• LA-??: Republican Rep. Garret Graves will run for reelection … somewhere
In a Friday statement complaining about a recent Supreme Court ruling that reinstated a map deliberately designed to target Graves, the congressman said he is "running for reelection in a district anchored in the Capital Region" and is "looking through these districts to determine where we can best represent the interests and priorities of the people of Louisiana."
He won't have to look too far. The area around the state capital of Baton Rouge is variously defined as covering nine or 11 parishes, which in turn make up parts of four different congressional districts, whichever definition you use.
Two of those are hopelessly blue, from Graves' perspective: the New Orleans-based 2nd and the Baton Rouge-to-Shreveport 6th—the district that Republicans, led by Gov. Jeff Landry, created out of the wreckage of Graves' old seat. Both are also majority-Black districts.
That leaves two others. The safely red 1st District reaches only the outer periphery of the Capital Region, but more importantly, it's represented by Rep. Steve Scalise, who is the second-most powerful Republican in the House.
The final option is the conservative 5th District, but Graves had previously downplayed the possibility he might take on fellow GOP Rep. Julia Letlow—who, in any case, was endorsed by Donald Trump earlier this year when Graves was first casting about for a district to run in.
The 5th would still represent Graves' most obvious choice, though. While Letlow represents 57% of the redrawn district and Graves just 43%, according to a Daily Kos Elections analysis, a November faceoff could be more evenly divided. Approximately 117,000 people who voted for Trump in 2020 live in Letlow's portion of the district while 111,000 Trump voters live in Graves'.
It could also be unpredictable, since all candidates from all parties run together on a single ballot, with the top two vote-getters advancing to a December runoff only if no one secures a majority. The presence of additional candidates, including Democrats, would make such a race difficult to handicap. Graves, though, has a while to decide: As he noted in his statement, Louisiana has a "last-in-the-nation" filing deadline of July 19.