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Johnny Berthelot has been involved in Gonzales city politics since before Gonzales was a city. He was elected to the Board of Aldermen in 1976, the year before the town officially became a city. He first ran for mayor in 1984 and served as chief executive for 24 years. After stepping down as mayor, he ran for the Legislature and served two terms in the House as a Republican.
He decided in 2019 not to run for the third term, saying he wanted to spend more time with his grandchildren.
Instead, he returned to his political roots and won a seat on the City Council. In that race, he qualified as an independent, which for him wasn’t a big change. “I got along well with Republicans and Democrats when I served in the House,” Berthelot says. “I was a Republican, but I crossed the aisle.”
But dropping the “R” from his name on the ballot also nods to the changing demographics of the city. Gonzales is now home to a solid Black majority, and it’s about to elect its first Black mayor; all four of the candidates are Black Democrats.
It’s no secret that Ascension Parish has been one of the state’s fastest-growing parishes. Well-regarded schools and a thriving petrochemical sector are the most often-cited factors driving that growth. Gonzales, the parish’s most populous municipality, certainly has participated in that growth, but its recent additions are almost all minorities. Comparing U.S. census results from 2010 and 2020, the total population grew from 9,781 to 12,231, but the white segment was basically stagnant, adding only 12 people in 10 years.
Meanwhile, the Hispanic population nearly doubled to 1,578, while the Black community grew by almost 1,500 residents. By percentage, Gonzales is roughly 47% Black, 36% white and 13% Hispanic, according to the 2020 census.
Without getting into the socioeconomic reasons, it’s probably not all that surprising that the city’s Black population has grown while white residents flock to the parish’s burgeoning subdivisions. And given the way race and political identity tend to overlap in Louisiana, changing the racial mix inevitably changes the city’s politics.
But state Sen. Ed Price, a Black Democrat from Gonzales, says he was still “a little shocked” not to see any white candidates qualify for mayor. The seat came open when four-term incumbent Barney Arceneaux, a white Democrat, stepped away to become executive director of the Louisiana Municipal Association. “I think it has a huge significance,” Price says about the prospect for the city’s first Black mayor. “I think that the city has come a long way.”
The mayoral candidates are Terance Irvin, a former council member who challenged Arceneaux for mayor in 2016; current council members Tim Riley and Harold Stewart; and Kemlyn Bailey Lomas, who serves on the Planning and Zoning Commission. The top issues in the campaign are likely to be traffic, drainage and public safety.
Berthelot will retire from politics after finishing out his current term on the council, and he says he’s trying to stay as far away from the mayoral competition as possible.
Price isn’t backing anyone either, at least not yet. He has relationships with all four: Riley and Irvin are relatives, Lomas is his neighbor, and Stewart used to be his barber. But while he’s not picking a winner, Price does say that whoever is able to extend beyond their base and pick up significant support from white Republicans will likely have the upper hand.
—THEY SAID IT: “I get a lot of criticism—governors get criticized for being dictators, for being kings. I’ve tried to allow these issues to percolate through the Legislature.” –Gov. Jeff Landry, on his abortion politics, in Rolling Stone magazine
