Will Hispanics swing the 2nd District?

By Christopher Tidmore
Contributing Writer

It’s not your father’s Kenner. As former OPDEC and Alliance for Good Government President Mark Vicknair put it to The Louisiana Weekly. “I don’t know if you’ve driven down Williams Blvd. recently, but it’s a Mecca for Latin American food—and international cuisine of all sorts.” The restaurants are wonderful, he explains, but they also reflect how this suburban enclave has transformed into a center of the Latino community in Louisiana.

It’s a demographic truth upon which Desiree Ontiveros has partially predicated her path to break into the Second Congressional District runoff in April. The successful small businesswoman, who is self-financing much of her big for office, certainly projects a pro-business, outsider appeal which she hopes will knock one of the two frontrunners – State Senators Karen Carter-Peterson and Troy Carter- out of runoff contention on March 20. Her attractiveness as a candidate transcends ethnic background; nevertheless, Ontiveros very strongly highlights her Latina heritage – and with purpose.

Official estimates list the Second Congressional District of Louisiana with an Hispanic population of 5.9 percent. However, those numbers are years out of date, and do not reflect the influx of immigrant population in the interim. (The 2020 Census may give us a better idea. Those updated population figures will not be available before March 20, though.). Regard-less, one would have to be blind to miss the ethnic transformations, particularly in South Kenner.

While often thought of as a West Bank seat outside of Orleans Parish, the 2nd District jumps the Mississippi River back to East Bank Jefferson to encompass the historically African-American neighborhoods between Williams Blvd. and Loyola Drive from Rivertown to just beyond Veterans Blvd. It enters one of the highest Hispanic concentrations in all Louisiana, in other words. Still, Latinos do not constitute a majority of the district, or not even a large plurality, but they may be enough matched Ontiveros entrepreneurial appeal to upset expectations.

Essentially, the leading candidates are evenly matched. Neither has much of an advantage over the other. Both represent State Senate districts wholly within the 2nd Congressional, With Karen Carter Peterson enjoying broad support on the East Bank and Troy Carter on the West Bank. She has Stacey Abrams’ backing to his Cedric Richmond’s endorsement.

Their mutual challenge is that fellow Democrat Gary Chambers has blocked much of each’s ability to grow political support up the river parishes and into metro Baton Rouge. The Second Congressional District stretches up the West Bank to the state capital, in order to gerrymander an African-American majority safe seat. Chambers has built a reputation in the Baton Rouge area as a vocal good government activist, and has a social media presence that stretches into the hundreds of thousands of followers. He may be the reason that the “powerhouse” of RedStick Black politics, Cleo Fields, has yet to make an endorsement in the contest.

With an entire election season numbering in only a few weeks, it’s been a challenge for the front runners to build beyond their core political bases. Moreover, while each enjoys some cross party support (particularly Troy Carter with the backing of former GOP House Speaker Jim Tucker), the presence of four Republican candidates in the race — Chelsea Ardoin, Sheldon Vincent Sr., Claston Bernard, and Greg Lirette — makes bipartisan support hard to accumulate. Republican candidates received almost 20 percent of the vote on November 3, 2020 against Cedric Richmond. If such a result could occur against an entrenched incumbent, it is hardly unlikely that the GOP contenders will garner any less support in the upcoming March primary.

The total vote will likely be pretty bivocated in any case, to say the least. Therefore with 10 candidates running in total, scenarios exist where a candidate who earns less than 25 percent of the vote can make the runoff. Mobilizing the Hispanic vote could have as much of an impact in a low turnout election like March 20 as the Vietnamese vote had for Joseph Cao in his upset election 12 years ago.

This article originally published in the February 8, 2021 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.