Two Democrats — Luke Mixon and Gary Chambers Jr. — are challenging John Kennedy in U.S.

One Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate is a White moderate who grew up on a farm in central Louisiana, graduated from the United States Naval Academy and served as a fighter pilot.

“We need moderation and civility and folks who care more about the people they represent in the country than themselves and the political party they represent,” Luke Mixon said on Jim Engster’s “Talk Louisiana” radio show in October just after declaring his candidacy.

The other Democrat in the race is a Black progressive who grew up in Baton Rouge and has attracted a horde of online followers with a compelling message against White privilege and for all working people.

“We can make a change in Louisiana because there are more of us who are willing to help our neighbors and lift our communities,” Gary Chambers Jr. said in a Facebook post this week just after announcing his candidacy. “There are more of us who want to see our children thrive and have a fair shot at a bright future and prosperous life right here in our state.”

As they begin their campaigns to unseat the formidable Republican incumbent, John N. Kennedy, Mixon and Chambers neatly capture the two major strains of the Louisiana Democratic Party.

Kennedy, meanwhile, has voted in near-lockstep with his fellow Republicans over the past five years, supporting programs favored by then-President Donald Trump and opposing the tax-and-spending policies pushed by President Joe Biden.

Kennedy, who has Trump’s endorsement, is sitting on a pile of cash with $10 million in the bank.

Mixon will provide the first indication of whether he can mount a serious campaign at the end of January when he reports how much he raised during the first six weeks of his campaign at the end of 2021.

“In order for Democrats to be viable, they have to have enough money to get their name out there. It’s the resources question right now,” said Stephen Handwerk, a Democratic strategist who served as executive director of the state party for nearly a decade until 2020.

Mixon models himself after Gov. John Bel Edwards and has the type of centrist profile that – until recently – often catapulted Louisiana Democrats into statewide office.

Chambers argues that Democrats have to forge a new path, with a forceful message that will energize working-class people who haven’t seen a reason to vote.

In the coming months, each candidate will have the opportunity to show which message is most persuasive in a state where Democratic successes have sharply declined over the past 20 years, and where a climate of extreme political polarization poses a major obstacle.

Qualifying begins on July 20 and ends two days later. The jungle primary, featuring Kennedy and all of his opponents, regardless of party, will be Nov. 8.

Chambers faces tall odds simply because no Black candidate has won a statewide race in Louisiana since 1872, said Michael Martin, a history professor at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette. That was during Reconstruction, when federal troops protected Black voting rights. Over the next few years, the troops left, and White leaders soon disenfranchised Black voters.

Since the civil rights era, numerous Black candidates have run statewide, but none has won.

“The premise of Gary’s campaign is that the moderate, mushy middle doesn’t exist. That being said, it’s not at all clear that his campaign has a path to victory either,” said Albert Samuels, the chairman of Southern University’s political science department.

No Democrat has won statewide office in Louisiana since 2008 other than Edwards, who was elected in 2015 and was barely re-elected four years later.

“I would say overall that Louisiana is a safe Republican state for Kennedy,” said Miles Coleman, a New Orleans native and LSU grad who is associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia.

Coleman has no shortage of data to explain why Kennedy is heavily favored over either Democrat.

Kennedy crushed Foster Campbell, a Democratic member of the Public Service Commission from the Shreveport area, in 2016, taking nearly 61% of the vote.

In his losing 2020 campaign, Donald Trump carried Louisiana with 58% of the vote, while U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, also a Republican, won re-election with 59%.

“Increasingly the Senate results line up with how a state votes at the presidential level,” said Jessica Taylor, who handicaps Senate races for the Cook Political Report in Washington.

The recent victories reflect the crest of the GOP tide in Louisiana.

The percentage of registered Democrats in Louisiana has plummeted from 59% in 2002 to 40% today. There are still more registered Democrats than Republicans (31%) and independents (27%). But many of them are Democrats in name only as they pull the Republican lever in election after election.

Republicans gained a majority in the Legislature in 2011 for the first time since Reconstruction. They have strengthened their hand substantially since then, falling just short of a two-thirds supermajority in both houses.

As in other Southern states, the Democratic Party in Louisiana has declined because it has hemorrhaged White voters, said John Couvillon, a Baton Rouge-based pollster and demographer.

In 2002, 57% of Democrats were White and 41% were Black.

That ratio has flipped. Today, 60% of Democrats are Black and 36% are white.

Of the 12 Democrats in the state Senate, only two – Gary Smith, of Norco, and Jay Luneau, of Alexandria – are White. Of the 34 Democrats in the state House, only nine are White.

“Being a Democrat is becoming more and more of a liability outside of a few scattered parishes,” Couvillon said.

That’s the difficult terrain that confronts Mixon.

He is 42 and was raised on a farm in Bunkie in Avoyelles Parish. He spent nearly 20 years flying the F-18 fighter, in support of American missions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.

Now a commercial pilot, Mixon said he felt compelled to challenge Kennedy because he believes the senator lacks decency and moral courage.

Mixon is hammering away at Kennedy’s vote against Biden’s giant infrastructure package that the Democratic Congress approved last year, with support from Cassidy and a few other Republican senators.

“This infrastructure bill is going to rebuild our roads and bridges, expand internet access, provide clean water to our cities and rebound from the once-in-a-generation storm that hits us every year,” Mixon told the Press Club of Baton Rouge on Monday. Referring to Kennedy, Mixon added, “He’s more interested in partisanship and sound bites than solving problems.”

Kennedy said the measure would increase the federal deficit and didn’t direct enough of its dollars to actual infrastructure projects.

Mixon is also calling for the federal government to make quality day care available to all parents and to expand spending on early childhood education.

He has a solid team of Democratic operatives working for him. His campaign manager is Ben Riggs, who until recently served as the state party’s press secretary. Crafting his media campaign will be Jared Arsement, who won notice devising John Bel Edwards’ ads. Bill Rouselle, a veteran ad man in New Orleans, is assisting Arsement. John Anzalone, who served as Edwards’ pollster, is overseeing the polling operation with the help of Silas Lee in New Orleans.

Chambers is coming off a strong third-place showing in last year’s special election to replace Cedric Richmond in a congressional district that stretches from New Orleans to Baton Rouge and was drawn to elect a Black candidate. Chambers nearly overcame state Sen. Karen Carter Peterson of New Orleans, who won a spot in the runoff but then lost to Troy Carter.

Chambers raised nearly as much as Peterson during the primary while offering full-throated support for the Green New Deal, Medicaid for All and a $15 per hour minimum wage.

He specializes in clever digital posts like one on Facebook this week that poked fun at Kennedy.

“He used to talk like this,” Chambers said as viewers then saw Kennedy, the state Treasurer, sounding like the corporate attorney he used to be.

“But then he became a Republican,” Chambers added, “switched accents and now talks like this.”

Viewers then saw a folksy-sounding Kennedy promising in a 2016 campaign ad, “I will not let you down. I’d rather drink weed killer.”

Chambers’ candidacy prompted a headline from The Hayride that said, “We’re Ecstatic,” with the conservative website forecasting that it would mean the Democratic Party’s further decline.

Chambers is pointing to Georgia’s election of Raphael Warnock, a Black minister, to the Senate in 2020, to prove the doubters…