What’s in store for Governor Edwards’ last year in office after midterm election results?

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - The midterm elections are still going on in some parts of the country but here at home all of our races have been called.

The big question now is will there be any shift in legislative power on the state level?

The governor still has one year left in his term and some are wondering if he will be able to push his agenda forward even more or if he’ll be a lame duck in his last year.

When it comes to seats at the state legislature for the 2022 midterms, there were two races to keep an eye on, both in the Senate. The Senate seat in District 17 was up for grabs after Republican Rick Ward stepped away from politics. His seat was replaced by Republican Caleb Kleinpeter with 51% of the votes.

“We have to put differences aside and move on and move forward for Louisiana is what we have to do,” said Kleinpeter.

Then there’s the Senate seat in District 5. Former Democrat Senator Karen Carter Peterson resigned from her position earlier this year. Her vacant seat was won by Democrat Royce Duplessis, who’s been serving District 93 in the House. He beat out fellow Democrat and House member Mandie Landry with 53% of the votes.

With both seats replaced by members from the same party as their predecessor, people want to know what this will mean for the governor’s agenda.

“I know he had power last year and kind of forced some hands. Look, he line vetoed a lot of things and I think a lot of people were afraid of that and they just voted however he wanted them to vote. So yeah, I definitely think this year is going to be a struggle for him to veto anything. We’ll see how it works out. Hopefully, everyone can work together and get some things done,” Kleinpeter added.

It may not be clear what to expect this upcoming session but after crunching the numbers last night, Polling Analyst Ron Faucheux said at Rotary on Wednesday, the chances of another Democrat being elected governor in Louisiana are out the window.

“I think that the numbers we saw yesterday should pretty clearly tell Democrats they’ll have a tough time if not an impossible time getting elected governor,” said Faucheux.

We also reached out to Royce Duplessis for comment but did not hear back.

Click here to report a typo.

Copyright 2022 WAFB. All rights reserved.