Ever since President Trump dropped a bomb on the U.S. Senate race in Louisiana and endorsed Julia Letlow, which precipitated Letlow’s entry into that race, we’ve seen a scramble of announcements for the 5th Congressional District seat that Letlow is vacating.
It’s getting hard to keep track of all of them.
Increasingly, it’s also becoming clear that the 5th District Letlow represented, as it’s currently constructed thanks to the 2022 congressional map Louisiana created in order to create a 2nd black Democrat district for Cleo Fields, is a monstrosity which is best lost to history sooner rather than later – though that necessary correction isn’t going to happen until after the 2026 election, something which will not redound well to the benefit of Republican incumbents in the 2027 statewide cycle.
Perhaps we’ll have more on that in another entry here at the site.
Meanwhile, the candidates keep coming all the time in the 5th District, which has been traditionally a Monroe-Alexandria district but now represents those areas, more or less, plus dives down into the Baton Rouge area and the Florida Parishes in one of the dumbest congressional districts ever drawn – and as such, we’re seeing two specific camps of candidates cropping up.
There’s the Monroe/North Louisiana camp, and there’s the Baton Rouge camp.
- Stewart Cathey: State Senator from Monroe; focused on conservative priorities like border security and economic growth.
- Misti Cordell: Chair of the Louisiana Board of Regents (appointed by Gov. Jeff Landry); physician recruiter from Monroe; emphasizes defending Trump, tax cuts, pro-life policies, and parental rights in education.
- Daryl Deshotel: State Representative from Marksville.
- Michael Echols: State Representative from Monroe; chairman of the House Republican Delegation.
And the Baton Rouge camp:
- Larry Davis: Member of the Livingston Parish Republican Executive Committee; from Livingston Parish.
- Rick Edmonds: State Senator from Baton Rouge; highlights experience in rural communities and job creation.
- Dixon McMakin: State Representative from East Baton Rouge Parish; also known as the public address announcer for LSU’s Tiger Stadium and other sporting events.
- Joshua Morott: From Livingston Parish; emphasizes conservative values in his bid.
- Ray Smith: Army veteran and former Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office employee.
- Sammy Wyatt: Navy veteran, retired police officer, and educator; “America First” conservative focused on border security, Second Amendment rights, pro-life issues, fiscal responsibility, and election integrity.
There are a couple of Democrats in the race as well:
- Jessee Fleenor: Dairy farmer and single father of three; positions himself as a “new generation of Blue-Dog Democrat” seeking real change.
- Larry Foy: Regional Director for the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity; social justice advocate.
McMakin, whose family has ties in Monroe, and Cordell, who has a house in Baton Rouge, will argue they belong in both geographical camps. That’s arguable; the conventional wisdom is going to be that the North Louisiana folks will split up the Monroe/Alexandria vote and the Baton Rouge area folks will split up the vote in the district’s southern cluster and it’s likely that one of each will make the GOP runoff.
Meanwhile, Fleenor is the white Democrat and Foy is the black Democrat, and the large majority of the registered Dems in the 5th District are black, so you can pretty much figure out how that one is going to go without our help.
We’re not even going to try to handicap this race. Nor are we going to try to score all of these candidates as to which ones conservatives should back, or run from. It’s too early. What we can say is that Edmonds, McMakin, Echols, Cathey and Deshotel have all been various shades of pretty good in the Louisiana legislature, and having them fight it out along with others like Cordell and Davis will make for a quite robust race.
In a district which shouldn’t exist as drawn.
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