By: Greg LaRose | Louisiana Illuminaator
A special election is set for Saturday to fill five vacant seats in the Louisiana Legislature, including one spot in the Senate and four in the House of Representatives.
State Senate District 3 was left open when Joe Bouie, D-New Orleans, stepped down to take the chancellor’s role at Southern University New Orleans. Four Democrats have qualified for the race: Kenn Barnes, Sidney Barthelemy II, Jon Johnson and Chad Lauga.
Barnes is a lawyer who has worked as a public defender, a city attorney and a special counsel to the Louisiana Supreme Court.
Barthelemy, the son and namesake of New Orleans’ mayor from 1986-94, owns a commercial construction company. This is his first run for public office.
Johnson hopes to return to the Louisiana Senate, where he served from 1984 through 2005 after holding a state House seat for six years. He sat on the New Orleans City Council, representing the eastern section of the city and Lower 9th Ward, from 2010-12 before resigning after having admitted he illegally misused federal recovery dollars. Johnson was sentenced in federal court to six months of house arrest and three years of supervised release.
Lauga is an electrician from St. Bernard Parish who has also lobbied the legislature for 10 years on behalf of the AFL-CIO labor union.
Two Louisiana House seats representing New Orleans became open when their occupants, Jason Hughes and Matt Willard, won election to the city council.
Running in House District 97 to replace Willard are the sons of two other prominent New Orleans politicians, both Democrats.
Ed Murray, an attorney, hopes to follow the lead of his father, Edwin Murray Sr., whose tenure in the legislature stretched from 1992 to 2016.
His opponent is Eugene Green III, whose father is in his second term on the New Orleans City Council. The younger Green is a property management consultant for his father’s real estate business.
In House District 100, five Democrats are running to succeed Hughes: educator Patricia Boyd Robinson; attorney Dana Henry; political consultant Aeisha Kelly, who ran Hughes’ winning City Council campaign; attorney Kenya Rounds; and community organizer Candice Taylor.
Saturday’s election will decide who takes over in House District 37 from Troy Romero, R-Jennings, who resigned to become the state’s rural development director for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The district takes in nearly all of Jefferson Davis Parish and a small portion of Calcasieu.
Reese “Skip” Broussard, a Republican small business owner, is going up against Ivy Woods, a former Jeff Davis sheriff who is not party-affiliated.
The seat in House District 60 was left open when Gov. Jeff Landry picked Democrat Chad Brown of Plaquemine to lead the state Office of Alcohol and Tobacco Control. The district includes portions of Assumption and Iberville parishes.
The candidates are Republican business owner Brad Daigle of Plaquemine and Democrat Chasity Verret Martinez, a member of the Iberville Parish Council.
Polling precincts will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday in the six parishes involved in legislative races. Any runoffs needed will be decided March 14.