How Duplessis defeated Landry in quest for state senate seat
14th November 2022 · 0 Comments
By Christopher Tidmore
Contributing Writer
In the Senate District 5 race, Mandy Landry made a bet. The District 91 State Rep believed that she could build a coalition based on her progressive politics. In a seat with a white plurality, she believed that her decades long support of reproductive rights would draw pro-choice African-American women into an electoral alliance with white liberals.
Royce Duplessis also made a bet. He believed that he could overcome the Caucasian edge in voter registration by keeping most African Americans behind his campaign, and reaching out to disaffected Republicans — while still maintaining his relatively liberal stands. In the end, there was not a whole lot of difference ideologically between the candidates.
The difference was of electoral strength, as Royce Duplessis won Senate District 5 by 2,044 votes, or 53 percent – 47 percent.
Considering that Senate District 5 is a historically Black seat, which now contains a white plurality thanks to gentrification, one might have concluded that statistically a Caucasian like Landry would have had the advantage. However, her opponent Royce Duplessis hit upon a three-prong strategy to keep the pro-choice vote in his corner, make himself the champion of the Black electorate through his redistricting fight, and — at the same time — draw the core of Caucasian Republican votes in the Senate District.
Along with the endorsement of the Alliance for Good Government, Duplessis earned the endorsements of the Jefferson and Orleans Democratic Parties, the Legislative Black Caucus, most of the old-line African-American political organization, and this newspaper. Equally as importantly, Duplessis personally wooed prominent Republicans in Senate District 5, especially in Mandy Landry’s own House seat. At gatherings in the Garden District and elsewhere Uptown, Duplessis explained to prominent Republicans of his desire to work across party lines. At one gathering at the Third Street home of Drs. Rand and Terry Voorhies, Duplessis spoke of his pro-business credentials. This occurred as Landry did comparatively little to reassure Republicans of her willingness to speak to their concerns.
Duplessis’ strategy proved the more successful, as he battled Landry to nearly an even position in some white majority precincts in her own District 91 House seat, based on his appeals to white Republicans, and he achieved this without — ostensibly — changing even one of his progressive political stands.
Meanwhile Landry, who currently represents both the Garden District and Central City in the State House, tried to garner support amongst African-American women, particularly those concerned by the recent Dobbs decision. Whilst many issues drove Landry’s campaign, her pro-choice stands underpinned the District 91 State Representative’s campaign for the state Senate. After all, her main campaign justification, on the front page of her website and her campaign materials, emphasized twice in a two-sentence blurb. “Louisiana State Rep. Mandie Landry is a strong progressive, pro-choice voice in her state house. Now, she’s running to be the only pro-choice female Senator in the State of Louisiana.”
Duplessis very effectively struck back on October 3 outlining the “trauma his great grandmother faced after having suffered a self-induced ‘coat hanger’ abortion…The women of Louisiana today have no more control over their bodies than my great grandmother had over hers more than a century ago. And because of that, there will be more trauma, violence and grief.”
Still while equally pro-choice in his voting stands, Duplessis knew he could not match Landry’s decades long work on reproductive rights, as an attorney long before running for public office, so he made a family connection on the subject. And, more importantly, Duplessis reminded his core constituency of the other major theme of this senatorial special election – the desire to have an African American represent a historically Black majority district.
The sole poll conducted in the contest at the beginning of September showed Landry narrowly ahead of Royce Duplessis. The survey’s results created a degree of anxiety amongst some Black opinion-makers in this Senate district who harken to the emotional appeal of electing the candidate “who looks like us.”
Duplessis skillfully campaigned on this desire, by noting Landry vulnerability on the issue of redistricting. When Rep. Cedric Glover introduced an amendment to the House-redistricting plan, which would have chopped Caucasian Republican Rep. Danny McCormick’s seat to create another Black House District in North Louisiana, Landry voted against the plan. In her defense, so did the majority of La House Democrats, following the incumbency convention to eliminate only open seats. However, Duplessis fought for the plan, and repeated attacked Landry for not wishing to create another African-American seat.
By all evidence, the strategy worked. Exit polling remains spotty, but a cursory examination of Black precincts reveals that Duplessis held on to his Black base.
The conclusion that in a simple White-Black racially based election, Landry would seemingly possess an advantage proved completely wrong. Despite Caucasians hold a very slight population advantage in the Senate district, 47 percent white versus 45.5 percent Black, thanks to years of gentrification in the Uptown neighborhoods like the Irish Channel, Blacks coalesced behind the Black candidate, and still were able to draw enough whites — particularly Republicans — for Duplessis to prevail. And next year, his position becomes even more secure as the newly drawn district lines will cast out the Caucasian-majority neighborhoods surrounding Tulane and Loyola universities and to compensate will jump the Mississippi River to absorb several Black-majority precincts in Marrero.
Duplessis’ lion’s share of support from the old-line Black political organizations, and his feat of managing a co-endorsement by the AFL-CIO which kept labor neutral, made all the difference with African Americans, overcoming Landry’s appeals to Black women on abortion rights amongst Democratic voters. And so he held the Black vote whilst stealing some of the Caucasian voters she desperately needed.
Nevertheless, Senate District 5, both the current lines and the new, elucidates much about the overall ethnographic changes reshaping the entire metro area. Landry’s popularity in Uptown came in large part due to her advocacy of reproductive rights, health and educational access, as well as LBGTQ issues. The fact that a highly educated attorney, who grew up in the suburbs became such a quintessential Uptowner reflects the affluent in-migration which is transforming the city. The fact that the state Senate had to draw an urban-based Senate seat into a suburb which once exemplified “White-Flight” in order to fight enough Black voters to constitute a majority provides a glimpse of the region’s demographic future. In two decades, current demographic trends suggest that Orleans Parish might not maintain a Black majority in population, and Jefferson Parish might not hold a Caucasian majority either. The demographic realities of the District 5 special election, perhaps, provide a glimpse of our local political future.
This article originally published in the November 14, 2022 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
