Charmaine Marchand-Stiaes was elected in 2003 for Louisiana Legislature Representative for District 99 (the majority of the Ninth Ward). According to Clancy DuBos (Gambit political columnist and political analysts for Chanel 4), due to redistricting Stiaes and Representative Wesley Bishop were put in the same district after the 2010 census. Stiaes decided not to run for re-elections this year. She said that she was not going to run because it would be better for her “family [her father was having health problems] and the community” because she would not be able to do her job as well as having to worry about her father.
Marchand-Stiaes’s decision is directly related to the process of redistricting that occurs every ten years at both the state and federal level. Redistricting is very political because if there is a dominating party in the Senate they will be able to position the districts in a way that will shadow the competing party in the districts. For example, if the majority of the Senate is republican they can draw the districts in a way so the there are less Democrats than republicans in each district. If there is a higher number of Republican voters then there is a high chance the Republican candidate will win. Therefore, the Republicans would dominate the aria. Redistricting also gives trouble to people who are running the districts. There was a big change in the New Orleans Districts because Katrina made so many people leave their homes, and they never came back. The Senate lowered the number of New Orleans Districts from five to three in the redistricting because there were less people. People like State Representative Charmaine Marchand-Stiaes ran into trouble because the aria that she was used to representing changed. Stiaes would have to run against more Representatives than she had before, and have to worry about her father. She focused her not running for re-election on her family so that the press would not be able to say that she just gave up because of the redistricting.
http://www.wwltv.com/news/politics/State-legislator-wont-seek-re-election-128492013.html
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