become secretary of the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries in 2017. John Stefanski, a Republican from Crowley, won that seat without a Democrat challenger.
Rep. Sam Jones, D-Franklin, was termed out in 2019, and Vincent St. Blanc III, R-Franklin, replaced him.
Rep. Robert Johnson, of Marksville, and Rep. Bernard LeBas, of Ville Platte, are two Democrats who were termed out in 2019. Both ran for the Senate seat held by Sen. Eric LaFleur, D-Ville Platte, who was termed out as well. Johnson and LeBas lost to Heather Cloud, a Republican from Turkey Creek, and two Republicans won their House seats. In that sequence, four White Democrats disappeared from the Legislature.
“‘Blue dog’ Democrats don’t really exist anymore,” said Roger Villere, one of Louisiana’s two members on the Republican National Committee, referring to conservative White Democrats.
Villere also chaired the state party when Republicans won their legislative majority a decade ago.
“Our focus was always on electing Republicans, not White Republicans or Black Republicans,” Villere said. “It didn’t matter what color they were.”
Nonetheless, all 95 Republicans in the Legislature are White, as are all seven Republican members of Louisiana’s congressional delegation.
After legislators convened Feb. 1, to begin the latest redistricting session, Black Democrats pushed to create more Black-majority districts in Congress, the state House and the state Senate.
They noted the 2020 census numbers showed that Black people became a bigger share of the state’s population over the past decade, reaching 33%, and argued that one-third of the state’s representatives in Baton Rouge and Washington ought to be Black.
Republicans refused to accept that logic.
To create a second Black-majority congressional seat would have cost U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow her Republican district, which stretches from Monroe in northeast Louisiana to Bogalusa in the Florida parishes.
Republicans declined to create more Black-majority seats in the Legislature because doing that no longer benefitted them. The lines that lawmakers approved maintain the status quo, both for race and party.
In terms of race, perhaps the most noteworthy vote during the redistricting session occurred when five Black Democrats supported new maps for the Louisiana House that lock in the huge Republican majority for the next decade.
“There’s a tension between creating more safe majority-minority districts for Democrats and creating more winnable seats,” said Alan Abramowitz, a political science professor at Emory University. “From the perspective of Black representatives, they can serve in the Legislature, but how much influence do they have?”
Whether the congressional and legislative maps remain in place is not yet certain since Edwards could try to block them with a veto, and outside groups have said they plan to file suit by arguing they violate the 1965 Voting Rights Act by not creating enough Black-majority seats.
Rep. Sam Jenkins, who is Black, heads the Democratic caucus in the House.
He sponsored a bill that would have added one more Black-majority district, to reach 30, and created several more winnable seats for White Democrats. Republicans bottled it up in the House and Governmental Affairs Committee, the first step in the legislative process.
Jenkins said Democrats cannot grow as a party by adding Black-majority seats alone.
“Many of us are spending considerable amounts of time to recruit White candidates to run for office,” he said. “That has not proven to be an easy task. Most feel like if they are not Republican, they will have trouble winning. A lot of the White citizenry in this state don’t think a Democrat stands for their values.”
