You hear this in every election, and it’s almost always one of those pat statements you can easily ignore, but it’s different this time and we’re actually telling you the truth.
Because if every East Baton Rouge Parish Republican voter – and if you’re a voter in Louisiana you know that there are lots of registered Democrats and independents who are nonetheless Republican voters, so they’re included in this – will get out to vote on Saturday for Sid Edwards, he’s going to win.
Really, he will.
The mayor’s race in Baton Rouge is something of a white elephant for Republicans in Louisiana, because it’s been 20 years since Democrats took control of the mayor-president seat and yet the demographics of the parish are such that it’s competitive. Baton Rouge isn’t like New Orleans, in that there is zero hope of a Republican winning even so much as a city council seat.
Quite the contrary. In fact, the coroner, sheriff, assessor and clerk of court in East Baton Rouge Parish are all Republicans, and the district attorney might as well be – essentially, the only reason Hillar Moore never switched parties is that he’s afraid of getting boat-raced by some Soros-funded leftist who rolls in against him with $2 million in out-of-state money.
Not to mention that seven of the 12 Metro Council members in East Baton Rouge Parish are Republicans.
Given all of that, it should be seen as realistic for a Republican to run for, and win, the top job in the parish. And yet for 20 years since Kip Holden took down Bobby Simpson to win that seat, there have been Republicans falling short again and again.
Which means there’s a perception among Republican voters in the parish that the GOP can’t win this race. Ted James ran on that perception, recruited a couple of GOP politicians in former state representative Scott McKnight and current state representative Paula Davis to shill for him, and put out a message that Republicans voters ought to surrender to him rather than vote for Sid Edwards because beating Sharon Broome with a Republican isn’t possible.
James came in third, and then endorsed Broome over Edwards, which made McKnight and Davis look like absolute idiots. The narrative that he aimed at Republican voters in the parish was a lie all along, given the coroner, sheriff, assessor and clerk of court.
And now we have early voting data from the primary which shows how close Edwards is to winning this election.
Here’s a graph we spun up which shows the early vote in the 2020 mayor-president runoff, the total vote in that race, the early vote in the current 2024 race, and a projection of the total vote in the 2024 election based on ratios from 2020. We’re not going to pretend this is scientific, for a number of reasons, but it’s pretty clear the opportunity for a win is right there for Edwards and the Republican voters in the parish.
Sure, it’s entirely possible that some of those Republican votes have been cannibalized based on get-out-the-vote efforts the Louisiana GOP has spearheaded on Edwards’ behalf. That said, we were privy to some of the strategy work done on that activity, and the people targeted for doorknocking were not the chronic GOP voters – instead, it was aimed at turning out high-fidelity, low-propensity voters. The chronic voters were largely left alone, in the assumption they’ll get themselves to the polls.
This is a turnout election.
Steve Carter lost by 15,000 votes, or a 57-43 margin, in that 2000 election. Having Democrats swamp Republicans essentially 2-to-1 in the early voting more or less blew him away. But four years later, after Baton Rougeans have watched in horror as Broome has utterly mismanaged the St. George incorporation, created scandals like the one around the $40 million stormwater fee, and presided over Baton Rouge turning essentially into Clownshow Murdertown as people like Allie Rice were murdered without so much as a lead for the cops to pursue, what we saw in early voting is completely different.
Republicans have gone from getting doubled up in early voting to being essentially at parity with Democrats. And white voters have gone from a slight early-voting lead to a sizable blowout this time. Our simple ratio projections actually show more Republicans than Democrats turning out in this race when it’s all said and done, though we’ll admit it’s going to take some work to make that happen.
But it doesn’t really matter that there are more Republicans than Democrats voting in this election, so long as it’s close. Four years ago 30 percent of the turnout in the early vote in the mayoral runoff came from registered Republicans, and with the typical pattern of the election-day vote being more GOP, that 30 percent grew to 32.8 percent. Carter got 43 percent of the total vote in that race.
So there’s a good 10 percent of the vote out there which is not registered Republican but will vote for a Republican for mayor-president in Baton Rouge, based on Steve Carter’s performance in 2020, which was, frankly, poor. Carter was in poor health and actually died of COVID a few weeks after the election that year.
The early vote number for registered GOP voters this time was 39 percent, and if the election-day number bumps that two percent up to 41 on Saturday, the math should tell you Edwards would be at 51 percent. That’s if all he can add to the GOP vote is 10 percent after the carnival of incompetence and dishonesty that Broome has put on over the past four years.
We’ve heard anecdotal evidence of Ted James signs in North Baton Rouge coming down after the primary and Sid Edwards signs going up in their place.
That’s all very nice, and Edwards having been a very successful high school football coach in the northern part of the parish – he just took Istrouma to the state quarterfinals in only his second year this year, and he didn’t have a single player sign with a major college this week – should have some relationships within the black community that should give him some inroads there.
But at the end of the day, the surest way to win this election, especially given the complete lack of enthusiasm voters have for giving Broome four more years to destroy this place, is for Republican voters to turn out en masse on Saturday and simply swamp the incumbent and run her out of office.
This can happen.
Southern University is playing in the SWAC Championship out of town this weekend. Thousands of Broome’s voters will be gone and not voting. Meanwhile LSU’s football team is home waiting on a bowl bid.
It’s expected to rain through Sunday. That typically will keep turnout down among low-propensity voters, and in the past that’s been a problem for Democrats.
Everything is in place for Edwards to win. But all that does is present an opportunity. You have to execute if you’re a Republican voter in East Baton Rouge Parish if you don’t want to watch Sharon Broome trash this place even more than she’s already done. So whatever else you do, get out and vote. This time it’ll actually mean something.
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