Incumbent – Jerry “Truck” Gisclair (D – Term Limited in 2019)

District Map

House District 54

Vote History

Current District

One of the unique features about the settlement of Lafourche Parish is that, by and large, most of the parish population lives along Bayou Lafourche. In fact, LA 1, which parallels the bayou, is known as the “longest Main Street in America.”

District 54 is mostly located in Lafourche Parish and, in general, covers territory south of Highway 90. It also includes Grand Isle which, even though it is technically in Jefferson Parish, can only be accessed by car through Lafourche Parish. This is a district with a very low black population: 6% of the district voters are black, which is up from 4% a decade ago.

Politically, this was a district that voted Democratic at the state and local level, while at the federal level, it was more evenly divided – a former legislator noted in 2005 in an interview that “while the district does have a Democratic lean the voting pattern is not terribly partisan.” However, the Democratic performance in the district has uniformly plunged in federal and state elections in recent years, and in the 2010 elections, the specter of the drilling moratorium propelled Republicans like David Vitter, Jay Dardenne, and Congressional candidate Jeff Landry to 2 to 1 (or better) margins of victory in the district.

In legislative races, this has been one of the most competitive districts in the state: between the 1983 and 2007 election cycles, no one has received over 61% of the vote in the district. Democrat Jesse Guidry represented the district between 1980 and 1992, and when he retired, Democrat Mitch Theriot served for two terms before Republican Lulan Pitre defeated him in 1999 52-48%. Theriot sought a rematch in 2003 and the results were identical: 52-48% for Pitre. When Rep. Pitre retired in 2007, Republicans got Theriot (who was running again) to switch parties. Democrats ran radio station owner “Truck” Gisclair to run. Rep. Theriot had a major electoral weakness, however: in the five times he ran for the Legislature, he never carried the Grand Isle precinct in Jefferson Parish. This weakness cost him the runoff, as the 85% of the vote (a 268 vote margin) Gisclair received in Grand Isle was enough to absorb Theriot’s 51% of the vote in the Lafourche Parish precincts. Rep. Gisclair is allowed to serve two more terms.

New District

Redistricting was pretty simple in this part of the state: the district was 3% over the population of an “ideal” district, and the nearly all white complexion of the district meant that there was no reconfiguration necessary to draw a black majority district. Eight precincts were traded between District 55 (represented by “Dee” Richard). A section of Lafourche Parish between Raceland and Kraemer north of US 90 was moved over to District 55: these precincts were 24% black and voted 61-34% for David Vitter. In return, the district picked up some precincts between Raceland and the Terrebonne Parish line along US 90 that were 5% black and voted 72-22% for David Vitter. These trades reduced the black voting population from 6 to 2%, and slightly strengthened the Republican leanings of the district.

How do these changes affect Rep. Gisclair’s re-election chances? The precincts he lost voted 65-35% for his opponent in the 2007 runoff that he barely won. This would seem to help him, except that he gained some heavily Republican precincts as well. Given the history of elections in this district, look for this to be a hotly contested race this fall, especially since the Republican wave hadn’t really arrived in the district in 2007, which was the last time there were legislative elections here.