Is Lafayette Mayor-President Josh Guillory in Trouble?
After picking up just 40 percent of the vote on Saturday, what does he need to do?
I usually have a rule about writing on local politics. It is very easy to just be a partisan person and focus on who the most conservative person is, who is a Republican and who is a Democrat, etc., but local politics is always quite a bit messier. There’s local drama involved. There are people who have more access to you locally than at the state or national level.
For example, Kevin McCarthy’s people have more than once reached out to folks several levels above my pay grade at RedState to get me to “correct” something that didn’t need to be corrected. They just wanted me to keep me in line. At the state level, something I once wrote got me a personal call from a former state Superintendent of Education.
But at the local level, these are people who have no qualms about calling, texting, or showing up in person to tell you why you’re wrong. In bigger cities, you can avoid the drama, but I grew up in a small town and the market I’m currently in is a bigger market with small town vibes at times. Up until recently, I avoided all that by focusing on the state and national level.
The 2023 elections, which were stellar for conservatives across the state, nonetheless bear a closer look at the local level. There are some reasons that the incumbent mayor-president, Josh Guillory, picked up two challengers ahead of the election and only won 40 percent of the vote Saturday night. I think his biggest mistake was filing for a restraining order against an opponent for using the word “corrupt” when describing his administration.
What that did was create headlines - yes, one of which I wrote - making more people aware of his opponent’s claims than would have been aware of them otherwise. He made people pay attention to her claims of “Fire!”, and those people thought they smelled smoke as a result. Most of the folks Republicans I’ve talked to outside of his administration believe it was a mistake. I do, too.
There was a poll about a month ago that showed Guillory and his lead opponent, Monique Blanco Boulet, tied at 25 percent, with the third Republican in the race, Jan Swift, at 19 percent. That leaves 31 percent undecided - one out of every three voters being undecided was questionable at best, I noted at the time.
If those poll results were indeed accurate at the time, that means that half the undecided voters broke for Guillory on election day, which could very well be the case. However, turnout was low, with as close as the election was to that poll, I felt at the time (and still do) that if you were undecided by that point, you likely remained that way on election day.
The only difference between then and Saturday night was the restraining order maneuver, which may have moved some votes. But, Guillory ended up with 40 percent of the vote. Boulet picked up 34 percent, and Swift ended up with 26 percent. We now have a run-off between Guillory and Boulet.
Here’s the lay of the land as I see it.
Guillory can safely assume that Boulet’s 34 percent cannot be won over. That’s pretty much the Democratic vote in Lafayette Parish. There are some Republicans in there, but the Democrats who went out to vote are either engaged enough to know Boulet was the Democratic alternative or they saw “Blanco” in her name and hit that button on the ballot (which is why that name was on all of her campaign materials).
Guillory should also go ahead and assume that, at minimum, two-thirds of the Swift vote was in protest to him. Those are votes he is likely not going to get back. So about 8-10 percent of the electorate that showed up on Saturday might be winnable for him, but not much more than that.
If I were running the Guillory campaign, I would be paying no attention to Boulet whatsoever. Her campaign is about to get nasty. They will throw everything they can at Guillory. Remember, the point of going negative isn’t to win people over, it’s to get the other side to just stay home.
Guillory has to do the opposite. His campaign hopefully started as of 8 a.m. this morning finding out every Republican in Lafayette Parish who did and didn’t vote. At this point, in order to win, you need a massive local effort to get out the vote every Republican you can in November.
Boulet could possibly have done better on Saturday but for the fact that Democratic turnout was low across the state. There was nothing at the top of the ballot to draw Democrats out and conservatives were more motivated than usual to get Jeff Landry in. But that also affects Guillory in November: Landry isn’t on the ballot. He has to rely on his own GOTV efforts to win the day.
Yes, it seems simplistic to say “It all comes down to turnout!” but that is, essentially, what Guillory has to focus on. Local folks who dislike him are motivated. They will sling whatever mud they have to beat him. They will do what they can to get voters out, but they know their best chance is to suppress his vote with negative attacks.
Guillory has to stay high while they go low. To be frank, this will have to take a lot more self-control than he has shown in the past. But he has to do it. Going negative is a double-edged sword. You lose voters who are disappointed in you for going negative. Boulet’s team will figure they can hurt Guillory more than they hurt themselves by going negative, so they will go ahead with it. Guillory’s efforts, meanwhile, need to be focused on ensuring as high a turnout as possible.