Before Conrad Cable’s campaign raised the money to put billboards along Interstate 20 challenging House Speaker Mike Johnson, it struggled to cover a bill of its own.
Louisiana’s suspension of the spring congressional primaries had upended the first-time candidate’s plans. Cable said donors who had promised to contribute after the Democratic primary pulled back, endorsements disappeared, and his staff worked for two months without pay. At one point, his campaign manager called to ask him to put personal money into the account to prevent an overdraft.
“Emma, what personal funds are you talking about?!” he recalled responding.
Cable said he returned to the phones, raised the $2,000 the campaign needed and paid the bill. The episode forced his team to rebuild its fundraising strategy while figuring out how to compete in an election that would now put Democrats and Republicans on the same November ballot.
Months later, Cable says the campaign has raised more than $2.5 million. That figure, shared in an interview with The Bayou Progressive, extends beyond the period covered in our recent fundraising report, which documented nearly $1.2 million in receipts through September 30 and approximately $334,500 in cash on hand.
The financial turnaround has helped Cable build an operation capable of reaching voters across Louisiana’s 4th Congressional District. Now, with early voting coming to a close and Election Day approaching, he is trying to turn that investment into a result that would force Johnson to spend the closing weeks of the year defending his own seat.
Cable is candid about the immediate objective. Winning outright on November 3 would be “a real long shot,” he said. His strategy is to finish second and hold Johnson below 50 percent, sending the race into a December runoff that he believes could draw national attention and substantially more resources.
“We’ve already been present and visible for Democrats here in this district in a way that we haven’t been in a long time,” he said.
From growing food to fighting over policy
Cable’s interest in politics predates his candidacy, but his explanation for running starts with the work he does at home.
He and his brother formed their vegetable farm business in 2017 and began farming full time in 2020. Cable had finished college at the University of Louisiana Monroe and saw an opportunity to address a need in Union Parish, where he said few farmers were growing vegetables full time. The decision also offered a way to remain in a community his family has called home for generations.
“My wife and I, we could have been like so many of my friends and moved away,” he said. “But I love this place. I love our people, and I’m ready to fight to make their life better.”
Running the farm meant long hours and lean periods, but Cable describes the work as an expression of the same beliefs that now shape his campaign: people should be able to earn a decent living, get healthcare and feed their families. He remembers his grandmother, a former cafe owner who retired with Social Security, relying on a monthly food box. His own farm later participated in a food-bank program whose contract, he said, disappeared following federal funding cuts.
Those experiences brought a personal urgency to policy fights that can otherwise seem remote. Cable said concern about nutrition assistance and the future of rural hospitals helped persuade him to enter the race.
He had already tried making his case directly to Johnson. In 2023, Cable traveled to Washington with agricultural advocates seeking better support for small and regional farms. His request, he recalled, involved making it easier for farmers to sell directly to people using federal nutrition benefits.
Johnson told him access to fresh, healthy food was a bipartisan issue, Cable said. Watching the Republican agenda unfold afterward left him questioning what that agreement was worth.
For Cable, the consequences reach beyond individual farms or households. Food assistance supports local businesses, hospitals help keep rural communities viable, and access to basic services influences whether families can afford to stay. His campaign treats those issues as parts of the same economic problem.
Building toward a second election
Cable’s organizing experience includes volunteering for John Bel Edwards’ reelection, serving as a Bernie Sanders campaign organizer in Ouachita Parish and helping revive the Union Parish Democratic Parish Executive Committee. One lesson he carried from that work was the value of giving frustrated people something concrete to do.
During Edwards’ reelection campaign, Cable helped organize what began as a planned protest against a Donald Trump rally in Monroe. After encountering resistance, he said, organizers turned it into an early-voting event for Edwards, bringing together musicians, speakers and more than 100 attendees.
“How can we make people feel like they are heard and that their voice and their power matters?” he said, describing the approach he has tried to carry into his own campaign.
Putting that philosophy into practice against Johnson requires Cable to navigate several constituencies at once. Fellow Democrat Matt Gromlich is also running, so Cable must consolidate Democratic support while reaching independents and other voters willing to consider an alternative to the speaker.
Cable said his campaign is mailing and texting Democratic voters, training canvassers and coordinating with fellow farmer and Democratic Senate nominee Jamie Davis’ campaign. Its billboards take a more confrontational approach, challenging Johnson on national controversies and the cost of living. Cable argues that showing up at community meetings and candidate forums also gives him an opportunity to make a contrast with an incumbent whose responsibilities extend far beyond the district.
National anger at Johnson has helped finance that effort. Cable said his campaign’s average contribution is $17.90, and he described hours of donor calls connecting his own background to the concerns of people eager to challenge the speaker.
A runoff is central to his strategy because he believes it would concentrate that national interest on Louisiana after most other congressional races have ended. With Johnson’s seat directly at stake, Cable expects donors and organizations would have a stronger incentive to invest.
That opportunity depends first on enough voters choosing someone other than Johnson in November — and enough of them choosing Cable to put him in the second round.
What has the speakership delivered?
Johnson’s position gives his supporters a straightforward argument for keeping him: few districts ever have the opportunity to be represented by the speaker of the House. Replacing him with a freshman Democrat would mean surrendering access and influence most members of Congress never acquire.
Cable’s answer is to ask voters what that influence has done for them.
“We’re represented by the third most powerful person in this country,” he said. “But what do we have to show for it?”
He described conversations with local officials who, he said, struggle to reach Johnson’s office, and pointed to communities still seeking reliable water infrastructure and internet access. Healthcare, he said, consistently emerges as a leading concern when he asks voters what matters to them.
Cable believes those conversations create an opening for a progressive economic message in a region where Republican candidates have long dominated. His familiarity with conservative voters comes from living and working alongside them.
“If I didn’t have a few conservative friends, I wouldn’t have many friends at all,” he said.
He is nevertheless sharply critical of the political information many of those voters receive, arguing that culture-war messaging and misinformation have helped Republicans avoid accountability for economic conditions. His challenge is persuading people to reconsider familiar partisan loyalties when they enter the voting booth.
Cable sees some encouragement in Louisiana voters’ willingness to reject Republican-backed constitutional amendments. He believes those results demonstrate that voters will break with party leaders when they understand the consequences of a proposal. Translating that willingness into support for a Democratic congressional candidate is the larger test his campaign now faces.
He also argues that challenging Johnson has value beyond the district. Money and time the speaker must devote to protecting his own seat, Cable said, are resources he cannot spend helping Republicans elsewhere.
“Every dollar that he has to spend here fighting for his seat is $1 that he is not spending fighting for Republicans in a purple or a blue district,” he said.
For Cable, that national argument begins with a local frustration: the assumption that Johnson can count on reelection while directing his attention to other races. The farmer who once struggled to keep his campaign account afloat has raised enough money to challenge that assumption. On November 3, voters will decide whether Johnson has to face him again.
“I’m sick and tired,” Cable said, “of this man thinking that he’s safe in his district.”
