Louisiana voters began the process of fully embracing Republican candidates around 2007, as registrations revealed a weakening of the Democratic Party and special interests put money behind efforts to elect more conservatives, writes Jeremy Alford in his new opinion piece. That’s when voters started sending more surrogates from the Grand Old Party than ever to the Legislature and placing others in higher elected offices.
During the subsequent years it became apparent that Republicans were well on their way to statewide dominance, with a sprinkling of exceptions—so much so that it became clear to political observers that the party would eventually fracture and, in essence, commence with the eating of its own.
The current party representation, while dominant in many areas, is also lopsided and has played out in a variety of ways, depending on the public body or electoral trend—and it hasn’t always spelled success.
Read Alford’s full column, in which he discusses the problems within Louisiana’s Republican party.
Jeremy Alford publishes LaPolitics Weekly, a newsletter on Louisiana politics, at LaPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter, or on Facebook. He can be reached at JJA@LaPolitics.com.
