Stephanie Grace: What Louisiana’s Republicans could teach California’s Democrats

In 2024, California voters went for Kamala Harris over Donald Trump by 20 points. In 2025, they approved a ballot proposition designed to counter Texas Republicans’ audacious, Trump-backed redistricting plan by nearly 30 points.

In 2026, there’s a not-so-far-fetched possibility that the state, one of the nation’s bluest, will replace self-appointed Trump troll Gavin Newsom in the governor’s office with — get this — a Republican.

That the state’s Democrats are increasingly alarmed by this nightmare scenario has nothing to do with shifting political winds, and everything to do with California’s adoption in 2011 of the open primary, the same system long used in Louisiana.

So, as voters here are currently decoding new party primary rules to elect a U.S. senator and a few other top officials, Californians are grappling with one of the quirks of the system that Louisianans know and still love, according to polls: When Republicans, Democrats and everyone else run on one primary ballot, pretty much anything can happen.

In this case, a whole bunch of Democrats signed up, any of whom would be a heavy favorite against any Republican runoff opponent.

But because none of them has caught momentum or taken one for the team and dropped out, polls are showing that two Republicans could claim the top two primary slots, leaving Democratic voters with a deeply unpalatable choice come November.

If any of this sounds familiar to Louisianans, it should. Republicans in our state faced just such a scenario three decades ago.

Louisiana’s Senate seat in 1996 was vacant, courtesy of J. Bennett Johnston’s retirement. At the time, the state was still regularly electing Democrats, but a shift was already underway, and Republicans thought they had a good shot at electing one of their own for the first time since Reconstruction.

But which one?

Four candidates who were considered mainstream conservative signed up: U.S. Rep. Jimmy Hayes, legislator Chuck McMains, New Orleans City Council member Peggy Wilson and businessman Bill Linder. So did former legislator Woody Jenkins, who had a firm base of Christian conservatives but was considered more right-wing than the others, and therefore less electable.

As they struggled to stand out, two Democrats, former state treasurer Mary Landrieu and attorney general Richard Ieyoub, stubbornly held the one-two spots in polls, potentially leaving Republicans shut out.

And there was another complication. Also in the race was Republican David Duke, the former Klansman and legislator who five years earlier made worldwide news by getting into a gubernatorial runoff. As folks in Louisiana politics knew, Duke was a wild card who often got more support on election day than he showed in public polls.

The prospect of an all-Democrat runoff or one pitting a Democrat against Duke was too much for Republican leaders, including the presidential campaign of Bob Dole, who understood that a Duke runoff candidacy would be an embarrassment for the party beyond Louisiana’s borders. And so a group led by then-U.S. Rep. Bob Livingston and his fellow GOP members of the state congressional delegation came up with a plan.

They would pick one of the Republicans, dominate the news cycle by staging a steady rollout of endorsements and signal to GOP voters to fall in line if they wanted a candidate in the runoff. While any one of the more mainstream candidates would have likely been a smarter and more personally appealing choice, Jenkins consistently polled just ahead of them, so he got the nod.

It came awfully close to working.

Jenkins finished first in the primary with 26% to Landrieu’s 22% and Ieyoub’s 20%, followed by Duke at 12%. Nobody else topped 6%. But then in the runoff, he fell 5,788 votes short, suggesting it’s highly likely that a different Republican could have won. Instead, Landrieu served three terms before the state’s gradual shift to the right finally came for her in 2014 — in the person, ironically, of the now-endangered Bill Cassidy.

I called Livingston recently to see if, given this experience, he might have some advice for California Democrats. He declined — “I think they’re crazy,” he said — but did have some thoughts about the Republicans.

“If polls show you’ve got a chance at two Republicans in the runoff, my advice is to stay firm,” he said.

He said he wasn’t happy to see Trump endorse one of them, Steve Hilton, because that might shift enough votes from fellow Republican Chad Bianco to allow a Democrat into the top tier.

“I think that was a mistake,” Livingston said.

Indeed, if the Democrats can’t find a way to choose among their own — and as of now they haven’t — it might well end up being a mistake that saves them come primary day on June 2.

It’s certainly a reminder that Louisiana’s traditional way of voting can be either charming or challenging, but is rarely boring.