Nick Laborde (D), Jean-Paul Coussan (R), and Julie Quinn (R) are running in the nonpartisan primary for Louisiana Public Service Commission District 2 on Nov. 5, 2024. Incumbent Commissioner Craig Greene (R) is not running for re-election.
In all 50 states, the public service commission is a multi-member board responsible for regulating utilities. Louisiana is one of 10 states where commissioners are elected rather than appointed.
Republicans have a 3-2 majority on the Louisiana Public Service Commission. The Louisiana Illuminator’s Wesley Muller described Greene as “a moderate Republican [who] holds enormous power as the lone swing vote between two GOP members and two Democrats on the panel.” Muller also wrote that Greene’s successor “gets to decide whether to hold onto that power with a similarly moderate stance or relinquish it and toe the party line.”
According to the Greater Baton Rouge Business Report’s Jeremy Alford and David Jacobs, “PSC District 2 is largely white and Republican.” In the 2020 presidential election Donald Trump (R) won 70% of the vote in the district. Alford and Jacobs also wrote that the “hotly contested race for mayor-president in East Baton Rouge Parish (which features two high-profile Democrats in incumbent Sharon Weston Broome and former Rep. Ted James) and the race in the new majority-Black congressional District 6 (which intersects with PSC District 2) [are] factors that could drive Democratic turnout.”
Laborde owns the consulting firm Laborde Consulting and is the product manager at his family’s company, NOLA Crawfish Bread. He previously worked as a video game developer and a human resources consultant.
Laborde said, “We have the opportunity to bring generational change to the Public Service Commission. And I think there’s an opportunity to change the direction we’re on, make Entergy pay more, invest in our grid, diversify our power generation rigs by investing in more renewables, I think we can make some change that’s why I’m running.”
Coussan is a state senator who has represented the 23rd District since 2024. From 2016 to 2024, he represented the 45th District in the Louisiana House of Representatives. Professionally, Laborde works as an attorney at a real estate law firm and owns a real estate investment company.
Coussan said he will be “a true conservative watch dog, and someone who understands the importance of the role that affordable and reliable energy plays in bringing jobs to our state.”
Quinn is the managing partner at the law firm Quinn Law, APLC. She previously worked as an adjunct professor at Loyola University and an attorney at McGlinchey Stafford. From 2005 to 2012, Quinn represented the 6th District in the state Senate. She previously represented the 6th District on the Jefferson Parish School Board from 2001 to 2005.
Quinn said she is “a fiscal conservative who believes the federal government under Joe Biden has overreached and is causing corporations, especially utility companies, to make unnecessary infrastructure modifications that are being passed on to consumers.”
Louisiana elections use the majority-vote system. All candidates compete in the same primary, and the candidate who gets more than 50% of the vote wins the election outright. If no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, the top two vote-getters advance to the general election, regardless of their partisan affiliation.