Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Jamie Davis is making his first major move onto Louisiana’s airwaves, launching two new advertisements Wednesday that will run on television, connected TV and digital platforms through Election Day.
The statewide campaign marks Davis’ first paid advertising of the election cycle and comes less than three weeks before voters choose between Davis and Republican nominee U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow.
The two ads take distinctly different approaches: one introduces Davis through his family’s history in rural Louisiana, while the other goes directly after Letlow over congressional stock trades that have become one of the Democrat’s central arguments against her candidacy.
In “6th Generation,” Davis discusses his roots in Tensas Parish and his family’s history farming land once worked by his grandfather as a sharecropper and later purchased by his father. The ad pivots from that biography toward Davis’ economic message, emphasizing health care affordability and prescription drug costs.
The second spot, titled “Stench,” is considerably sharper.
It centers on reporting earlier this year that Letlow signed a nondisclosure agreement connected to Meta’s massive Richland Parish data center project before stock in Meta and chipmaker Nvidia was purchased on her behalf.
Multiple outlets reported in August that Letlow signed the agreement with a Meta subsidiary in June 2024, giving her access to confidential information surrounding the project. Within months, transactions involving Meta and Nvidia stock began appearing in her investment portfolio. Those transactions were also among hundreds of trades Letlow disclosed after federal reporting deadlines had passed.
Letlow’s office has said she did not direct the trades and was unaware they were occurring, and has denied that the NDA played any role in the transactions. The reporting has not established that Letlow personally ordered the purchases or traded based on confidential information.
Davis has nevertheless made the episode a recurring campaign issue, arguing that it illustrates broader concerns about elected officials signing private confidentiality agreements and trading individual stocks while in office. In the new ad, he pledges not to trade stocks as a senator and calls for stronger restrictions on congressional stock trading.
The issue also gives Davis a direct connection between his campaign’s economic message and one of the biggest development debates in Louisiana. Meta’s planned Richland Parish complex is expected to represent roughly $50 billion in investment, while questions surrounding its enormous electricity demands, public subsidies and secrecy agreements have drawn increasing scrutiny.
Davis’ entry into the television advertising fight comes shortly after Letlow began airing her own general-election message. Letlow released an ad earlier this month focused on rising flood-insurance costs, presenting herself as fighting FEMA and insurance companies over premiums that have become a major concern for Louisiana homeowners.
The Davis campaign described its new advertising effort as a “significant statewide buy,” although it did not disclose the amount being spent.
That distinction matters in a race where Letlow has held a substantial financial advantage and benefited from millions of dollars in outside spending during the Republican primary. Davis has spent much of the general election attempting to turn the contest into a referendum on affordability, transparency and Letlow’s record rather than a conventional partisan matchup in a state that remains strongly Republican.
With early voting beginning Oct. 20 and Election Day set for Nov. 3, the two new ads offer perhaps the clearest preview yet of Davis’ closing argument: introduce himself to voters who still may not know him, while giving those who already do a reason to vote against Letlow.
