By: Julie O’Donoghue | Louisiana Illuminator
Anger over suspended elections and congressional map changes are fueling a campaign to vote down five constitutional amendments backed by Gov. Jeff Landry on Saturday’s election ballot.
But Republican leaders are warning public school teachers and staff will likely see a pay cut if Amendment 3, aimed at raising educators’ salaries permanently, fails to pass.
“If the public doesn’t vote to give [teachers] a pay raise, then that means they don’t want to give them a pay raise,” Senate President Cameron Henry, R-Metairie, told reporters Wednesday. “So the legislature is not going to turn around and do something that our constituents voted not to do.”
Amendment 3, if approved, would require the state to use the balances from three education trust funds to pay off retirement debt for K-12 schools and universities early. Public school districts would be obliged to use any resulting savings to give teachers and school support staff permanent annual salary increases of $2,250 and $1,125, respectively.
The salary increases would replace the temporary pay stipends of $2,000 and $1,000 teachers and support staff have received from the state the past three years. Legislators said they have no plans to continue that stipend if the amendment fails, which would mean teachers and support workers would see a pay cut equivalent to the size of the stipends.
“They will not get the stipend. That is 100% accurate because the public, the voting public, would have just voted not to do that,” Henry said. “So if your constituents vote not to do something, it doesn’t make a lot of sense [for lawmakers] to turn around and do it.”
Amendment 3 supporters are worried their proposition is getting caught up in a larger political storm that has nothing to do with how the public feels about teacher pay.
“It’s getting challenging as you hear a lot of noise around other issues that are now starting to bleed into the discussion around: ‘Will I vote for anything that the governor puts on the table?’” said Larry Carter, president of the Louisiana Federation of Teachers, who is campaigning for Amendment 3.
The current version of the state’s annual budget proposal doesn’t include funding for the teachers stipend, which would cost an additional $200 million per year. Louisiana’s financial outlook also worsened in recent days.
The state downgraded its revenue projections last week by $113 million in the current budget cycle and by $104 million in the fiscal year that begins July 1. The drop in revenue is largely the result of personal income and corporate taxes coming in lower than expected after Landry and the legislators reduced them in 2025, state economists said at a hearing last week.
State lawmakers already have to make cuts in their current budget proposal to account for the drop in revenue, even if the $200 million teacher pay stipend isn’t a factor.
There is an organized “Vote No On All” campaign encouraging people to reject all five constitutional amendments, partly as a “protest vote” against the governor.
Landry is among the chief proponents of Amendment 3 and three other propositions on Saturday’s ballot. His political action committee, Protect Louisiana Values, has spent $1 million so far on a campaign to get them passed, according to a review of its campaign finance reports.
But the governor enraged Democrats and Black residents by suspending congressional elections originally scheduled to take place Saturday. The pause gives state lawmakers time before the election resumes to approve a U.S. House district map that eliminates one of Louisiana’s majority-Black House seats held by a Democrat.
The governor said a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in April that declared Louisiana’s current congressional map unconstitutional required him to delay the election. Democrats and Black leaders have questioned to what extent the governor’s hand was forced to make that decision or if he did it because it was advantageous to President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress.
“Voting against the amendments is a way for us to channel that energy, that anger, that frustration,” said Jared Evans, an attorney for the Power Coalition for Equality and Justice, which filed a lawsuit to stop the election delay. “It’s personal from our coalition and those of us who have been in the redistricting fight.”
There’s good reason to think a groundswell of Democratic outrage might lead the amendments to fail. Left-leaning groups were successful in mounting a campaign to defeat constitutional amendments backed by Landry just last year, including a similar amendment linked to teachers’ pay.
Black voters also turned out in larger numbers than expected last week during early in-person voting for Saturday’s election. Their voter participation grew stronger throughout the week and was particularly high on Saturday, the day after a contentious legislative hearing on Louisiana’s congressional redistricting, according to Louisiana pollster John Couvillon.
Louisiana saw a similar turnout of strong Black voter participation during early voting for the March election last year, when Landry’s previous set of constitutional amendments failed, Couvillon said.
There’s a contentious and expensive U.S. Senate Republican primary on Saturday’s ballot but Black voters likely aren’t exceptionally motivated to go out and vote early in that election. They are overwhelmingly registered Democrats and can’t participate in the GOP primary. The Democratic primary for the Senate race has multiple candidates but hasn’t been as high profile and wouldn’t be expected to drive higher voter turnout, Couvillon said.
“The amendments are the obvious target,” Couvillon said.
Amendment 3 is also a pared-down version of Amendment 2 in 2025, which voters rejected by a two-to-one margin.
Last year’s failed version included the same plan to swap early retirement debt payments for a permanent teachers’ salary increase, but it also had dozens of other, unrelated tax law changes that proved to be unpopular and difficult for the public to understand.
This year, Amendment 3 is more straightforward. It doesn’t include any of the tax policy measures thought to doom last year’s amendment.
Last year’s confusion was why, in part, lawmakers acquiesced and extended the $2,000 and $1,000 temporary pay stipends for teachers and school support workers again in 2025.
Since the proposal this year is far clearer, lawmakers won’t entertain another stipend, according to the Senate president.
“This is a much simpler amendment with a very specific purpose, and I think people have a better understanding of what it is,” Henry said.