Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of posts covering the various electoral contests we’ll be seeing this spring as candidates vie for party nominations for the elections this fall.)

Last week, Public Service Commissioner (and occasional Hayride contributor) Eric Skrmetta gave up his bid for Bill Cassidy’s Senate seat and endorsed Julia Letlow in the race. But Skrmetta, who’s finishing his third term on the PSC, is termed out of his current seat and it’s coming open.

And the Republican primary for PSC District 1 looks like it might be our favorite of all the races.

Five candidates qualified under the GOP banner…

Wayne Cooper, a businessman from Tangipahoa Parish and John Mason, an attorney who ran for the seat in 2020 (he managed 13 percent of the vote), are in the race, but most of the attention is likely going to focus on the three current and former officeholders who are running.

Mark Wright, a state representative from Covington, is currently Chairman of the House Republican Delegation. Prior to that, he was Chairman of the House Transportation Committee. His fellow state representative Stephanie Hilferty doesn’t have any committee chairmanships on her record; she isn’t particularly well-liked among her fellow Republicans.

And then there’s John Young, the former parish president in Jefferson Parish who has been a candidate for higher office before. Young ran for Lt. Governor in 2015, losing to Billy Nungesser.

Young’s entry into the race on Friday muddied the waters a bit – previously it was thought to be a Northshore-vs.-Southshore race between Wright and Hilferty with some ideological undertones – Wright is generally regarded as a solid conservative, if not quite a Louisiana Freedom Caucus member, while Hilferty is most certainly not regarded as conservative at all.

We’ve covered her various peccadilloes and exploits multiple times in the past, of course.

The thinking is that Hilferty will have a good bit of New Orleans money behind her, while Wright will get the endorsements of most of the business and conservative groups, while Young is a strong candidate to make the runoff based on his demonstrated strength in Jefferson – though that’s based on an electoral record from more than a decade ago, and it’ll be interesting to see how that holds up.

The Public Service Commission regulates utilities in the state, but not all utilities and not all of the state. This might be an issue in the race.

Specifically, the regulation of electric utilities in Orleans Parish does not fall under the PSC’s ambit. The New Orleans City Council regulates electric utilities, which means Entergy, and nobody thinks they do a good job. The woke Democrats on the City Council fought Entergy for years on building a natural gas power plant in New Orleans East before finally relenting, and availability of electricity at decent rates is seen as a major obstacle (among many) to economic development in Orleans.

It’s very likely that we’ll see an effort at taking utility-regulation power away from the City Council in the upcoming legislative session and putting it in the hands of the PSC.

If so, Hilferty will be put in an interesting position.

Outside of Orleans Parish (Hilferty lives in the Lakeview section of New Orleans, and her House district straddles Orleans and Jefferson), most voters would probably prefer to see the PSC, rather than the New Orleans City Council, handling electric regulation. In Orleans Parish that might or might not be true.

Orleans is a very small part of PSC District 1. More than half the population of the district is on the Northshore. Most of Orleans is actually in District 2, which is represented by crypto-gay woke communist Devante Lewis (crypto-gay, because Lewis de-emphasized his sexuality when running for office solely on bringing down electric rates mostly in New Orleans where the PSC doesn’t regulate them, and then as soon as he won he proclaimed his victory as a landmark achievement for the LGBTQ crowd). But Stephanie Hilferty’s political allies are mostly New Orleans Democrat politicians who are generally toxic to voters in the suburbs, and if the big issue in the PSC District 1 race is taking regulatory power away from the City Council it puts her somewhat in a vice.

We’ll see how this works out. We’re admittedly a bit surprised Hilferty got into this race, but perhaps it’s more fun that she’s in it.