The 81st District is one of the more venerable seats in the Louisiana House of Representatives. And it’s a good example of what’s about to happen when legislators sit down in February for the political task of redrawing the lines of districts from which officials are elected, to match the 2020 Census Bureau numbers.
Over the past decade, Louisiana’s population hasn’t so much grown as moved: primarily from rural northern parishes to southeastern urban parishes. The shift is setting up dramatic changes such as happened in 2011 with the 81st House District.
Located for generations near the 17th Street Canal from mansions by Metairie Country Club through blue-collar neighborhoods to Bucktown, the 81st was one of the state’s first conservative enclaves where most voters declared Republican before Republican was cool. Only 46 Black voters lived among the 21,457 registered voters in 1980.
That was the year Chuck Cusimano resigned the 81st House seat to join the 24th Judicial District Court. David Duke beat John Treen, the brother of the first Republican governor since Reconstruction. When Duke ran for governor, David Vitter succeeded him.
By 2010 the U.S. census counted so many people in Jefferson Parish that voters could fill up the remaining House districts and allow partisans to move one seat to help carve out a favorable district in a less populated area. Every district must contain more or less the same population. The GOP-majority Legislature chose to move the 81st District upriver.
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Republican Rep. John LaBruzzo, who had easily won the 81st twice, ended up living in the newly drawn 94th House District, ran for election to that seat and lost.
In a parish slowly moving away from its conservative roots, voters from the old 81st augmented three districts — now represented by Reps Stephanie Hilferty, Polly Thomas, and Laurie Schlegel, all steadfast GOP votes in the House — that today have fewer Black voters, combined, than their neighbor.
About 9% of the registered voters in House districts 82, 94 and 80 are Black. Kenner’s 92nd House District has 35% Black voters and is represented by Republican Rep. Joseph Stagni. He is one of the few in the highly partisan Legislature willing to cross the aisle and occasionally support Democratic initiatives. He defied House Speaker Clay Schexnayder and voted to uphold a veto by Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards.
In 2011, House District 81 was plopped into rural swamps and timberland, mostly in Livingston Parish but including considerable parts of Ascension, St. James, and St. John the Baptist parishes, with only 17% Black voters. The area had been represented by Democrats for generations and moving the 81st allowed map drawers to concentrate Black voters in Gonzales and along the Mississippi River into minority-majority districts.
The 81st elected Republican Schexnayder, a White auto mechanic, in 2011.
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Legislators are halfway through their statewide redistricting tour. During the first hour or so of the town hall meetings, legislative staffers delve into the numbers and the laws guiding the redistricting process. The second hour takes testimonials about the desires of regular voters.
Unsurprisingly, voters in north and central Louisiana want to keep their representatives and senators the same, said Rep. John Stefanski, the Crowley Republican who as chair of the House and Governmental Affairs Committee will have the most to say about how those district maps are drawn.
Though a political process, redistricting is primarily about numbers, he added. The ideal population for a Louisiana House district is 44,359 people. They must live next to each other and map drawers can’t lift their pencils to pick up the district elsewhere. The districts should be contiguous. Law allows a deviation of 5%, more or less, of the 44,359 ideal. If the map ends up in court, however, the Legislature will have to defend why the district’s population deviates at all.
In the entirety of northwest Louisiana, only four districts are above the population ideal. In central Louisiana, only House District 25 is OK. The rest are underpopulated.
Thirty-seven House districts have too few constituents and will need more. Twenty-nine districts will need to shed people to other districts.
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“A lot of members want tweaking,” around geographical and common culture of the existing districts, Stefanski said. But the numbers won’t make that goal easy. And that puts moving districts across the state, à la the old 81st, on the menu as legislators try to fill 105 House seats with the proper number of people while meeting political wants.
“There’s no secret of the losses in north Louisiana and the gains in the southeast. It’s going to be very difficult given the numbers,” Stefanski said, adding that no maps will be drawn until after the road show concludes in early January.
