Three candidates for the Louisiana Public Service Commission’s (PSC) fifth district have advanced from their party’s primaries to November’s general election for the two open seats on the board that regulates the state’s utilities — including some of its largest corporations, like Entergy.
In the first district, comprising much of metro New Orleans and neighboring parishes, Republican state Rep. Stephanie Hilferty and former Jefferson Parish councilman John Young advance to a runoff on June 27, where the winner will face Democratic candidate Connie Norris — who was unopposed in her primary — in November. District one has traditionally been a GOP stronghold.
Voters in the first district can also choose to support independent candidate Chris Justin, who did not qualify for the closed party primary, in November.
In the fifth district, which encompasses much of North Louisiana, Shreveport City Councilmember James Green defeated the Sierra Club-endorsed candidate Austin Lawson in the Democratic primary, setting up a November election against GOP candidate and Caddo Parish Commissioner John Atkins.
Each race will fill the seats of the PSC’s longest-serving members: Republican chairman Eric Skrmetta of the first district and Democrat Foster Campbell of the fifth district.
Both were first elected in the early 2000s and reached their term limits this year, just as numerous large-scale industrial projects they’ve voted in favor of connecting to the grid — like hyperscale AI data centers — have entered construction or neared final approval.
A final vote on a new effort to construct seven additional gas power plants to service an AI data center in Richland Parish is expected to occur Nov. 18, after both open seats are filled but before the new commissioners are sworn into office.
Inheriting a new world
Republicans currently command a one-seat advantage on the five-member commission, which has historically served as a platform to take on sitting governors and launch political careers, including former governors Huey Long and Kathleen Blanco.
But the PSC has in recent years more closely aligned itself with Gov. Jeff Landry and Louisiana Economic Development’s (LED) push to attract more industrial & tech investment dollars by speeding up — and sometimes bypassing — the regulatory process for new projects.
In April, the PSC voted to expedite the application for seven new natural gas power plants that would power a second new Meta data center in Richland Parish, tacked on to three additional power plants they approved last year that would help power the earlier ‘Hyperion’ data center, also in rural Richland Parish.
Both Skrmetta and Campbell have been strong supporters of those efforts, and Skrmetta has long been more of the reliable pro-utility votes on the commission.
The two candidates replacing them will be inheriting what is relatively new territory for the PSC, and a delicate balancing act between state policy shifts targeting more industrial investment and also limiting increases for ratepayers.
When Skrmetta and Campbell were last re-elected in 2020, AI data centers as we now know them were mostly nascent and hardly, if at all, policy considerations among the electorate or commissioners.
Now, only a few in Louisiana are among the largest investments and single power requests in state history. Lawson ran his campaign mostly on a promise to regulate data centers further, but ultimately lost his party’s nomination.
