Voters trickle into a downtown Baton Rouge precinct Saturday, Oct. 13, 2023, for the statewide primary election. (Jonathan Peterson for Louisiana Illuminator)
By Nov. 5, over a half-million Louisiana residents will get the chance to vote someone new into one of the most powerful political offices in the state, though the candidates say most people don’t realize it.
The race in question is for the District 2 seat on the Louisiana Public Service Commission, an elected regulatory body that can directly impact the pocketbooks of Louisiana residents through the cost of energy. Early voting begins Friday and ends Oct. 29.
As all three candidates interviewed for this report said in slightly different ways, the Public Service Commission (PSC) is probably the state’s most powerful political body that people haven’t heard of or know little about. It oversees utility companies that provide electricity, water, natural gas and telecommunications services for most of Louisiana. These include investor-owned utilities such as Cleco and Entergy, as well as member-owned rural power cooperatives such as SWEPCO. It also regulates pipelines and tow truck services.
The commissioners can create certain energy policies and represent the residents in their districts in any disputes with utility companies.
One of their most impactful roles is in determining how much money utilities can charge ratepayers for their services. The utility company has to get PSC approval before raising rates or adding any kinds of fees to customers’ bills.
Most but not all utility companies fall under the PSC’s jurisdiction. Many of the public-owned municipal utilities are regulated by their respective governments, such as Lafayette Utilities System. Likewise, the New Orleans City Council oversees Entergy New Orleans.
The District 2 seat is currently held by Dr. Craig Greene, R-Baton Rouge, who surprised many when he announced in June that he wouldn’t be seeking reelection upon the conclusion of his second term at the end of this year. As a moderate Republican, Greene was the lone swing vote on the commission between two Democrats and two Republicans.
The district spans 13 parishes, including East Feliciana, Lafayette, Lafourche, Livingston, Pointe Coupee, St. Martin, Terrebonne, West Feliciana and portions of Ascension, Assumption, East Baton Rouge, Iberville and West Baton Rouge.
Vying for the seat are two Republicans and one Democrat. All three have similar qualifications as self-employed professionals with advanced college degrees.
The Republicans are Jean-Paul Coussan, a Lafayette real estate lawyer who became a state senator last year after serving two terms in the House, and Julie Quinn, a Baton Rouge business attorney who held a Louisiana Senate seat from 2005-12. The Democrat and youngest candidate in the race is political newcomer Nick Laborde of Baton Rouge, a 31-year-old business consultant for tech startups.
In separate phone interviews this week, all three candidates shared policy positions that are not far apart from one another, though some of their fundamental ideologies are different. Each said they believe the main purpose of a public service commissioner is to ensure Louisiana residents have access to the most affordable and reliable energy available.
Energy Generation
All three candidates focused most of their remarks on the topic of energy generation and shared views on the debate over investing in traditional sources such as natural gas or renewable energies such as solar and wind.
Whether one agrees with it or not, the renewable energy transition is well underway across the U.S. — and not just in blue states. In fact, Iowa, Kansas and South Dakota now lead the country with the majority of their electricity generation coming from renewables, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. A staggering 64% of Iowa’s power comes from renewables.
Right on their heels are Nebraska, North Dakota and Oklahoma. In terms of the sheer amount of renewable energy production, Louisiana’s closest southern neighbor, Texas, has made huge investments in recent years and now produces more than any other state, including California.
Only about 4% of the electricity generated in Louisiana comes from renewables.
Of the three candidates, Laborde expressed the strongest advocacy for renewables, while the two Republicans took a more neutral position, neither opposing nor advocating for any specific type of energy.
“I embrace all forms of energy sources. But just because something is the cheapest doesn’t mean it’s most available,” Quinn said.
Laborde said he would support completely replacing fossil fuels with cleaner energy sources, including nuclear. He said his position is based on economics just as much as it is on environmental concerns and pointed out that the market has for several years shown solar and wind to be more affordable than fossil fuels.
Louisiana’s largest industries tired of waiting for renewable energy
Utility-scale solar and onshore wind are, on average, the cheapest forms of electricity in the country even without government subsidies. They are both roughly 33% cheaper than natural gas, though that cost increases when they are paired with battery storage facilities, according to an analysis by Lazard, an independent investment bank that publishes annual reports comparing the costs of different energy sources.
“We need to do something,” Laborde said. “You don’t make things better by doing things the way you’ve always done them … It doesn’t have to be this way. What we’re doing isn’t working.”
Louisiana’s major utilities have begun investing in solar, but most of those projects take years to complete and often encounter delays.
Coussan said it’s important to let the market determine how utilities should produce their energy. Any renewable energy generation should come from Louisiana-based companies and facilities, he added.
“It’s critical that we look at the most affordable options,” Coussan said. “I think renewables are currently part of the matrix and will be in the future … We also need to address the reality that we’ve got an abundant supply of natural gas” to run power plants.
Politics and Policy
All three candidates said the regulatory work of a public service commissioner is much more complicated than other elected offices. The job is filled with obscure concepts and procedures that appear in almost no other areas of government. Many of the issues are nuanced, and some major political ideologies on government regulation versus “free market” deregulation are often inverted with conservatives favoring regulation and liberals favoring deregulation.
“This is not a job for a title,” Quinn said. “It’s a job you have to really dig into and learn.”
One of Quinn’s ideas is to require utility companies to have in-person customer service centers.
All the candidates said the PSC needs to expand its public outreach efforts and incorporate better communication technology to make the commission’s activities more accessible and transparent to the public.
“Part of my campaign since July has been educating people about the Public Service Commission and how they and every other socioeconomic group is impacted by the PSC,” Coussan said. “What I want people to know is they are powerful because they’re the ones electing the PSC members.”
As a Democrat, Laborde faces the narrowest path to victory in a district that supported former President Donald Trump with 70% of the vote in the 2020 presidential election.
His best chance of winning is not on Nov. 5 but by forcing a runoff and sharing a ballot with a Baton Rouge mayoral runoff election in December.
In such a scenario, Democrats in Baton Rouge would be compelled to turn out for the mayoral runoff and get to vote in the LPSC runoff, while voters outside of Baton Rouge would be more likely to stay home, no longer paying attention to politics a month after the presidential election.
Among the three candidates, Coussan has maintained a significant funding advantage over his rivals, with Quinn and Laborde refusing donations from utility companies. Campaign finance disclosures as of Sept. 26 indicate Coussan has raised over $465,000 compared to Quinn’s $124,000 and Laborde’s $4,400. Those amounts don’t include any campaign contributions received between Sept. 26 and the Oct. 16 fundraising deadline.
Both Coussan and Quinn are working to turn out the conservative base within District 2 by highlighting their own right-leaning bonafides while targeting liberal concepts in their campaign messaging.
Through their campaign ads, both Coussan and Quinn have made it a point to say they oppose the “Green New Deal” — a term Quinn acknowledged is used loosely to refer to any part of a liberal agenda on energy and the environment.
The Green New Deal was a resolution briefly introduced in Congress in 2019 but never approved. The Louisiana Public Service Commission does not vote on federal policy and has never adopted or considered any versions of a Green New Deal proposal.
Also, LPSC members have never adopted policies that would prohibit or require certain types of power generation.
For information on how to vote in this election and others, visit GeauxVote.com or contact the Louisiana Secretary of State’s Office at (800) 883-2805 or elections@sos.la.gov.
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