Last week wasn’t so hot for Shreveport mayoral candidate Republican Caddo Parish Commissioner John-Paul Young. By contrast, it went pretty well for incumbent Republican Mayor Tom Arceneaux.

At the Commission’s work session Monday, Young offered up a resolution that would have placed a two-year moratorium on data center siting in the parish. He also wanted to advance to Thursday’s regular meeting a resolution by a colleague to require more onerous environmental impact studies on centers.

Instead, commissioners, perhaps because resolutions don’t have the force of law, decided to send the matters to committee. Only an ordinance would be enforceable, but legally the parish can’t pass one on this matter because it doesn’t have a master plan. That came as a consequence of the separation of the parish and Shreveport from joint zoning for a portion of parish jurisdiction a few years ago, leaving a good chunk of the parish unregulated.

Young last year voted to allow the parish’s payment-in-lieu-of-taxes arrangement from which the Amazon-intended data center took advantage. Now, he says he acted too hastily in not demanding greater transparency and hashing out additional details, which he said the resolution could accomplish.

Yet the more pressing need to change his mind came from his mayoral candidacy. Young essentially is running for pique against Arceneaux for perceived grievances, as well as from a belief that his somewhat right-of-center record is a better fit for the majority-black Shreveport electorate than Arceneaux’s agenda, which is more conservative but muted. Success in attracting data centers to the area largely falls on the mayor, as he, along with Democrats on the Commission and City Council, has been an unabashed supporter of their locating in and around the city. Arceneaux has his incumbency and fat campaign coffers, so Young needs to differentiate himself to gain traction in an uphill battle. Lately, significant numbers of GOP voters – although likely skewed largely to rural areas – have expressed misgivings at the speed at which center rollouts have been occurring.

Which is why his campaign received a blow, and Arceneaux’s a boost, when the next day it was announced that Amazon pulled the trigger on the option for a third area data center, in Shreveport’s Resilient Technology Park. By the numbers, it’s an extra $6 billion invested for potentially more than 200 jobs and almost 500 more indirectly. While not under parish jurisdiction, the economic benefits undoubtedly will spill over into the parish.

Shreveport, a chronic population-loser and slow-growth economic hub, needs a shot in the arm, and Arceneaux’s consistent championing of centers to reverse the former and jumpstart the latter appears to be paying off, which will catch the attention of its urbanized voters. While Democrats largely oppose data centers nationally, some portion of them in Shreveport will welcome the economic benefits, and the third facility’s location won’t be very disruptive to nearby residents – a complaint about the parish’s incipient facility. This will aid Arceneaux in putting together the disparate coalition that, for different reasons, sent him into office four years ago and is necessary for a repeat.

As for Young, it seems he has fallen on the wrong side of the issue in Shreveport, and so that won’t be a magic bullet that propels him onto equal terms with Arceneaux or the leading candidate among Democrats, state Rep. Tammy Phelps, in hopes of making the inevitable runoff.