After Saturday’s elections, Louisiana Democratic Party Chair Katie Bernhardt's chances of keeping her position as party head aren’t looking good.
At least one candidate, former state Rep. Randal Gaines of LaPlace has already announced he’s running for chair. And there are a host of candidates who may also challenge Bernhardt, who despite losing her own race Saturday has said she will defend her role as chair.
Other potential candidates include 32-year-old Louisiana Public Service Commissioner Davante Lewis, who has said he’s considering a run, two-time statewide candidate Caroline Fayard, 24-year-old Bogalusa Mayor Tyrin Truong and state Rep. Jason Hughes of New Orleans.
Bernhardt on Saturday lost her seat on the Democratic State Central Committee, the 210-member body that elects the party chair and other leadership roles in the party. Attorney Madeleine Brumley Clavier defeated her handily, receiving 600 votes to Bernhardt’s 337 in a race with 12% turnout.
The new state committee also now includes 61 members of Blue Reboot, a reform group whose members have all pledged to vote against Bernhardt. Plus, committee members who supported her for chair in 2020 may not vote for her again, given Democrats’ poor showing in the elections last fall and hard feelings about her ad floating a run for governor last year.
“She's a weakened candidate on every front,” Blue Reboot organizer Lynda Woolard told Gambit. “I haven't talked to many people or heard a tale of many people who are saying that she's the right course to continue taking.”
Clavier, a Blue Reboot member, ran on a reform platform, saying the party needs to take strong positions on issues that Democratic voters care about rather than trying to play the middle out of fears of alienating conservative voters.
“Running candidates who moderate on policy to try to win over conservative voters has not produced results,” she wrote on her website. “With polarization on the rise and voter turnout remaining stubbornly low, there is no reason to think it ever will.”
Bob Mann, who spent more than two decades working in Louisiana Democratic politics, said he’s never seen such a public effort to reform the party.
“This is the most interest and most enthusiasm I've seen for the party in at least the last 20 years,” he said.
Anyone can run for chair, not just those on the state committee. Gaines, Lewis and Hughes all have seats on the new DSCC. Fayard lost her DSCC race, while Truong didn’t run for a seat on the committee.
Woolard says she believes Blue Reboot “will try to have a unified voice" in the party chair race. Should Lewis run, as a Blue Reboot member, he could receive his fellow members’ votes.
While Bernhardt has not set a date yet for leadership elections, state law says the party must hold one within 40 days of Saturday’s election.
Woolard, who ran against Bernhardt for chair in 2020, said that the next chair will need to work on “bringing everybody together, unifying the party, but also motivating and inspiring voters.”
But both she and Mann also agreed a new chair won’t solve all the party’s problems.
“I don't think that it changes a whole lot if the only thing that changes is Katie Bernhardt for somebody else,” Mann said.
Woolard said the chair will need Democrats working on all fronts — including at the local level and support staff and executive committee at the state level — to raise money and create programs to register Democrats and get them to the polls.
On that front, Woolard said she's encouraged by the fact that some Blue Reboot candidates who lost their DSCC race won their races for seats on their local Democratic Parish Executive Committees — which means they can work on building the party up at the parish level. She also said Blue Reboot’s efforts have inspired new faces to get involved in political organizing across the state.
“I've repeatedly had people message me or say to me like, 'This is the first time I felt hope in a long time,’” she said. “While it's just the beginning, I think it's been able to show people that if you organize and you get energized around something that you can make progress."
From the New Orleans metro to small towns across Louisiana, these DSCC races are heating up.