Incumbent – Jeff Arnold (D – Term Limited in 2015)

District Map

House District 102

Vote History

Current District

House District 102 is a Westbank district totally contained within the Algiers section of New Orleans (Algiers is what you see when you look across the river from downtown New Orleans). It includes most of Algiers up to the Intracoastal Waterway. This is a district with a solid 69% black voter registration majority (up from 65% when the lines were last drawn) that also has a significant contingent of white liberals. Accordingly, the district is solidly Democratic, and be counted on to give about 80% support to Democratic candidates.

Interestingly for a district with a sizable black voting majority, this district has usually elected white Democrats whose occupants tend to move on to other offices. Democrat Francis Heitmeier was elected in 1983 and served two terms before getting elected to a state Senate seat in Algiers which had opened up in 1991. He was succeeded by a black Democrat, Troy Carter, who only served a partial term before getting elected to the New Orleans City Council in 1994. A white Democrat, Jackie Clarkson, served from 1994 until she also was elected to the New Orleans City Council in 2002. She was succeeded by white Democrat “Jeff” Arnold, who has served ever since, although his re-election margins have been in the 60% range. He is allowed to serve one more term.

New District

Reapportionment could have been a problem for any legislative district in Orleans, Jefferson, or Saint Bernard, but was surprisingly painless here, despite the fact that the district was 18% under populated. What made the process painless was that House Speaker Jim Tucker (whose district was neat door) was term limited, and his House district was eliminated in redistricting. This enabled 102 to pick up all but three precincts in Algiers that were in Tucker’s district (District 86).

While this simple addition reduced the black voter registration from 69 to 63%, you’re still looking at a Democratic stronghold that has merely gone from being 4 to 1 Democratic to being 3 to 1 Democratic. Rep. Arnold shouldn’t have re-election troubles, but the black majority is something he has to be mindful of. It will be interesting to see whether blacks are able to elect a candidate of their own at some point here.