Incumbent – Gerald Long (R – Term Limited in 2019)

District Map

Senate District 31

Vote History

Current District

District 31 is located in north central Louisiana and contains a mixture of suburbs, rural areas, and the college town of Natchitoches. It contains all of four parishes (Grant, Natchitoches, Sabine, and Winn) and parts of two parishes (western Red River and parts of northern Rapides).

The district has a moderate 23% black voter registration (relatively unchanged from 2003) and leans Republican, but there is some demographic and political variation within the district. Most of the rural parishes (Winn, Sabine, and the district’s portion of Red River) have a low black population and lean Republican, but sometimes support Democrats in statewide races and often in local races. Natchitoches Parish is the home of Northwestern State University; with the combination of university employees and a 39% black voter registration, it leans Democratic. Grant and the suburban portions of Rapides Parish are almost all white and typically vote heavily Republican.

Historically, this district, like many others in North Louisiana, voted Republican in top of the ballot races while electing (and re-electing) Democratic incumbents without much incident. Natchitoches Democrat Don Kelly represented the area from 1975 to 1995. When he retired, he was succeeded by Democrat Mike Smith of Winnfield, who served from 1995 to 2007, when he was forced to retire because of the term limits law. The open seat race was a competitive one, and was a good exhibit of the two conflicting strains of Louisiana politics. The Democratic candidate was a populist attorney (and state representative at the time) from Natchitoches named Taylor Townsend, while the Republican candidate was insurance agent and interim Baptist preacher Gerald Long. While it didn’t hurt that Bobby Jindal running strongly at the top of the ticket, Long had some strength of his own, and carried all but Natchitoches Parish to defeat Townsend 54-46%. This was one of several crucial races in North Louisiana in 2007 that paved the way for the Republicans to attain a numerical majority in the Senate earlier this year. (UPDATED 9/9/2011) Senator Long is allowed to serve two more terms, and was re-elected without opposition in 2011.

Proposed District

Redistricting in central and north Louisiana was a little tricky: though Senate District 31 was 1% over the population of an “ideal” district, pressure (and presumed legal mandates) to maintain or increase minority representation to offset losses in New Orleans resulted in a new minority district being drawn between Alexandria and Ruston. While only a small portion of the district (the black section of Natchitoches) was directly affected, the resulting changes made to the boundaries of Senate districts to the north and southeast directly impacted the district. The biggest changes outside of Natchitoches were twofold: (1) nearly all of Grant and Winn was removed from the district, which reduced the influence of those parishes from 31 to 7%; (2) the northern portion of Rapides was substituted for nearly all of the white suburban and rural neighborhoods in Rapides south of the Red River, which increased the influence of Rapides from 10 to 37% of the district. The rest of Red River Parish was also added back to the district.

These changes basically gave Rapides Parish a larger say in who its state senator should be. While from a political standpoint, these changes strengthen the Republicans by reducing the black voter registration from 23 to 19%, Senator Long is now facing a district where he has not represented over 40% of its voters. (UPDATED 9/9/2011) Though he was re-elected without opposition, he will still have to invest some time on building up his name recognition with voters in Rapides Parish.