Now that Julia Letlow will be vacating her District 5 seat to challenge Bill Cassidy for his U.S. Senate seat, the race is on for her successor. Greg Hilburn, a Louisiana politics reporter for the USA Today Network, says this will be a wide-open race – at least in one of the primaries.
“There are a ton of Republicans who want to run in this race, want to be the next congressman from the Fifth District, and there’s a wild card still out there, and that’s Garret Graves,” Hilburn said.
Garret Graves formerly represented the Sixth District until he was effectively drawn out of that district, leading him to drop his re-election bid. Hilburn says while he does not expect Graves to run, there are several people who you will likely see on the ballot on the Republican side.
“Stuart Cathey, he’s a senator from Monroe. We have Michael Echols, who’s an established State Representative from Monroe, Misti Cordell, who is close to the governor, and is a chairman of the Board of Regents in Baton Rouge. We’ve got Rick Edmonds in the Senate,” Hilburn said.
The Fifth District is decidedly Republican, as are the three other Republican-leaning districts in the state. Hilburn says with qualifying less than three weeks away, the candidates will have to resort to creative ways to raise any significant amounts of money.
“To be able to raise money and establish yourself through the media markets throughout that district, they’re going to have to give as much earned media as they can for sure,” Hilburn explained.