Incumbent – Tom Mc Vea (R – Term limited in 2011)

District Map

House District 62

 

 Voting History

Current District

As you drive along I-10 or I-12 through Baton Rouge and the Florida Parishes, the land seems very flat. If you were to travel north, the flatness gives way to hilly terrain in an area known as the Felicianas. This area is a series of contradictions: graceful plantation homes coexisting with rural poverty and a significant governmental presence due to the number of state institutions (state hospitals and the Angola prison).

District 62 embodies some of these contrasts. Before the 1990s reapportionment, the district contained the Felicianas and areas near Zachary in East Baton Rouge Parish. After 1990, the Felicianas were horizontally divided between two state House districts, with the “whiter” parts being placed in District 62. District 62 actually contains parts of six parishes: areas around St. Francisville in W. Feliciana, the southern portion of E. Feliciana, the area around Zachary in East Baton Rouge, a precinct in northeast Livingston Parish, the area around Natalbany and Independence in Tangipahoa, and the southern fringe of St. Helena. Overall, the district is 29% black by voter registration (up from 27% when the lines were drawn), and has seen some growth, as people continue to leave the core areas of the Baton Rouge and New Orleans metropolitan areas for places like Zachary (which now has its own school district) and Tangipahoa Parish.  

Though increasing suburbanization has given the district a Republican lean, you still have a significant Democratic presence here between the black vote, rural whites with ancestral Democratic loyalties, and numerous state workers employed by prisons and hospitals scattered throughout the area. In other words, Republicans usually carry the district in statewide and Congressional races, but those “victories” are in the 50-55% range.

The district typically re-elects its legislators, but it has had competitive races here for years. Then-Democrat Tom McVea from St. Francisville (in West Feliciana Parish) was elected here in 1979, but was defeated in the 1983 Edwards landslide by populist Democrat John Travis from Jackson in East Feliciana Parish. Though Travis had competitive races from Republicans every four years (he never exceeded 60% of the vote in any of his races), he served until 2000, when Mike Foster appointed him Commissioner of Financial Institutions. In a special election that year, Tom McVea made a comeback – as a Republican, and was able to combine his hometown support from St. Francisville with a strong Republican vote from the Zachary precincts. Though he was unopposed in 2003, he was re-elected in 2007 with a comfortable (but not overwhelming) 57% of the vote. He is subject to term limits this year and cannot run again.

Proposed District

With the robust population growth apparent throughout most of the Florida Parishes, the challenge with drawing the district lines was accommodating the new districts in the area, and making the appropriate adjustments to existing districts. District 62 took part in this growth, and was 19% over the population of an “ideal” district (in fact, only 14 House districts had more people than District 62).

The compaction of the district into one where 2/3 of its voters are in the Felicianas made the district more Democratic: the black voter registration of the district went from 29 to 36%. This means that a district that was marginally Republican is more of a tossup now. A lot will depend on the candidates running and minority turnout in the primary and/or the runoff.