Independent Louisiana journalism.
Troublemaking truthtellers.
Stories tagged 2026 elections.
Louisiana’s congressional election chaos is no longer theoretical. It is now moving through the Legislature. The Louisiana Senate voted Thursday to advance a Republican-backed congressional map that would likely return the state to a 5-1 Republican congressional delegation, eliminating one of Louisiana’s two majority-Black congressional districts after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the current…
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry has suspended the state’s May 16 U.S. House primaries days before early voting was set to begin, throwing the congressional elections into chaos after absentee and mail-in ballots had already gone out and some voters had already cast ballots. The order applies only to Louisiana’s U.S. House races. Other contests scheduled…
A new Emerson College Polling/KLFY News 10 survey, sponsored by KLFY/Nexstar Media, shows Louisiana’s Republican U.S. Senate primary locked in a tight three-way fight, with state Treasurer John Fleming narrowly leading U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow and incumbent U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy running third. The survey was conducted April 24-26 among 500 likely Republican primary voters….
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry is reportedly preparing to suspend next month’s U.S. House primaries so Republican lawmakers can redraw the state’s congressional map before voters cast ballots. Early voting is scheduled to begin Saturday, May 2. Landry’s announcement could come as early as Friday, according to the Washington Post, one day before voters were set…
For a party that has spent years struggling to build credible federal campaigns in Louisiana, the first-quarter fundraising reports offered something Democrats do not always get in this state: signs of life. Several Democratic candidates posted respectable numbers in reports covering Jan. 1 through March 31, enough to show that there is still donor interest,…
For many Louisiana voters, Nick Albares is still an introduction. He is not a former statewide officeholder. He is not a longtime elected official with a built-in political base. And unlike some of the more familiar names in Louisiana Democratic politics, Albares comes out of the world of policy and nonprofit leadership more than the…
Rev. Larry Foy is running for Congress with an argument Louisiana voters do not hear very often from a candidate shaped by the church: faith is not a detour from progressive politics. It is what brought him there. For Foy, a Democrat running in Louisiana’s 5th Congressional District, the through line from ministry to public…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
On March 21, the Louisiana Democratic State Central Committee is scheduled to convene at the state capitol in Baton Rouge and vote on endorsing candidates in this year’s congressional races. Under normal circumstances, that might not raise many eyebrows (though the process has been historically messy). But this year is not normal. For the first…
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…
Louisiana voters are about to experience the most significant change to the state’s election system in decades. After years of operating under a “jungle primary” model, Louisiana will begin using a closed-party primary system for a limited set of offices starting in 2026. The shift is technical, but the consequences are very real for how…
Former Gov. John Bel Edwards announced on Monday that he will not run for the U.S. Senate in 2026, ending months of speculation that had frozen the Democratic field and leaving the party with a steep uphill climb in one of the nation’s most conservative states. After giving it careful consideration, we have decided that…
