Introduction
Halloween comes early this year, with a veritable parade of ghouls and boogeymen crawling out from the shadows and swamps all across the great state of Louisiana plying voters with every manner of trick and very few treats ahead of Election Day, October 14th. But only a ghastly few will come to rule us mortals as our next batch of state elected officials. While we’re sure to see a fair number of creeps and weirdos lurking the rank halls of the state Capitol come inauguration day, this year our chapter has voted to endorse two candidates who promise to shine a light on the murky depths of Louisiana politics to cast out some of those creepy crawlies (more on them later in the guide) and maybe guide us out of the haunted house of conservative austerity politics and reactionary entrenchment that has cursed us all for the last several decades.
By wide margins, our local members voted to endorse Mandie Landry for House District 91 and Lauren Jewett for state Board of Elementary & Secondary Education, District 1. These endorsements represent our first in strategically targeted districts in the state legislature and on school boards; previously, we have only endorsed Bernie Sanders for President in 2016 and 2020 and Margee Green for state Agriculture Commissioner in 2019. Both candidates are members of our chapter and participated in our democratically-mandated endorsement process.
What makes these candidates special is that each is committed to something greater than any one election. Both are committed to ideals that look beyond a Louisiana where the best we can hope for is the bare minimum. They have built inclusive and genuinely grassroots campaigns that center meaningful engagement with their constituents (or prospective constituents), which means they don’t have to limit their political vision to accommodate the dysfunctions that have kneecapped progress in this state, only to the benefit of an ever-slimming bracket of elites. Our endorsed candidates look beyond that status quo, where the many muddle through or suffer and the few enjoy their spoils, toward the better world that they believe is possible—which is the central ethos of our work as members of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Read more about the candidates and why we’re supporting them in their entries later in this guide, and if you’re in their district(s), we ask that you cast your vote for them. Finally, our endorsed candidates can’t win this fight alone, and neither can we. Making that better world a reality takes a mass movement made up of and led by those who need it, who want it, and who believe in it—and that’s what we’re trying to build together. Join us for the ride.