Pat Forbes does not pretend that three Democrats competing in Louisiana’s newly redrawn 6th Congressional District is an ideal situation.
“Obviously, it’s not good for us to have three Democrats in the race,” Forbes told The Bayou Progressive in a wide-ranging interview this week. “But here we are.”
The question hanging over Forbes’ candidacy is what comes after the “but.”
Forbes, the former executive director of Louisiana’s Office of Community Development, is running alongside Democrats Chauna Banks and Lindsay “Rubia” Garcia in an open primary that also features a crowded Republican field. Louisiana’s congressional elections were shifted back to the state’s traditional open-primary system after the U.S. Supreme Court’s April redistricting decision led lawmakers to redraw the congressional map and cancel the spring U.S. House primaries.
Forbes and Garcia both qualified Aug. 6, while Banks entered the race the following day, according to Secretary of State records.
Forbes said his decision to run had “nothing to do with closed versus open primary.” Instead, he said, the district itself changed — and so did the field.
If Democratic Congressman Cleo Fields had remained the incumbent, Forbes said he would not have run. But after the new map reshaped the 6th District and effectively ended Fields’ reelection bid, Forbes saw an open seat where he believed his experience could matter.
“I felt like I needed to give people an alternative,” Forbes said.
Asked specifically whether he still would have entered the race had Louisiana retained the closed-primary system but used the new congressional map, Forbes answered simply: “Oh, yeah.”
That answer complicates an easy political narrative around his candidacy. Forbes has the backing of former Gov. John Bel Edwards, as well as former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu and former U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu. But Forbes said no political figure recruited him into the race. Asked who encouraged him to run, he answered: “My wife and I.”
His argument for the seat is built less around ideology than competence.
Forbes spent two decades working in Louisiana government, much of it overseeing disaster recovery and community development. As head of the Office of Community Development, he administered federal disaster and mitigation funding and worked on recovery efforts following hurricanes and the 2016 floods.
He argues that experience gives him something other candidates do not.
“I just have a level of experience, relationships with people both in D.C. and in local and state government, and a knowledge about how things work that just doesn’t exist in any of the other candidates,” Forbes said.
That is also how Forbes answers the most uncomfortable question about his campaign: whether adding another Democrat to an already difficult race makes it harder for any Democrat to reach the runoff.
When asked directly whether his candidacy makes a Democratic runoff appearance more or less likely, Forbes shifted the focus beyond November.
“What I’m interested in is whether it makes it more likely that a Democrat wins this seat,” he said, before broadening that to someone who would not serve as “a rubber stamp for the president.”
“And I think I’m the best candidate to do that.”
Getting there, however, requires a coalition that extends beyond Democrats.
“I’m gonna get some Democrats, I’m gonna get some Republicans, and I’m gonna get some independents,” Forbes said.
His pitch is aimed at voters frustrated not only with the cost of living but with the broader direction of national politics. He argues that Congress has become consumed by partisan combat at the expense of its basic responsibilities.
“We need to go back to doing the work of Congress,” Forbes said, pointing to infrastructure, government programs and policies affecting household costs. “That’s not a partisan issue. Everybody in our district’s being affected by those things.”
That language can make Forbes sound like the archetypal moderate Democrat, but his actual policy positions do not fit neatly into that label.
He calls for reversing cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, restoring Affordable Care Act subsidies, ending tariffs, banning members of Congress from trading individual stocks and ending the current war with Iran. He described climate change as an “existential threat” and said government must return to reducing carbon emissions.
On voting, Forbes called concerns about undocumented immigrants casting ballots a “red herring,” saying such cases are rare and should not be used to justify policies that could disenfranchise eligible voters.
And when asked what separates Democrats and Republicans in 2026, he offered a scathing assessment of Republican governance.
“Everything I have seen come out of that combination in the last 18 months has made it harder for working people,” Forbes said, citing tariffs, war, social-program cuts and tax policy benefiting the wealthy.
But Forbes’ political instinct remains rooted in negotiation. He rejects the idea that working across the aisle means capitulating to it.
“There are gonna be times when people wanna do things that are not good for us, and I know how to fight like hell,” he said. “I’m not saying I’m just gonna go be friends with everybody.”
Instead, he describes his governing philosophy in two words: “People first.”
For Forbes, that means judging decisions by their consequences rather than their usefulness in partisan warfare.
“We can’t let ourselves get drug into every day talking about another issue of something that the president did,” Forbes said, while losing sight of issues materially affecting people’s lives.
Whether that message can assemble enough Democrats, independents and crossover Republicans to survive the open primary remains the central test of his campaign.
Forbes acknowledges the risk.
Asked what responsibility he would bear if the three Democrats divided their vote badly enough that none reached the runoff, he again defended the decision to run.
“I think that we have three Democrats in the race, and any of the three of us, I’m sure, would make a fine member of Congress,” Forbes said.
But he added that his own conclusion has not changed.
“I think that I would be the best person, and I’ve believed that from the day that I qualified, and I’ll believe that on November the 4th, regardless of what the outcome of the election is.”
“It is a shame for Democrats that there are three of us in here,” Forbes said. “But, for me, it’s more about giving the folks in the 6th District an opportunity to vote for somebody who can go to D.C. and know how to do this job.”