Louisiana's 2nd congressional district

History

Louisiana gained the 2nd Congressional District in 1823 as part of the 18th United States Congress. At first it comprised New Orleans and significant populations from surrounding areas, but it has incrementally been compacted into being mostly within the city of New Orleans per se. Since the late 19th century, it has been historically among the most safely Democratic seats in the country, for sharply opposing reasons. It remained in Democratic hands from 1891 through much of the 1960s because in 1898 the Democratic-dominated state legislature disenfranchised most blacks through provisions of a new state constitution and maintained their political exclusion for decades. Like most congressional seats in the South, this district consistently voted Democratic from the time of Reconstruction until the 1960s, but the voters during that time were nearly all white Democrats. New Orleans had a significant proportion of African Americans in its population who were utterly excluded from the political system.

Since passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the federal government oversaw voter registration and elections in areas in which portions of the population were underrepresented. Since that time, African Americans in the South have re-entered the political process. Most have affiliated with the Democratic Party, as its national leaders supported the civil rights movement. The 2nd was configured as a "Majority-Minority" district to ensure minority voters have a chance to elect representatives of their own choice to Congress, and to guard against adverse racially motivated gerrymandering. It has been drawn as a black-majority district since 1983. It is the only black-majority district containing any territory west of the Mississippi River.

In 2008 Joseph Cao was elected as the first Republican to represent the 2nd Congressional District and most of New Orleans in over a century; he was the United States' first Vietnamese-American U.S. Representative. He was the only Republican in the 111th Congress to represent a district with a predominantly African-American population.

For most of the time from 1983 to 2013, the district contained nearly all of the city of New Orleans (except for a small portion is located in the neighboring 1st Congressional District), and some of its suburbs. From 2003 to 2013, it also included the West Bank portion of Jefferson Parish and South South Kenner, which have a higher proportion of white residents. After the 2010 census, it was pushed slightly to the west, picking up a portion of Baton Rouge.