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Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Nick Albares said Thursday that his brother, David Albares, has died, and that he will temporarily step away from the campaign trail to be with his family. “On Tuesday, March 24, 2026 I learned my brother died,” Albares said in a statement. “My brother and I were very close and we…
The Louisiana Democratic State Central Committee on Saturday moved ahead with a long-debated endorsement meeting, formally backing candidates in the U.S. Senate race, all six congressional districts, and several statewide contests ahead of the party’s new closed-primary cycle. By the end of the day, the party had endorsed Jamie Davis for U.S. Senate; Lauren Jewett…
Matt Gromlich says he is running for Congress because too many people in Louisiana’s 4th District have gotten used to a kind of representation that feels distant, performative, and largely absent from everyday life. A Shreveport educator now in his 14th year teaching, Gromlich is challenging House Speaker Mike Johnson as a Democrat in one…
Democratic congressional candidate Tania Nyman is not running as a generic issue-sheet progressive. In an interview with The Bayou Progressive, Nyman framed her candidacy in Louisiana’s 5th Congressional District as an extension of years of advocacy around public schools, fair maps, democratic accountability and the preservation of public institutions she argues are steadily being hollowed…
With Louisiana’s 5th Congressional District open for the first time in years, Democratic candidate Lindsay “Rubia” Garcia is trying to make the case that this is not the cycle for cautious politics. In an interview with The Bayou Progressive, Garcia described herself as a teacher, advocate, organizer, and newly minted lawyer who has spent years…
The Recreation and Park Commission for the Parish of East Baton Rouge (or “BREC”)’s effort to declare multiple Baton Rouge parks “obsolete” and move them toward sale hit serious resistance this week after residents and local officials blasted the process as rushed, opaque, and disconnected from the communities most affected. The controversy centers on a…
John Day is making an unusually direct case for his candidacy in Louisiana’s 3rd Congressional District: Democrats, he argues, do not need a symbolic opponent for U.S. Representative Clay Higgins. They need someone willing to campaign aggressively, talk plainly, and treat the race like it can actually be won. In an interview with The Bayou…
Gary Crockett is running for the U.S. Senate as a political outsider with a blunt argument: Louisiana does not need another talking head in Washington. It needs someone focused on bringing results home. In an interview with The Bayou Progressive, Crockett, a Democrat, framed his campaign around a mix of personal biography, economic frustration and…
At La Divina Italian Café in Baton Rouge, Democratic congressional candidate Jessee Fleenor made a simple argument for why he belongs in the race for Louisiana’s 5th Congressional District: the people in one of the state’s poorest and most rural districts do not need another polished lawyer or political climber pretending to understand their lives….
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Nick Albares has picked up the sole endorsement of the Greater New Orleans AFL-CIO, adding organized labor support to his campaign as he works to build early momentum in Louisiana’s U.S. Senate race. The endorsement was announced Monday and gives Albares a notable regional labor backing as candidates continue jockeying for…
Tania Nyman, a veteran community advocate known for her fierce battles over local public schools and city governance, has officially launched her campaign for the Democratic nomination in Louisiana’s 5th Congressional District. Speaking to a crowd of supporters at the Mid City Ballroom in Baton Rouge, Nyman framed her candidacy as a necessary escalation of…
Republican Paul Sawyer won the special election for Louisiana House District 69 on Saturday, defeating Democrat Angela Roberts in a closely watched race that drew the highest turnout of any contest on the statewide ballot. Unofficial results from the Louisiana Secretary of State show Sawyer receiving 2,587 votes, or 53 percent, to Roberts’ 1,945 votes,…
As Louisiana’s 2026 legislative session begins, State Representative Mandie Landry does not sound like someone expecting a loud, dramatic showdown at every turn. That, in her view, may be part of the problem. In an interview with The Bayou Progressive, the New Orleans Democrat described the opening days of the session as oddly subdued —…
The Louisiana AFL-CIO has endorsed Democrat Lauren Jewett in Louisiana’s 1st Congressional District, giving the educator and union member a significant institutional boost as she emerges as her party’s presumptive nominee following the withdrawal of James “Jim” Long. The endorsement is an early but meaningful marker in the race to challenge Republican House Majority Leader…
A newly revealed police report detailing a rape allegation against Louisiana Republican congressional candidate and state senator Blake Miguez is casting a dark cloud over a campaign that had just received a major boost from Donald Trump. The report, first obtained and published by The Atlantic, describes a 2007 incident in which Miguez’s former girlfriend…
The push for massive data center construction in Louisiana, anchored by Meta’s staggering $27 billion facility in Richland, is being presented as a modern economic masterstroke. But as the details of the proposed subsidies emerge, it looks less like a “new frontier” and more like a high-tech version of the same lopsided deals that have…
The release of WalletHub’s 2026 report on the Best and Worst States for Women provides a stark, data-driven look at the reality of life in the Pelican State. While Women’s History Month typically serves as a time for commemorative reflections on progress, the empirical evidence suggests that for women in Louisiana, systemic barriers to economic…
A special education teacher and union member is challenging Steve Scalise with a blunt promise: stop treating District 1 like an afterthought, and start “showing up.” Lauren Jewett talks like someone who’s spent a career dealing with the consequences of systems that don’t work. Not in theory — in real time, with real people, and…
When the Louisiana Legislature gavels in at noon on Monday, March 9, lawmakers will face a crowded slate of prefiled bills that signal where the real policy fights are likely to emerge this spring. With constitutional limits this year preventing the creation of new taxes or increases to existing ones, the focus shifts to other…
At noon on Monday, March 9, lawmakers will gavel in the 2026 Regular Session. They have until June 1 to pass laws, shape state policy, and decide what problems are worth solving — and which ones aren’t. On paper, it’s a 60-day legislative session inside an 85-day window . In reality, it’s a tightly choreographed…
In the race to fill Louisiana’s House District 69 seat, voters were promised a comprehensive look at their future representative. But when the microphones went live on Thursday night, only one candidate was in the room to make her case. Hosted by the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison Reform Coalition, The Bayou Progressive, the Louisiana…
When people talk about the integration of New Orleans public schools in 1960, they often focus — rightly — on the four little girls who walked into history under the protection of federal marshals. They were six years old: Leona Tate, Ruby Bridges, Gail Etienne, and Tessie Prevost. But behind those children were mothers who…
When the CEO of the Louisiana Chemical Association took the Rotary Club podium Wednesday to complain about “misinformation” in discussions of industry health impacts, he stepped so far into cognitive dissonance that it might now qualify as public art. David Cresson’s defense of the petrochemical industry — the dominant economic engine in the Mississippi River…
Following the resignation of Republican State Representative Paula Davis in late 2025, the race for Louisiana House District 69 has drawn a crowded field for the March 14, 2026 special election. While three Republicans — Adam Beach, Lynn Coxe Graham, and Paul Sawyer — battle for the conservative base, one candidate is offering a distinct alternative…
