INCUMBENT: Rick Gallot (Democrat)

DESCRIPTION: Senate District 29 is a district in central and north Louisiana that generally travels along US Highway 167 between Ruston and Alexandria and takes in parts of seven parishes: Bienville, Grant, Jackson, Lincoln, Natchitoches, Rapides, and Winn, although 54% of the district vote is cast in Rapides Parish (Alexandria).

DISTRICT MAP:

District Map

RED/BLUE RATING (using 2008, 2012, and 2014 elections): 63% Democratic

JMCEL’s SUMMARY: District 29 is a district whose convoluted shape was the product both of Hurricane Katrina and the intricacies of redistricting politics. In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Orleans Parish lost a substantial amount of its population, and while it was popularly thought that Houston was the recipient of those displaced by the storm, a lot of those displaced also relocated to Baton Rouge and other metropolitan areas across the state. This volume of displacements from New Orleans is what necessitated an elimination of a state senate seat from New Orleans proper. Furthermore, while the state house was creating black majority districts outside of New Orleans to simultaneously make up for the loss of black representation from New Orleans House districts while increasing the overall number of black majority districts, the Senate was similarly challenged. But while the state house had a Republican speaker (Jim Tucker), the Senate President at the time was a Democrat named Joel Chaisson, and his apparent strategy was bipartisan incumbent protection, while at the same time maximizing the chances for Democrats to hold onto the seats of five term limited Democrats, even while he faced not so subtle pressure to increase the number of black majority Senate districts.

Given these parameters, Senate District 29 was a politically painless choice of which Senate district needed to be converted to a black majority district, but there were additional contributing factors: in its former (i.e., pre-2011 reapportionment) incarnation, it included all of Rapides Parish (Alexandria) except for the most heavily Republican precincts in the northern part of the parish. Politically, that district was a marginally Republican district that had been held for all but four years from 1984-2012 by a Democrat named Joe McPherson, who was term limited in 2011. Plus, after the 2007 elections, Republicans held nearly all of the Senate districts north of Alexandria, and these freshmen senators certainly had no problem shedding Democratic precincts. Finally, the chair of the House and Governmental Affairs Committee (which was tasked with reapportionment) was a politically ambitious black Democrat from Ruston named Rick Gallot.

Given that north Louisiana already had two black majority districts in Shreveport and in Monroe/the Delta, the next logical place to draw a black majority district was by connecting black neighborhoods in Ruston/Grambling, Natchitoches, and Alexandria with rural territory. However, the rural and suburban territory in between them is nearly all white, which is why the district lines are as convoluted as they are, and the district has a 57% black voter registration and a basic (but not overwhelming) Democratic preference.

In that new district configuration, Rep. Gallot sought the open senate seat in 2011, and he eked out a 50% primary victory against two opponents – without the 75% support he received from the parishes (Bienville and Lincoln) he represented in the House, he would have been forced into a runoff. While Sen. Gallot can serve two more terms, he recently decided against seeking re-election. While a Democrat will almost certainly be elected this fall (Barack Obama and Mary Landrieu both received 62% of the district vote), it is not outside of the realm of possibility for a white Democrat (particularly from Alexandria) to be elected, as (1) Rapides Parish casts a majority of the vote, (2) given that there are differences in turnout between white and black voters, the district electorate in the 2011 elections was only 51% black, so a white candidate can theoretically win if he/she can garner 10-15% of the black vote. This will be an interesting race to watch.