Rep. Bill Cassidy (R)

The new Congressman from the 6th District is Republican Bill Cassidy. He was one of only five Republicans to defeat a House Democratic incumbent in the Democratic year of 2008. Republicans have held this Baton Rouge-based district for 30 years, except for the brief tenure of Democratic Rep. Don Cazayoux. He won a May 2008 special election to fill out the term of retiring GOP Rep. Richard Baker, who resigned to head a Washington trade group. Cazayoux held the seat until the regularly scheduled congressional election the following November, then lost it to Cassidy. The son of a life-insurance salesman, Cassidy grew up in Baton Rouge and went to college at Louisiana State University. He went on to graduate from LSU’s medical school, and during his medical training, he met his wife, Laura, who is also a physician and formerly chief of surgery at Earl K. Long Hospital. Cassidy was an associate professor of medicine at LSU and taught at the same hospital. Cassidy went on to cofound the Greater Baton Rouge Community Clinic, which provides free dental and health care to the working uninsured. He developed a school-based hepatitis B vaccination program that has immunized more than 36,000 public, private, and parochial schoolchildren at no cost to parents or schools.

One of Cassidy’s defining moments came when Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. With the help of several other physicians, he created a makeshift field hospital in an abandoned Kmart store. In a PBS documentary, he recalled entering the store after the storm. “When we came in, there was grease all over the floor, dust, 90 percent of these lights were out. There was no electricity, no phone lines. No one had checked the plumbing, and we couldn’t even open all the doors. Thirty-six to 48 hours after we began the process, we were ready to begin receiving patients.” Cassidy won a December 2006 special election to the state Senate and was re-elected in 2007. He sponsored several bills to improve health standards in Louisiana, including one to overhaul the children’s mental health system and another to expand Medicaid coverage to patients at new organ-transplant centers.

He passed on the opportunity to compete for Baker’s seat in the special election. But after state Rep. Cazayoux defeated social conservative Woody Jenkins 49%-46%, with a big boost from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Cassidy vowed to take the district back for the Republicans. He described himself as a “pro-life, pro-gun-rights” social conservative in favor of free enterprise, limited government, and lower taxes. He made the economy the focus of his campaign, highlighting his record in the state Senate of voting against spending bills and cutting taxes for businesses and for parents with children in private schools. He also criticized Cazayoux for supporting Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama’s tax plan. Cazayoux ran an ad criticizing Cassidy for supporting the idea of private savings accounts in the Social Security program. State Rep. Michael Jackson, who is African-American, ran as an independent, due partly to his unhappiness over the national Democrats’ early support for Cazayoux in the special election. Cassidy won comfortably, with 48% to 40% for Cazayoux and 12% for Jackson. In East Baton Rouge, which cast 62% of the total vote, Cassidy won 44%-42%. His margin of victory came in Livingston and Ascension parishes, which he won by more than 27,000 votes. Cazayoux ran strongly in the western part of the district, where he took three rural parishes. The shifting dynamics in this district could set up another competitive contest in 2010.