New Orleans"Je suis un Cajun noir,” Elbert Lee Guillory, the 69-year-old state senator from Opelousas, Louisiana, tells me proudly. “I am a black Cajun.” To which he might these days add, “Je suis un Républicain noir—I am a black Republican.
On May 31, Guillory became the first black Louisianan to serve at the state or federal level as a Republican since Reconstruction. In truth, he was a Republican before running for the statehouse in 2007, serving on the party’s St. Landry Parish committee and the state committee. But when he decided to run for office in his majority black, majority Democratic district, having an “R” by his name would have done him no favors. Besides, he says, his goal was to take down what he considered the corrupt regime of the local Democratic family in power, headed by Don Cravins Sr.
“He left Opelousas driving a Chevrolet,” Guillory says of his arch-rival. “Went to Baton Rouge and came back with his pockets stuffed with cash, driving a Cadillac.” Guillory registered as a Democrat and won his first race for the statehouse in a special election. He went on to win reelection and two subsequent elections to the Louisiana senate.
But by his 2011 campaign, Guillory was the only sitting Democratic senator not to receive the standard financial contribution from the state party. Always among the most conservative members of the Democratic caucus, Guillory had been voting with the Republicans more often than with the Democrats, who had been following the national party’s liberal lead on social issues like life, school choice, and gun ownership.
“All of the core values that I held and my community held, my family held,” Guillory says. “As they moved farther and farther away, what was kind of a tenuous relationship anyway became tense and rancorous.”
