FiveThirtyEight: “We’re barely two months removed from the last election of 2020, but Saturday marks the first congressional elections of the 2022 midterms: a pair of special elections for Louisiana’s 2nd and 5th districts. While there’s little question about which party will ultimately win each seat — the 2nd District is solidly Democratic, the 5th solidly Republican — that’s not why these elections are interesting.
Always a state that marches to its own beat, Louisiana holds elections a little differently than most (as the Saturday election date might imply): Rather than pitting a Republican against a Democrat, the two elections are what’s known as jungle primaries, where all candidates, regardless of party, run on the same ballot. If no candidate receives a majority of the vote, the top two finishers will advance to a runoff election on April 24. So the big questions going into Saturday’s elections are which wing of the Democratic Party will come out on top in the 2nd — and whether a second round of voting will even be necessary in the 5th. …
Richmond’s departure has left a power vacuum in this New Orleans-based district that local politicians have rushed to fill: Fifteen candidates, including eight Democrats and four Republicans, are on the ballot. However, two clear front-runners with similar profiles — even similar names — have emerged. Troy Carter and Karen Carter Peterson (no relation) are both Democratic state senators from New Orleans. Both have sought a promotion to Congress in the past (they even ran against each other for this seat in 2006) and are longtime players in the Democratic political establishment, but they hail from different factions of that establishment.
Local power brokers have largely lined up behind Carter, the highest-ranking Democrat in the Louisiana state Senate. And according to Roll Call, 76 percent of the $519,000 that Carter raised in January and February came from donors who live in Louisiana. Carter also has arguably the campaign’s most valuable endorsement: that of Richmond himself. He’s aligned with the Biden-Richmond wing of the party on policy, too: He has said he prefers a public option to single-payer health care, and while he thinks the Green New Deal is “a good blueprint,” he doesn’t think it’s realistic to implement in one go. On the campaign trail, he has also emphasized his ability to build relationships with people of all political stripes.
By contrast, Peterson is more progressive on policy and isn’t afraid to make waves: “When I go to Washington, my job is not to agree with Steve Scalise all the time,” she told The Advocate….”