Yesterday we saw a development which didn’t make a whole lot of sense (but might turn out to be positive anyway)…

Blake Miguez Declares Campaign for LA-05 Congressional Seat

State Senator Miguez enters the race to replace Representative Julia Letlow with a massive $3.6 million cash on hand and an active campaign operation

BATON ROUGE, LA – Today, State Senator Blake Miguez announced his candidacy to replace Representative Julia Letlow in Louisiana’s 5th Congressional District as she moves on to campaign for the United States Senate. Senator Miguez is suspending his prior campaign for the U.S. Senate seat and redirecting that campaign and its resources towards representing Louisianians in the House of Representatives.

“When I announced my campaign for the U.S. Senate last year, I promised Louisianians I would stand with President Trump and fight for an America First agenda that puts Louisiana families first,” Miguez said. “I remain committed to that promise, and I’m ready to deliver the kind of representation that will support President Trump and help advance the mission to Make America Great Again.”

After a seven-month statewide campaign, Miguez enters the congressional race with strong grassroots momentum, significant statewide name recognition, and a nearly unprecedented $3.6 million day-one war chest, following nearly $1.75 million raised in the final quarter of 2025.

“I want to thank the thousands of Louisianians who have supported me over the last seven months — especially the more than 10,000 individual donors who invested in this campaign,” Miguez said. “Together, we built something bigger than a single race. We built a Louisiana coalition committed to conservative values and holding Washington accountable. I will always put America First and hold elected leaders accountable to the MAGA agenda — regardless of party. The office may be different, but the fight remains the same. Thank you.”

Blake Miguez is a 7th generation Louisianian with deep roots in the Pelican State, a world champion marksman, a small business owner in the oil & gas industry, and an incumbent State Senator. Miguez’s campaign is rallying support from Louisianians who understand the need for true, America First representation in Washington, D.C.

Miguez is from Erath, which isn’t in District 5. Erath, which is basically New Iberia, is in District 3.

What’s he doing running in District 5?

His answer is pretty simple: he’s running for Congress and District 5 is the open seat since Jeff Landry and Donald Trump put Julia Letlow into the Senate race he was running in.

We disagree that Miguez didn’t have a path to winning that Senate race. We said so. Trump’s endorsement of Letlow only changed that race because Miguez and Julie Emerson let it do so. Emerson had less of a path to victory with Letlow’s entry to be sure; Miguez, though, had a good one nonetheless.

And yes, there were polls showing he was at five to seven percent. But Miguez hadn’t turned loose much of that $3.6 million war chest to build name ID yet.

$3.6 million is a nice war chest for a Senate campaign. For a House seat, it’s a straight-up gangster roll.

And in a couple of weeks, all the people objecting to Miguez on the basis of geography will likely get over it.

I was on with Brian Haldane on Talk 107.3 this morning talking about this, and I mentioned that practically every other candidate in the race is going to deal with some sort of question about whether they live in the district. It’s only a matter of time before somebody beats Rick Edmonds up over the fact that he’s the pastor of a church in McComb, Mississippi while he serves as a state senator in Baton Rouge. Dixon McMakin was living in Cleo Fields’ congressional district until five minutes ago; he had to move to be able to claim he lives in District 5.

In other words, don’t hate the player, hate the game.

Miguez is going to note that he went to LSU – Blake Miguez is going to try to out-Tiger McMakin, who’s the voice of the PA system in Tiger Stadium now – and Southern Law School, that he’s been a property owner in Baton Rouge since 1999 and he was roommates with Mike Johnson at one point. He’s going to talk about how his business has a facility on Choctaw, which is… in Fields’ district, and he’s going to note that he’s been in and out of Baton Rouge for more than a decade as a state legislator.

People can decide if that’s enough of a nexus to the district to get over the objection. Clay Higgins didn’t live in District 3, after all – his place was a little north of the border line, but the folks there decided they didn’t care. In 2019, Higgins moved his primary residence inside of the district and now nobody talks about that anymore.

McMakin and Edmonds, not to mention Misti Cordell, Michael Echols and Stewart Cathey, will all rip Miguez for horning in on their action. So will Daryl Deshotel, who is from Marksville, which is in the district but utterly geographically hopeless given where the actual voters are in LA-5.

And the funny thing is that we have absolutely no guarantees that the district will look like this – and it shouldn’t look like this; Louisiana’s congressional map is probably the worst it’s ever been – by the time the election comes around. The Supreme Court could rule at any time in the Callais case either that the map is constitutional invalid or that the state would not be out of line under the Voting Rights Act to change it, and if either of those things happens the state legislature could redraw the map.

Probably not to put Erath in the 5th District, but by that point Blake Miguez will certainly not be the leading absurdity in Louisiana’s electoral politics, so who cares?