On Monday (Sept. 16), Devin Davis stepped up to the dais before the New Orleans City Council, which was holding a hearing on how city agencies and local utilities handled Hurricane Francine. The storm had grazed the city last week and caused power outages for about 56,000 residents, and the meeting drew dozens of public commenters who focused much of their ire toward the representatives from Entergy New Orleans in the room.
But Davis, who wore gold wire-framed glasses and a gray blazer, lending his cherubic face an air of authority, had a slightly different target in mind. He identified himself as not just a concerned citizen but also a candidate to represent New Orleans in Congress this fall. He bemoaned that what amounted to a lower-intensity hurricane had still managed to knock out power for so many people.
“If this was a test, Entergy would have failed, and yet, it seems Entergy fails every test, every year, every storm,” Davis said. “The question is whether some of our elected officials – and particularly our member of Congress – is willing to go against their donors’ wishes and actually regulate Entergy.”
The comment was part of a slate of public appearances by Davis, who is running as a progressive challenger to incumbent Congressman Troy Carter, a fellow Democrat, in the 2nd Congressional District. In recent weeks, Davis could be found holding a press conference about the state’s home insurance crisis, visiting the picket line of the Communication Workers of America and handing out food and supplies after Hurricane Francine – aiming to build name recognition and align himself with progressive stances that he hopes will resonate with voters.
The Davis campaign might appear like a long shot. Davis, who most recently worked for the political arm of the New Orleans-based civil rights group Voice of the Experienced (VOTE), is 27 years old and has never held public office. As of his last campaign finance report, Davis had raised about $32,000 this election cycle, compared to about $1.2 million for Carter. And Davis does not boast the same political connections as Carter, who is expected to receive support from the Louisiana Democratic Party and many of its most prominent members.
But Davis is running on a campaign to capture the voters disillusioned by the current state Democratic Party, which has come under fire in recent years for failing to run candidates in many state and congressional races – effectively forfeiting the seats to Republicans – while endorsing candidates running against its own progressive members.
Davis said he is hoping to challenge the status quo and center issues that he feels have long been neglected: high costs of living, including climbing home insurance rates, for regular Louisianians; the scourge of corporate donations going into the coffers of Democrats; and the injustice wreaked on Cancer Alley, the industrial corridor spanning Baton Rouge and New Orleans, much of which is in the 2nd District.
After all, these are issues Davis is intimately familiar with.
Davis is a child of southeast Louisiana. He was born in St. John the Baptist Parish, a part of Cancer Alley. He grew up attending parades on St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans, where his parents owned a restaurant. Multiple family members, including his grandfather, worked for petrochemical companies.
“He actually worked for the Shell Oil refinery in Norco for the last 25 years of his life,” Davis told Verite News in an interview. “It was the last 25 years of his life because he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and told he only had two weeks left to live.”
His grandfather died in his early 60s, shortly after receiving his cancer diagnosis. Davis was just 5 years old at the time.
“And the tragedy is that it is not a one-off instance,” Davis said, adding that many families have struggled with similar diagnoses in Cancer Alley. He criticized Carter for taking “millions” in campaign contributions from petrochemical and insurance industry interests — “these very people that are actively killing folks in our communities.”
Carter has accepted contributions from oil, gas and energy companies, including Entergy, after initially pledging not to take money from them. Two of his top contributors this election cycle so far include the liquified natural gas company Venture Global LNG, which contributed $7,200, and the landfill company River Birch Incorporated, which contributed $19,800. Carter has also received $29,000 from the insurance industry, according to OpenSecrets.
Davis pointed to Carter’s support from those industries as proof that Carter won’t address what Davis sees as the key issues facing voters in the district that only the federal government can address: climate change born out of environmental racism and corporate greed.
“When I look at this growing climate crisis, when I look at this growing threat of environmental racism throughout Cancer Alley, many of these solutions are on the federal level and require somebody in Washington that’s, yes, ensuring that funds are getting allocated throughout our district properly, but that are also bringing more solutions that address these issues that impact more than just our state,” Davis said.
Carter declined to be interviewed for this story.
A path to office?
The election of Jeff Landry to the governor’s office last October without a runoff was seen as a catastrophic failure for the state’s Democratic Party. That prompted an effort to reshape party headquarters earlier this year when around 100 candidates ran to join and reform the Democratic State Central Committee as part of a “Blue Reboot” campaign. The reformers eventually won about one-third of the committee’s 210 seats.
Davis was among Blue Reboot’s slate of candidates, but he ultimately lost his race to state Sen. Royce Duplessis.
“Those party positions are in very low turnout elections, and there was not a lot of turnaround and opportunity to build a campaign,” said Bruce Reilly, the deputy director of Voters Organized to Educate (VOTE’s political arm), which is supporting Davis’s campaign. “And so, he lost to Duplessis, who is obviously a very strong candidate with lots of name recognition.”
That loss doesn’t worry Reilly, who believes that the political calculus will be entirely different in a congressional race, where more voters turn out, especially the kind that he thinks Davis will most appeal to: young progressives.
“Obviously it’s a long shot in terms of this particular race and at this point in time, but it’s actually a good shot,” Reilly said. “One, people get just really excited about him as an individual and his skill set and want to put him in a position to be a congressperson. And two, people just kind of get tired of the same old 40 years of dysfunction. And, you know, Troy Carter represents a political establishment that didn’t save the city.”
For many years, Louisiana’s 2nd Congressional District reliably elected Democrats to Congress – the only district to regularly do so in Louisiana. (A recent exception, former Republican Rep. Joseph Cao, was elected just three years after Hurricane Katrina and served only one term.) In the district, notable state Democrats honed their reputations, Hale and Lindy Boggs cemented their legacies, William Jefferson courted scandal and Cedric Richmond developed into a prominent ally and advisor of President Joe Biden’s administration.
While generally seen as a moderate, Carter can point to some progressive causes he has championed. In his short time serving the district, Carter has supported legislation to expunge marijuana misdemeanors; directed funding to Louisiana farmers, the Regional Transit Authority, The New Orleans Recreation Department and other organizations; and championed Louisiana’s participation in the summer EBT program. A campaign flyer for Carter boasts of millions of dollars distributed to the district.
But the upcoming election — which coincides with the presidential election — will likely be the largest group of voters that Carter has faced yet, having twice been elected with low voter turnout.
In 2021, Carter won in a special runoff election against then-state Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, who fashioned herself as the more progressive option. Voter turnout was only 16.8%. (The primary for that race included another progressive challenger in Gary Chambers, who only secured 21% of vote and failed to advance to the runoff.) In the 2022 midterms, when Carter ran again, turnout increased to 41.2%. Carter’s only opponent in the solidly Democratic district was a Republican.
However, presidential elections tend to bring out a higher share of voters. And in 2020, voter turnout was at 65.8% for the 2nd District race when Richmond was elected.
This is also the first election since Louisiana created a second majority-Black district by dramatically altering the 6th district, also changing the shape and demographics of the 2nd District. While the district still includes most of New Orleans, it now has more rural and white voters than it did previously. That might mean that Republicans could capture a slightly larger share of voters than last time.
Right now, the biggest advantage for the Davis campaign is Louisiana’s jungle primary system, where all candidates of all political parties run against each other. If one candidate wins the majority of the vote, then they win the office. Otherwise, the two candidates with the largest shares of votes go to a runoff. This means that Davis is not running against Carter for a Democratic slot, but to get enough votes to reach a runoff.
“The great thing about our current strategy is that we don’t actually need 50% of the vote this first time around to be competitive,” Davis said. “What we need is 30% of the vote.”
Progressive challengers in the New Orleans area have had a string of victories in high-profile races in recent years: District Attorney Jason Williams in 2020, Sheriff Susan Hutson in 2021, and Louisiana Public Service Commissioner Davante Lewis in 2022. Those candidates were not generally favored to win, but they were successful, in part, because of the backing of grassroots groups like Voters Organized to Educate.
Davis is running not just with their support, but also with the support of organizers with People Power and Light, the Sunrise Movement and Democratic Socialists of America, among other local organizations and communities. His campaign is also active on Instagram, X and TikTok as part of a bid to engage young voters, who tend to vote for more progressive candidates.
Carter appears to have taken a largely hands-off approach to his campaign so far. His campaign website still lists early voting dates from his 2022 race. But Carter will likely ramp up his campaign as the date of the election approaches and could run a more aggressive campaign if the election goes to a runoff. And if he does, he will have a war chest with over a million dollars plus the endorsement of prominent Democratic figures – including Lewis, the upstart public service commissioner.
It’s one thing to discuss how Davis might win, but the most important question is what Davis will do if elected to office. Congresspeople exist at the nexus between the local and federal government, needing to navigate relationships within Congress and their own district.
“So Devin Davis wouldn’t just be a representative from New Orleans and the 2nd District,” Reilly said.”He’d be a representative on these issues in the same way that so many people around the country see Bernie [Sanders] as their representative or [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] as their representative.”
Davis comes with a bevy of organizing experience, having worked with the Los Angeles chapter of the AFL-CIO, Planned Parenthood of Arizona, the Yavapai County Democratic Party and Sanders’ presidential campaign.
But what his potential election would represent goes beyond just organizing bona fides, Davis said. As a bisexual, he’d also be the first openly LGBTQ+ member of Congress from the South. For Davis, it feels like the right moment for someone like him – young, queer, progressive – to represent Louisiana.
“I really do think that we are facing an existential threat to our future,” Davis said. “And that there are many solutions that we stand on the front lines of that we need an answer for from the federal level and that we’re not getting from our state and our local officials.”
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