Incumbent – Herbert Dixon (D – Term Limited in 2019)

District Map

House District 26

Vote History

Current District

During legislative redistricting in 1991, the Voting Rights act was interpreted as requiring that additional black majority districts be drawn wherever possible. This interpretation of the law doubled the number of black House members that year, and one of those redrawn House districts was in Alexandria.

Prior to that reapportionment, black neighborhoods in Alexandria (which are generally between MacArthur Drive and the Red River) were split between two state representative districts. The 1991 reapportionment merely put these neighborhoods into one district. Also added to the district was a tentacle of land stretching all the way up LA 1 to Boyce to pick up the black population in that small town.

After the 2001 reapportionment, Boyce was moved to District 25 (which was then held by Charlie DeWitt), and a 31% black section of Pineville was added. This substitution had minimal political impact, because the Pineville precincts only contained 18% of the district’s voters.

Today, the district has a 66% black voting majority (up from 61% when the lines were last drawn), which means this is a solidly Democratic district, although there are Republican pockets in the district in Pineville and near City Park.

This district has had steady representation since it was redrawn in 1991: black Democrat “Bo” Curtis represented the district from 1991 to 2007, although curiously for an incumbent, he has never received more than 63% of the vote, and in 2003, he was forced into a runoff.

Representative Curtis was term-limited in 2007, and was succeeded by another black Democrat, Herbert Dixon, who nearly defeated Curtis in 2003. Representative Dixon is allowed to seek two more terms.

New District

Reapportionment in Rapides Parish was pretty simple: the district was 4% overpopulated, and since the demographics only supported creating one black majority district, only minor adjustments needed to be made (five precincts were traded among adjacent districts). Two precincts in northeast Pineville that were 12% black were moved over to District 27 (represented by Republican Chris Hazel), while three precincts near Masonic and Horseshoe Drive which were in the aggregate 31% black were taken from District 25 (represented by Democrat Chris Roy.  These changes had a negligible impact: the black voter registration remained 66%.  (UPDATED 9/8/2011) While Representative Dixon was unopposed in 2011, the history of contested elections here means he can’t take re-election entirely for granted.