You would think, based on the fact that St. Tammany Parish has become the most upscale place in all of Louisiana, that the local politics there would be the cleanest Louisiana has to offer.

You’d think that and you’d be wrong, of course.

Take, for example, the fact that St. Tammany’s former sheriff Randy Smith had to resign last year after pleading guilty to second-degree battery arising from his beating the hell out of one of his critics at a fashionable Madisonville steakhouse. It’s generally thought that if you’re going to have police brutality, it would typically involve an arrest rather than a side of potatoes au gratin, but they do it a little differently in St. Tammany.

When you consider that Smith replaced longtime Sheriff Jack Strain, who is now spending the rest of his life in jail as a kiddie-diddler – Strain also got himself convicted and sentenced to 10 years in jail on a federal bribery beef – you begin to see a pattern.

So there’s a special election to replace Smith. Bret Ibert, the current interim Sheriff and a longtime deputy in that department, decided not to make the race. He’s retiring after the new guy takes office.

We don’t blame Ibert. That guy has seen an awful lot.

There are four candidates in the race and it’s competitive. The somewhat-likely winner, or at least he’s got the most money and endorsements at this point, seems to be a familiar name – Robert Hodges, the retired Colonel of the Louisiana State Police. Hodges was in the LSP for 31 years, working his way up from trooper to Superintendent under Gov. Jeff Landry (2024–mid-2026). That job oversaw roughly 2,800 employees, and LSP has a large budget, and Hodges did a lot when he ran LSP; among his accomplishments, he helped stand up Troop NOLA, and he was in charge of major events including post-Katrina work and the investigation of the New Year’s 2025 Bourbon Street attack. As of earlier this month Hodges had raised just under $600,000, which was

Two others in the race are former U.S. Marshal Scott Illing and former St. Tammany Sheriff’s Deputy David Maki, who is the only non-Republican in the race (Maki is running as “no party.”). Neither have raised a whole lot of money.

But the other candidate running gives off the vibe of giving St. Tammany its third straight exceptionally colorful Sheriff – something you’d think the folks don’t want, but then again maybe they do.

That would be Daniel Seuzeneaux (Soo-zen-oh), who hails from the Slidell police department save for the year that he followed Smith to the Sheriff’s Department as its spokesman. Seuzeneaux has been a Slidell cop for two decades, but he’s parlayed that into something of an empire of sorts. You might know about him – he’s been the public information officer for the Slidell PD for a good while and in that role he built up a Facebook page which has 250,000 followers, presumably for the police department but now it’s his campaign page, which is a little strange, plus he’s been on national TV a bit – shows like Live PD and  The First 48, for example. Seuzeneaux was Chief Administrative Officer and then interim chief, following Randy Fandal jumping from police chief to mayor in Slidell.

Seuzeneaux has raised around $435,000 as of earlier this month. It looks like Hodges and Seuzeneaux are going to be in the runoff, or maybe one of them can get to 50 percent on November 3. As such, they’re throwing haymakers at each other. The St. Tammany Chamber of Commerce’s PAC co-endorsed them; there’s something of a Mandeville/Covington vs. Slidell regional thing going on with this race, which is an actual political divide in St. Tammany that most people outside of that parish don’t pay much attention to but it’s becoming almost like the East Bank/West Bank divide in Jefferson Parish.

That plays into this quite a bit.

But there’s more going on.

Seuzeneaux’s camp is pushing the narrative that Hodges’ is Landry’s man, and it’s not unreasonable to say that – he worked directly for Landry as the State Police Superintendent. There is also a lawsuit from Hodges’ time in that office which may or may not actually help Hodges.

Treone Larvadain was LSP’s first black female captain, and she’s the plaintiff in the suit. It accuses Hodges of age and gender discrimination plus retaliation. According to the suit, Hodges vowed to end “DEI,” which one is tempted to think he’d want to put on a mailer in St. Tammany, and that Hodges pushed her toward a women’s prison leadership role with comments about being a woman and “working with her kind.” Hodges demoted her, with a large pay cut, stripped duties from her, and effectively forced her resignation, per the suit.

Hodges has called the allegations frivolous and false, stating he appointed the most qualified people, that there was no DEI at LSP, and that there will be none in the Sheriff’s Office. Which, from the perspective of a relatively typical St. Tammany voter, sounds pretty good.

Does his affiliation with Jeff Landry cost him in St. Tammany? We’re not convinced of that, but there are people who will say it will.

Hodges’ camp has its own complaints about Seuzeneaux.

A public-records request and lawsuit surrounding it sought roughly 20 years of Seuzeneaux’s Slidell PD employment records – including personnel files, disciplinary items, outside employment, vehicle purchases, communications involving Matt Bowers Auto Group and Southern Rogue Media, which is his ad-agency side company. That’s standard campaign oppo research stuff, but it kicked over an anthill of sorts. Seuzeneaux answered the lawsuit saying he has no disciplinary history, that vehicles he bought through the Slidell PD were purchased on the up and up and that he’s being essentially witch-hunted.

Which are fair statements. Except a memo arising from the public records request noted that Seuzeneaux seems to be more of a car dealer media buyer than a cop of late…

On April 22, 2020, Seuzeneau submitted a request for “permission to accept outside employment” with Southern United Auto Group, under the direct supervision of Matt Bowers.
Seuzeneau asked for permission to work 20 hours per week, with an “unknown” schedule. Seuzeneau asked for the term of this employment to be allowed to extend indefinitely. Seuzeneau listed the services he would perform as “Consulting, Marketing, Advertising.” In a supplemental letter, he detailed the specific services he would provide to Bowers and Bowers’ companies, such as placing advertisements for Bowers’ companies and producing a podcast for Bowers. Seuzeneau disclosed that he “may” personally appear on “television, social media, advertisements, or podcasts” as part of his outside employment with Bowers. Then-police chief Randy Fandal approved Seuzeneau’s request on April 29, 2020.

The memo also notes he hasn’t arrested anybody since he got that job with Bowers’ car dealership group. Also, Seuzeneaux said that among Southern Rogue Media’s clients were “law firms,” but he hasn’t said whether any of those law firms did criminal defense work.  It wouldn’t be great if they did.

Also in the files released via the public records request was this, which doesn’t say much but we thought was amusing…

This file includes Seuzeneau’s annual “Police Officer Performance Evaluation” documents. Two separate annual performance evaluation documents – one covering 2018 and one covering 2019 – include the following language lauding how well-dressed he is: “Detective Seuzeneau is always very well dressed and clean shaven. Detective Seuzeneau almost always arrives at work in dress slacks, a long sleeve dress shirt, and a tie. As a result, he is consistently one of the most well dressed detectives in the division.” The evaluation covering 2019 (conducted in 2020) includes “Chief’s Comments” noting that Seuzeneau’s responsibilities had recently expanded to include “assist[ing] with purchasing.”

What that tells you is he’s not really the uniformed beat cop archetype, even though he’s always wearing the uniform in those press conferences on TV and at that Facebook page, but the sheriff isn’t generally in a uniform anyway. It’s not disqualifying, but it’s curious. Did that stuff about how well-dressed he is go into the evaluation as a shot at him?

Seuzeneaux resigned as the interim police chief in Slidell to run for Sheriff, but right after he resigned he got appointed as an “Administrative Reserve – Special Assistant to the Chief,” which sounds like he’s still in charge of the Slidell PD. That’s not evidence he’s doing anything wrong, per se, but it does seem like it’s a little fuzzy for somebody who advertises his transparency.

The memo has other items in it which smell funny. For example, he’s said he’s a SWAT officer, but the records show he’s done all of five hours of SWAT training since 2019 and none since 2023. And the job working for Bowers is a little weird – here he is doing marketing work for the dealer group at the same time he’s the CAO of the department making its purchasing decisions. A role like that is supposed to get oversight and by rule it has to be approved annually. It hasn’t been since 2020, because the guy in charge of the approvals is Daniel Seuzeneaux.

This is Louisiana, after all.

What’s not in evidence, and therefore the accusation hasn’t been made, is whether the Slidell PD is buying cars from Bowers. It would be really, really on the nose if they were.

Some of this is likely to get resolved on Wednesday, when there’s a hearing set about the lawsuit filed over the public records request. Some of the records sought haven’t been produced, or at least that’s what the suit’s plaintiffs say.

And what it means is next week is likely to be pretty wild in St. Tammany.

We’re getting same-old, same-old vibes about Seuzeneaux, which is something they really can’t afford in another sheriff. Hopefully that’s a false read. But it does seem like he’s got a lot to fall back on if he doesn’t win.