“Louisiana no longer a swing state,” which was a Sunday headline in The Advocate, caught my attention. I didn’t know Louisiana had ever been a swing state, but perhaps it was when the Democratic Party was in total control of state politics.

The newspaper, in reporting about Republican growth in the state, focused on Catherine Roberts, who in 1961 when she became old enough to vote for the first time in LaSalle Parish, registered as a Republican. She couldn’t vote, unfortunately, because Republicans at that time didn’t bother to run for office in this state.

In 1968, Roberts formed a Republican group in LaSalle that was so small, she joked, that everyone could meet in a phone booth. Tell that joke to most folks these days and they would probably ask, “What is a phone booth?”

Things have definitely changed in LaSalle Parish and in the rest of Louisiana. The Advocate said Democrats are virtually an extinct species today in LaSalle Parish and White voters have fled the Democratic Party throughout Louisiana.

Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and former Republican President Donald Trump haven’t campaigned in Louisiana, but Trump did have a fund-raiser earlier in New Orleans.

Trump carried Louisiana when he won the presidency in 2016 with 58% of the vote. He repeated that with 58% in 2020, the election he lost but which he continues to falsely insist was stolen from him.

Louisiana’s Republican members of Congress had even better results in  the 2022 midterm elections. U.S. Sen. John Kennedy won with 62% of the vote.

U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise won the 1^st Congressional District seat with 73% of the vote. U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins won the 3^rd District seat with 64%. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson was unopposed. U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow won the 5^th District seat with 68%. And U.S. Rep. Garret Graves won the 6^th District seat with 80%.

Graves isn’t running this year because his district has become the state’s second majority-Black district. Four Democrats and one Republican are seeking that seat.

U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, the only Democrat in the state’s congressional delegation, won re-election to the 2^nd District in 2022 with 77% of the vote. This year he has three Republican challengers and one Democrat.

Like many other Southern states, Louisiana today is thoroughly controlled by Republican officeholders. Republicans now hold all seven statewide offices.

State Rep. Gabe Firment, a Republican from Grant Parish who also represents LaSalle Parish, explained why the GOP is so dominant in Louisiana.

“People here are pro-life and pro Second Amendment,” Firment said. “The Democratic stance on those two issues alone eliminates them from consideration in LaSalle Parish.”

The fact that he also favors those two issues helped Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards get elected Louisiana governor twice.

Democratic strategist James Carville in August said of the far-left progressives in the national Democratic Party, “Literally on every issue, they’re dead a-wrong.”

The Advocate said Democratic dominance in state politics began crumbling in the 1960s, with historians pointing to the Democratic Party’s efforts to extend basic civil rights to Black people.

In 1968, voters in five Deep South states, including Louisiana, turned away from Democrats when they supported then-Alabama Gov. George Wallace, who ran a race-based campaign as a third-party presidential candidate.

Republican Richard Nixon won re-election as president in 1972 when he swept the South. When Trump was elected president in 2016, he carried all of the Southern states except Virginia.

A Democratic presidential candidate last won Louisiana when President Bill Clinton won re-election in 1996.

William Frey, a senior fellow at a Washington think tank, explained why North Carolina and Georgia have become swing states and Louisiana hasn’t. He said both states have seen an influx of college-educated Whites, Black people of all socioeconomic categories and immigrants from Latin America. And polling shows they favor Democrats more than Republicans.

Meanwhile, instead of new people coming here, Louisiana is one of only five states that have lost population in each year since 2018. The Advocate said not seeing newcomers means Louisiana had the highest percentage of native-born residents, at 77.5%, of any state in 2022.

Catherine Roberts, who is now 84, summed up the Louisiana political situation well when she said, “Everybody’s comfortable with being a Republican now.”

Jim Beam, the retired editor of the American Press, has covered people and politics for more than six decades. Contact him at 337-515-8871 or jim.beam.press@gmail.com.

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