Jeremy Alford and David Jacobs: Will Legislature choose between two incumbents?

The Legislature’s special session to push back the 2026 election calendar by a month reached its quick and forgone conclusion last week.
Gov. Jeff Landry and the Republican leadership in the Legislature hope the new schedule will buy them some extra time as they wait for the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of the state’s congressional map. Whenever the court issues a ruling, lawmakers may find themselves back in Baton Rouge to draw a new map.
The current map includes a new, second majority-minority district that allowed Congressman Cleo Fields of Baton Rouge to join fellow Black Democratic Congressman Troy Carter of New Orleans in our delegation.
Should the Supremes throw out the map, the Legislative Black Caucus will continue fighting for two minority districts, but conventional wisdom suggests the most likely scenario will be a revised map with just one such district.
If that is indeed the case, will Fields or Carter be sacrificed? 
While some Republicans would prefer the Black Caucus make the decision, its members are adamant that they want no part of that plan. 
“I haven’t been a part of any meeting that talks about… [starting] from the proposition of accepting discrimination,” said Sen. Gary Carter, who sits on the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee that would have to approve a new map. Gary Carter is also the nephew of Troy Carter.
Gary Carter added, “That is not something that’s been the history of my people, let alone my party, and that’s not something that we accept.”
As Rep. Edmond Jordan, chair of the Black Caucus, echoed those remarks and said the state’s population figures call for two minority districts.
“We’re not going to be in support of any map that does not have two minority districts,” Jordan stressed.
Troy Carter said the current map works fine. If the Supreme Court decides it doesn’t, “we’ll rely on the Legislature to draw maps that will recognize the diversity of our state” without diluting the voice of Black voters, he said. 
Asked if he would run for re-election in a district that is no longer majority-minority, he said he would consider it if the new lines aren’t drawn in a way that completely kills his chances. 
“Remember, we’re living in a state that has never elected an African-American statewide since Reconstruction,” said Congressman Carter. “We’re living in a state that has never elected a member of Congress from a majority-white district since Reconstruction.”
Fields didn’t respond to interview requests for this column. It’s no secret, however, that he has a strong working relationship with Gov. Landry, which raises the possibility that, if it comes down to a political fight, Fields would have the upper hand at the Capitol over Carter. 
“I think that the people of Louisiana are smart,” Carter said “I trust the voters to see through any political favoritism and that they will respond in kind.”
Silas Lee, a New Orleans-based polling consultant and political analyst, said it’s too soon to tell which way the political winds will blow. 
“Who can muster the political resources and support in the state Legislature?” Lee said. “Will it be Cleo? Will it be Troy? They both have a history out of the state Legislature.” 
Even if the politics are in Fields’ favor, the state’s demographics may be more friendly to Carter.
Demographer Michael Hefner, who testified for the plaintiffs in the case against the current map, argued it’s impossible to create a second majority-minority district in Louisiana while still adhering to other traditional redistricting criteria, such as compactness, because the state’s Black population outside of New Orleans is too spread out. 
Other experts disagree, including demographer Anthony Fairfax, who testified for the defense that many majority-minority configurations could pass muster. (Florida-based Democratic data analyst Matthew Isbell presents one option at the end of this post.)
But while you could craft a district anchored in Baton Rouge that is both compact and competitive, Hefner said it would be hard to nudge the minority population over 50 percent without racial gerrymandering. 
Meanwhile, a district centered in New Orleans that favors Carter could be a simpler matter, and a reversion to the Legislature’s 2010 redistricting plan, with a few tweaks, Hefner said.
So what if Republicans wanted a 6-0 map, cutting out Fields and Carter? Hefner said it wouldn’t be that difficult to get Carter’s district below 50 percent minority by adjusting boundaries in Orleans and Jefferson parish and manipulating the areas that house Black precincts. 
“I would hope they wouldn’t go in that direction,” he said. “I think [the New Orleans district] has pretty much stood the test of time as being a majority Black district.” 
Of course, all of this is speculation until we know how the Supreme Court will rule.
While few SCOTUS-watchers expect them to let the current map stand, they certainly could. 
They could also send it back to a lower court, along with clearer instructions than they have offered in the past.
The possibilities are practically endless. 
During special session debate, some Democrats suggested Republicans already have a plan to eliminate one or both minority districts.
Some said they were doing the bidding of President Donald Trump, who has been pushing GOP-led states to create new Republican-leaning districts ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. 
“The only thing that I know the White House wants is to find out what this opinion’s going to look like,” said House and Governmental Affairs Chair Beau Beaullieu. “If there’s a plan, it hasn’t made it to my desk.”
Beaullieu said he’s not aware of anyone already working on a map, though he noted that he wouldn’t necessarily hear about it if they were. Other members of the House leadership are saying the same.
“I would imagine that there’s six members of Congress who have maps in mind,” said Speaker Pro Tem Mike Johnson, “but as far as the Legislature, no.” 
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