INCUMBENT: Ted James (Democrat)

DESCRIPTION: House District 101 is located in Baton Rouge and generally includes territory between Airline Highway and Flannery Road, and it takes in the subdivisions of Monticello, Park Forest, and most of Sherwood Forest.

DISTRICT MAP:

District Map

RED/BLUE RATING (using 2008, 2012, and 2014 elections): 73% Democratic

JMCEL’s SUMMARY: East Baton Rouge once had the reputation for being a Republican beacon in an otherwise solidly Democratic state, but it has twice voted for Barack Obama, voted for Mary Landrieu three times in a row (2002, 2008, and 2014), and only gave David Vitter a 48-46% plurality in his landslide 2010 re-election. To understand why this is the case, an examination of the demographic changes of House District 101, which was a newly created district in 2011 that was drawn to be a black majority district, is a good place to start. For this was a conservative, mostly blue collar white constituency that a generation ago gave George HW Bush 72% of the vote against Michael Dukakis in 1988, but by 2012 gave Barack Obama 74% of the vote. It is due to these demographic changes that a black majority district was carved out of existing territory during the 2011 reapportionment. Considering that this was a Democratic district, Republicans nevertheless made a game effort to compete here in the 2011 elections, but while the two black Republicans in the race received 29% of the vote, that vote was split down the middle, and neither made the runoff. The winner in the runoff, with 58% of the vote, was Democrat Ted James. Given that this a newly created district, there is very little electoral history to draw upon for clues as to the district’s “personality”, but Rep. James is likely to be re-elected, and he is allowed to serve two more terms.