Q&A: Louisiana’s Jamie Davis Could Shock the Nation

Until recently, it seemed like the race to fill Louisiana’s U.S. Senate seat would be an easy Republican win. Congresswoman Julia Letlow (R-LA) had the odds stacked in her favor: an endorsement from Trump, a high-profile primary defeat of Sen. Bill Cassidy, and high name recognition amongst Louisainans. But recent polling indicates that Democrat Jamie Davis, a Black farmer from the state’s northeastern region, is surprisingly neck-and-neck with Letlow. Republicans quietly have grown nervous about the race: Trump is holding a tele-rally with Letlow today, and pro-Letlow super PACs are hitting Davis with attack ads. 

Davis’s humble background, Southern candor, and grassroots campaign stands in stark contrast to Letlow, who’s running on corporate PAC money and has been embroiled in scandal this year. After signing a nondisclosure agreement with Meta related to its Hyperion data center project in Richland Parish, Letlow bought undisclosed stock in Meta and Nvidia. Davis is aware of his opponent’s shaky status, and is honest in offering himself up as an alternative.

The Prospect spoke with Davis at the beginning of Louisiana’s early voting period. At the time, polls showed that he was trailing Letlow by four points. Regulating data center development and expansion in Louisiana is one of his top priorities, in addition to addressing the cost-of-living crisis and passing legislation that supports farmers. The grandson of a sharecropper, if Davis wins, he would be the state’s first Black senator ever; during Reconstruction, the state legislature selected P. B. S. Pinchback to serve, but he was never seated because of a voting challenge. 

A victory from Davis would signal a true blue tsunami and how voters are fed up, disillusioned, and looking for something different in a state that’s often written off as a lost cause.  

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Naomi Bethune: Why are you running for Congress, and what are the key issues you are campaigning on?

Jamie Davis: When I decided to run for the United States Senate, it was back in last year, shortly maybe in the fall of the year. You know I still needed to talk and get that permission slip from my wife! But I had been talking with you know my old senior advisory crew, talking about how I’m thinking about running for the U.S. Senate, and we talked about the issues, but my number one issue was the very best crop that I had ever had on average in 2025. It was 1,300 pounds of cotton per acre, 150 bushels of corn per acre, and 50 bushels of beans per acre, approximately, and I still ended up in the black. 

It was because of tariffs and policies that had been hurting farmers for quite some time during this administration, and I just decided to step up and make a run. That is the number one determining factor, and the reason why I ran for the United States Senate.

After the Supreme Court effectively overturned Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, several states moved to redistrict their congressional maps to favor Republicans. Louisiana’s governor, Jeff Landry, suspended the state’s primary elections for U.S. House seats so that new congressional maps could be drawn up and passed. In what ways has congressional redistricting in Louisiana impacted your election? How have you responded to those changes during your campaign?

To have an election just stopped right in the middle of it, with ballots being cast already, it really disappointed me. Both of my parents are deceased, but they have siblings that are still alive, and those siblings that are left here voted for me. I got two calls from both sides of the family to ask, “Do you know what happened to my vote? Do you know if my vote counted for you, nephew?” I couldn’t give them an answer because I didn’t know, and I still don’t know till this day whether or not my uncles’ and aunts’ votes counted. It was a hurting feeling to know that I’m in an election where I have loved ones and relatives that wanted to vote for me, and they had. 

Here is the point: they all were senior citizens, and so they voted early. They get early ballots, and when [Gov. Jeff Landry] suspended the elections and then threw out all of the early ballots, that was a crusher. It was hard on me. It really hurt my feelings. It made me really mad. Made me just want to run even harder. 

There are a lot of people that just energized and mobilized and made them want to get out and vote even more. You saw a petition get started to recall the governor and the attorney general in the state of Louisiana. That was a lot of people in Louisiana that’s mad, and I’m hoping that anger still is built into the people because if it does, it will inspire them to go out and vote during this election cycle.

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Can you discuss your stance on data center expansion and development in Louisiana? How are voters approaching these issues? 

Data centers, carbon capture, and eminent domain are big issues in Louisiana. You have a lot of voters that are, in some cases, one-policy voters. They’re voting totally against the data centers and carbon capture or eminent domain. It has been an attack on our precious resources of land and air and water because of all of these data centers. That’s going to be a lot of pressure on our aquifers, and which means that the municipalities will be competing with data centers for drinking water from our aquifers. I just think that is not good because with the amount of water that data centers can use, it could actually put a real strain on our aquifers.

When it comes to data centers and my stance on them, I think we need a moratorium on them. Any new ones being built, I think we need to have a lot of oversight on rules and regulations on them. Right now, there are hardly any rules and regulations on the data centers, and I don’t think you just give people an open reign to do what they want with this kind of industry that you know cannot believe can wreak havoc on our precious aquifers.

What are your thoughts on the actions that have been taken by the Trump administration and the current Republican majority in Congress? Has this inspired any of the issues you’re considering, and the work you want to do if you’re elected?

We got so much going on here in Louisiana with these data centers, with eminent domain, with energy companies that are wanting to take people’s land to build private electrical lines to go from one data center to another. I do understand and know that I will be a federal official, and I have to vote on federal things. But right now, the issues right now for me are in Louisiana. We got farmers here losing their farms because of being hurt by the tariffs and diesel fuel being $6 a gallon. Bankruptcies for Louisiana farmers is the highest it’s ever been. Suicides for farmers right now is the highest it’s ever been. It’s just a lot going on at home.

Why is it important to pay attention to what’s happening to Louisiana right now?

Way back in the winter, the candidate that I’m running against for this seat, she was running for re-election in her House district, and the president directly gave her a directive to run. He said, “Run Julia run.” Three days later, she accepts his endorsement and runs for the United States Senate. 

Then to move forward, we have this largest data center [Meta’s Hyperion project] that wants to come to Louisiana, and she gets involved with that data center, and signs an NDA later on. Stock trades behind it. Later on, says that this president is the best president of all time. 

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen that in my life before. It’s just a lot, and it just feels like these people think that money can buy elections. But the only people that have a say in that are the people of Louisiana, because the one thing that trumps money is votes, and the people of Louisiana turn up and they turn out in a mighty way and vote. We will beat the machine because our campaign is a grassroots campaign. We have taken no corporate PAC money. All of our contributions have been from individual donors. We’re fighting against an organized machine versus a grassroots campaign.

How are you feeling about your chances come Election Day?

The experts have been saying from day one that this race was comfortably red. Nobody has ever said that this race was a blue race. For [Louisiana Sen.] John Kennedy to say that the experts will be surprised at the results of this election—I’m seeing it as he is saying that we are going to win this race, and I do agree with him on it. 

The experts will be surprised because the people are sick of the shenanigans that the Republicans have been doing and the NDAs that my opponent signed, the stock trading that she’s done, voting against ending an Iran war on two occasions, voting against education when she voted for the H.R. 1 and the one big ugly bill, voting against health care and rural hospitals, as she did in H.R. 1 to make all of the cuts that she did. I agree. The experts will be surprised. 

We started this race as a no-name grassroots campaign and my wife was confident that we could win this race, but now we are in striking distance, and I can feel the belief in the people of Louisiana that we’re going to win this race. The people are turning out. We’ve had one day of early voting so far, and the people turned out yesterday more than they did on the first day of early voting from way back in the primaries in May. It showed that Democrats outvoted Republicans. 

Does that tell us that we’re winning? No, because no party voters a lot of times determines who wins a race. Now we have made a strong appeal to no-party voters, and I believe we’re reaching them. They are tired. They’re paying $6 for diesel and $4 for gas, just like everybody else. Their grocery bills are high. Their insurance is high. So why would they differ from anyone else? I don’t think they do. I totally believe that. Just like John Kennedy said, the experts are going to be surprised.