page_title: Tensas Parish, Louisiana
section_title: Partisan politics
hierarchical_section_title: Tensas Parish, Louisiana / History / 20th century to present / Partisan politics
caption_attribution_description: English: I took photo on Aug. 2, 2008.Billy Hathorn (talk) 02:02, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
context_page_description: Tensas Parish is a parish located in the northeastern section of the State of Louisiana; its eastern border is the Mississippi River. As of the 2010 census, the population was 5,252. It is the least populated parish in Louisiana. The parish seat is St. Joseph. The name Tensas is derived from the historic indigenous Taensa people. The parish was founded in 1843 following Indian Removal.
  The parish was developed for cotton agriculture, which dominated the economy through the early 20th century. There has also been some cattle ranching in the 1930s and timber extraction.
context_section_description: Historically, Tensas Parish has been heavily Democratic in orientation, although the make-up of the party has changed markedly in terms of demographics.
  In the 1860 presidential election, the parish supported by plurality the Constitutional Union Party candidate, U.S. Senator John Bell of Tennessee, who pledged to support the Constitution of the United States, the Union of states, and the "enforcement of the laws." Louisiana as a whole narrowly cast its electoral votes for the Southern Democratic choice, Vice President John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky. Regular Democratic nominee Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois ran poorly in Louisiana, and the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln, also of Illinois, was not even listed on the state ballot.
  The end of the war was followed by emancipation of millions of enslaved African Americans in the South. After gaining the franchise, most black men joined the Republican Party, electing candidates who made up a biracial legislature in Louisiana during Reconstruction. White Democratic groups worked through intimidation and fraud to suppress black and white Republican voting during and after the Reconstruction era. In 1898 Louisiana passed a new state constitution with provisions that created barriers to voter registration in order to disenfranchise African-American voters and cripple the Republican Party. Louisiana was effectively a one-party state and part of the Solid South for the next several decades.
  In 1988, Vice President George H.W. Bush, the Republican presidential nominee, prevailed in Tensas Parish with 1,645 votes (50 percent). Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts trailed with 1,556 (47.3 percent).
  In 1996, native son of the South U.S. President Bill Clinton obtained 1,882 votes (60.7 percent) in Tensas Parish, and the Republican Bob Dole of Kansas polled 1,000 votes (32.3 percent).
  In 2000, the Democratic nominee, Vice President Al Gore, won Tensas Parish by 250 votes. The Democratic electors polled 1,580 votes that year to 1,330 for the George W. Bush-Dick Cheney ticket. In 2004, the Democratic ticket of U.S. Senators John F. Kerry of Massachusetts and John Edwards of North Carolina carried Tensas Parish, 1,460 (49.6 percent) to 1,453 (49 percent) for Bush-Cheney.
  In the 2008 presidential contest, Democratic nominee Barack Obama of Illinois won Tensas Parish, 1,646 (54.1 percent) to 1,367 (45 percent) for Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona. In 2012, President Obama again carried the parish, with 1,564 votes (55.6 percent), while rival Mitt Romney polled 1,230 votes (43.7 percent). The Obama-McCain and Obama-Romney voter divisions in 2008 and 2012 reflect the demographics of the political parties in Tensas Parish.
  In the 2004 U.S. Senate primary election, Tensas Parish gave a plurality to the Republican candidate, U.S. Representative David Vitter of St. Tammany Parish, who polled 1,145 votes (41 percent) compared to 881 ballots (32 percent) for his chief Democratic rival, Congressman Chris John of Crowley. He won statewide. There was no general election in Tensas Parish to determine if Vitter would have surpassed 50 percent plus one vote to obtain an outright majority in this traditionally Democratic parish.
  In 2007, the successful Republican gubernatorial candidate, U.S. Representative Bobby Jindal, polled 40 percent in Tensas Parish. Tensas gave a plurality of 48 percent to Secretary of State Democrat Jay Dardenne. Two Republican candidates ran for a seat on the Tensas Parish Police Jury, the parish governing body, and Emmett L. Adams, Jr., won over fellow Republican Patrick Glass, 207-179 votes (54-46 percent).
  Under the state constitution, prior to 1968, each parish -regardless of population- elected at least one member to the Louisiana House of Representatives. That year the US Supreme Court ruled that states had to develop legislative districts that were based on roughly equal populations and had to be redistricted after each decennial census, based on the principle of "one man, one vote". It said there was no constitutional basis for state legislatures to b
caption: Legion Memorial Cemetery is located north of Newellton off Louisiana Highway 605.
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