Foster Campbell, not-so-affectionately known as Bananas Foster due to his often loopy pronouncements and various political hijinks, is termed out as a Public Service Commissioner after this year. When he goes, there will be no white Democrats in any elected position above the state legislature.

It looks almost certain that Campbell’s replacement will be a Republican with very, very different views on how the Public Service Commission, and the commissioners, handle business.

The Public Service Commission races now fall under the state’s new party primary rules – the PSC was included with federal races in switching from the old jungle-primary system to party primaries – and the District 5 race to replace Campbell will offer an interesting little test of what party primaries will do to Louisiana’s Democrats.

So far it doesn’t look like the Democrat primary will be super-competitive, but it’s going to be a black-vs-white contest between Shreveport City Councilman James Green, the pastor of Union Mission Baptist Church in Shreveport, and Austin Lawson of Bossier City, who styles himself a working man and is running on a working man’s platform…

It’s a pretty solid bet that Green and Lawson will slug it out to see which one can bash Corporate America the hardest, and that should be fun to watch. Green has said that Campbell is “one of my heroes of public service,” and that he’d like to follow in his footsteps.

Campbell was a frequent attacker of all things business, and he managed to win a trio of elections in a PSC district which spanned most of North Louisiana – a reasonably conservative territory – which was a surprise.

How he did it, though, probably can’t be duplicated by the latest round of Dems.

Campbell was known to essentially run an extortion racket. He solicited big donations from the companies the PSC regulates, and he did so more or less through terror. Campbell would rail against this utility or that, and he would threaten all kinds of awful consequences from his rage at “fatcats” and “crooked corporations,” and then they’d pay him protection money by way of campaign contributions. When Republicans would run against him they’d struggle to raise money, because people who aren’t regulated by the PSC generally struggle to care about what it does (utility regulation  is highly important but it’s a subject embedded very deep in the weeds) and the people who were affected were too afraid of Campbell to effectively back an opponent of his.

Two six-year cycles went by with Campbell managing to defy the odds because of cash-starved opponents. Neither Green nor Lawson have the means to continue that advantage, and so what it appears is they’ll both simply trash Big Tech and other corporate entities over data centers being built in the district – starting with Meta’s facility in Rayville, and now including the newest facility to be built in the Shreveport-Bossier area. People are understandably freaked out about data centers and the power they’re going to use, but if there is anywhere in the world that’s less of a major concern it’s northwest Louisiana, which sits on a gargantuan pocket of natural gas known as the Haynesville Shale. And natural gas power plants are more or less the cheapest to build of any.

There is a body of thought which holds that Green is only running for Campbell’s seat in an effort to drive up turnout in Shreveport for the district attorney race in which GOP state senator Alan Seabaugh is attempting to take down the incumbent Caddo Parish DA, a Soros-funded leftist named James Stewart.

The Republican favorite who is very likely to win the election and replace Campbell, on the other hand, couldn’t be further from him. John Atkins, a timber company executive and former Conoco geophysicist, is in his third term on the Caddo Parish Commission. Atkins has been on the board of the Louisiana Committee for a Conservative Majority and a conservative donor for quite some time.

And in an opposite philosophical statement from Bananas Foster’s modus operandi, Atkins says he won’t accept any donations from utilities and others regulated by the PSC. His campaign caught a check earlier this year from one such company; he gave it back.

“I think it’s best to keep them at arm’s length,” said Atkins of the donation.

Atkins’ opponent in the GOP primary is Aiden Joyner, a college student at UL-Monroe.

It doesn’t promise to be a particularly competitive race – Atkins will almost certainly win. But the PSC District 5 race should be interesting for the giant shift it will represent away from the old Bananas Foster Campbell way of doing things, and as such it’ll be one of our favorite races to watch nonetheless.