Rep. Clay Higgins will return to Capitol Hill next term.
Rep. Higgins (R-Lafayette) cruised to victory in the Third Congressional District Race, winning his fifth term in office. With early voting tallies in LA-3 reported, Higgins leads with 72 percent of the vote. His nearest opponent, Democrat Priscilla Gonzalez, has 18 percent of the vote.
Higgins was first elected to Congress in 2016 after making a name for himself as a tough-talking spokesperson for the St. Landry Parish Sheriff's Office. After he resigned amid a disagreement with the sheriff over how he presented himself in his Crime Stoppers segments, Higgins beat former Lieutenant Governor (and future Trump Administration official) Scott Angelle in his first-ever run for office.
Since then, Higgins has courted controversy through his public comments and his posts on social media. Most recently, Higgins was criticized for racist comments he made about Haitians living in the United States, accusing them of "eating pets" and calling their native country the "nastiest country in the western hemisphere" (sic). Those remarks led to some Democratic members of Congress to call on Republican leaders to censure Higgins. In 2017, Higgins drew condemnation for posting videos from inside a gas chamber at the Auschwitz concentration camp to social media.