Red state governor blocks Dems from vote for state Supreme Court justice

When thousands of voters cast their ballots next month to decide who will join the Louisiana Supreme Court next, none will be registered Democrats.

Louisiana’s new semi-closed primary election system, pushed by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, has shut Democrats out of picking the state’s newest justice entirely.

The only two candidates who filed to run for the open District 1 seat, Judges Billy Burris and Blair Downing Edwards, are Republicans. That one-party field means the election will be decided by the May 16 GOP primary, in which only Republicans and voters who aren’t registered with a political party can participate.

District 1 is overwhelmingly conservative. It includes St. Tammany, Washington, Tangipahoa, Livingston and St. Bernard parishes with a small portion of New Orleans.

Yet nearly a quarter of the district’s registered voters, around 100,000 people, were Democrats as of April 1, according to the latest data from the Louisiana Secretary of State. Unless they switch their party registration by the end of this week, they can’t participate in the Supreme Court race.

The exclusion of Democrats could be a major factor in determining who wins the election. Nearly everyone involved in the race, including people working on Burris’ campaign, have said Edwards would likely be the clear frontrunner in the race if Democratic voters could participate.

But with the semi-closed party primary in effect, political pundits consider the race a toss-up and too close to call.

A native of Franklinton, Burris, 44, took over his seat on the 22nd Judicial District Court for St. Tammany and Washington parishes from his father, William J. Burris, who was on the bench from 1997 through 2017.

Edwards, 58, who lives in Amite, has served on the state First Circuit Court of Appeals since 2024 and was a juvenile court judge in the 21st District Court for Tangipahoa and Livingston parishes from 2008 until she joined the appellate bench.

She married into a political family. Her husband, Daniel Edwards, served as Tangipahoa Parish sheriff from 2004-24 and was the fourth generation of the family to hold the job. Her late father-in-law, Frank Edwards Jr., was sheriff from 1968-80. The judge’s brother-in-law is John Bel Edwards, Louisiana’s governor from 2016 to 2024.

In spite of their connections, neither candidate said they planned to enter politics.

“As a kid, as a young adult, no, I never just thought, ‘Hey, I want to be a judge,’” said Burris, whose father was a judge when Billy was in high school.

Burris initially attended college at LSU as a vocal performance student but ultimately switched his majors to philosophy and religious studies. After graduation, he was supposed to go China to teach and thought he would enter academia, Burris said in an interview this month.

Those plans were derailed in 2003 by a Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in China. It shut down the program he was supposed to attend. As a backup plan, he enrolled at Southern University Law Center.

“I went to law school because the other thing fell through, but I’m glad I did,” Burris said.

Blair Downing Edwards took a more circuitous route to the bench. She became pregnant with her oldest child while she was still a teenager. That prompted her to drop out of high school a year before graduation, take the GED exam and enroll at Nicholls State University. At the time, her first husband, who is also the father of her first child, was going to Nicholls to play football.

While adjusting to being a mother, Edwards got her accounting degree and even joined the college cheerleading squad. She worked in corporate accounting for a few years before going to Loyola University College of Law at 28 years-old. The summer before her last year of law school, she married her second husband, Daniel, who she had been friends with since childhood.

Edwards’ experiences as a teenage mother informed her work as a juvenile court judge, where she saw a lot of underage people who had gotten sidetracked.

“Had I not had the family I did, I could be a statistic, right?” Edwards said in an interview. “What I wanted to do was certainly impress upon these young people is, you don’t have to be a statistic.”

The Edwards campaign has raised far more money than Burris’ in the first quarter of the year, according to the most recent election reports.

Her campaign collected $753,750 in donations, including a $125,000 personal loan from Edwards to her campaign committee. Burris’ campaign raised $306,400 during the same time period.

The candidates’ money mostly comes from opposing camps in the legal community.

At least $210,000 of Edwards’ money has come from personal injury lawyers and plaintiffs attorneys who bring class action lawsuits. Louisiana’s nursing home industry has also given at least $35,000 to her campaign.

Almost $60,000 of Burris’ donations came from law firms who work for the business community and the insurance industry. Another $50,000 came directly from the oil, gas and energy sector, according to a review of his campaign finance reports. Associations representing hospitals, trucking companies and manufacturers also made contributions to Burris.

Plaintiffs attorneys and the business community are often on opposing sides of expensive legal disputes, including those that end up before the Louisiana Supreme Court. Trial lawyers represent people who sue some of Louisiana’s largest companies over alleged injuries and malfeasance.

At a candidates’ forum this week in Baton Rouge, Edwards said she doesn’t track who her campaign donors are because it is inappropriate to do so as a judge.

“Regardless of who gives, it doesn’t matter because I will not be looking at those finance reports because that is what the law says that I should not do,” she said.

Burris responded that it was “silly” to claim not to know who your campaign supporters are. He said Edwards surely knows that the people she meets at a campaign fundraiser are likely giving her campaign money.

“I think it’s kind of laughable to say that folks don’t know who their donors are,” he said at the forum sponsored by the Baton Rouge Press Club.

Yet there are donors who are spending large amounts of money on the Supreme Court race that have been allowed to remain anonymous. At least three groups have sent attack mailers to voters in District 1 without disclosing who is paying for the negative campaigning.

The First Principles PAC spent $1.2 million during the first three months of the year — more than the two candidates raised combined — on marketing attacking Edwards and favoring Burris, according to records filed with the Louisiana Board of Ethics.

All of the group’s money came from a Tennessee nonprofit organization with the same name whose donors are secret.

There’s even less known about two groups sending mailers attacking Burris to district voters.

Moms Protecting Children has sent out a few mail pieces and text messages maligning Burris. It’s registered with the Louisiana Secretary of State under Jessi Genung, with the Vivve Agency, a Baton Rouge marketing firm that has worked on other judicial races.

Genung said in an interview Wednesday that Moms Protecting Children is a social welfare organization, a type of nonprofit political group that doesn’t have to disclose its contributors under federal law.

Genung said the group also isn’t required to file a campaign spending report with the Louisiana Board of Ethics, so it will remain unclear who is funding its advertisements and how much it is spending on the race.

Another mail piece criticizing Burris for not sentencing an alleged sex offender to prison says it was “Paid for by Protect and Defend Louisiana.” No group with that name has filed a campaign report with the Louisiana Board of Ethics or registered with the Louisiana Secretary of State.

The negative advertising coming from the anonymous groups mirrors the attacks the candidates have launched against each other in person.

At the candidates’ forum earlier this week, Edwards accused Burris of not giving out harsh enough prison sentences. She also criticized him for having too many decisions overturned by higher courts.

Burris said his decisions have been overturned by higher courts because judges often have differences of opinion.

“If you get four judges in a room, you’ll have four different opinions,” he said at the forum.

Burris also said he is at a disadvantage when compared to Edwards because she spent most of her judicial career overseeing juvenile cases. Juvenile court records are sealed, so most of Edwards decisions as a judge aren’t public and can’t be scrutinized like his have been.

“They look at my record because my record is publicly available, and they know what type of judge I am,” he said.

Attacks launched against Edwards mostly focus on whether she is really a Republican.

She has been a GOP elected official since she first became a judge in 2008, but her husband and brother-in-law are well-known Democrats. Burris has alleged she is also a Democrat in disguise.

Blair Edwards likes to point out she was elected judge as a Republican eight years before her brother-in-law became governor. She finds it frustrating that people assume her political views would have to align with him or her husband’s.

“It’s somewhat offensive to me that because my brother-in-law was the governor, that it’s almost like I have to check with him before I do things,” she said in an interview.