Three Republican candidates fighting for two open District 1 and District 5 seats on the Louisiana Public Service Commission this year received substantial support from PSC-regulated entities or organizations, PACs or businesses with ties to those enterprises, according to an Energy and Policy Institute review of campaign finance filings for candidates participating in the Louisiana primary elections from January 1, 2025 to April 16, 2026.
Republican candidate Stephanie Hilferty, D-1, received 50 percent of her contributions from PSC regulated entities or people or entities associated with them, primarily lawyers associated with utilities and lobbying firms whose clients include oil and gas companies and utilities.
Republican candidate John Young, also running for D-1, received 29 percent of his contributions from people or entities associated with PSC regulated entities, primarily utility PACs and utility executives.
District 5 Republican candidate John Atkins has deep ties to the oil and gas industry, and received nearly 30 percent of his contributions from people or entities associated with PSC regulated entities, primarily in the oil and gas and utility industries.
Early voting in the primary elections is already underway, with ten Republicans and Democrats vying for the two open seats that have been held by Commissioner Eric Skrmetta (R-D1) and Commissioner Foster Campbell (D-D5), who have termed out. Commissioners whose terms are not up for election include District 2 Commissioner Jean-Paul P. Coussan, District 3 Commissioner Davante Lewis, and District 4 Commissioner Mike Francis.
The PSC regulates electric, gas, water, wastewater and telecom utilities, as well as intrastate oil and gas pipelines, non-consensual towing (towing a car without the owner’s permission) and intrastate common carrier services for household waste, goods, and passengers, which encompasses both motor and freight transportation.
The PSC approves the rates paid by customers of utilities, and it sets the profit margins that utilities’ shareholders are allowed to earn on their share of the utilities’ capital investments. In 2025, Entergy Louisiana kept approximately 19 percent of the revenue that it took from customers’ bills as profit, one of the highest such rates for electric utilities nationwide.
The LA PSC is one of ten utility regulatory agencies with an elected commission; its five members serve six-year terms in single-member districts.
The contributions come as Louisianian ratepayers are confronting affordability challenges and as the PSC confronts looming questions about whether and how ratepayers should pay for massive data center developments in the state. People and entities associated with utilities regulated by the PSC contributed $123,991.98 across all candidates.
People and entities associated with all PSC-regulated companies contributed $234,241.98 across all candidates.
In Louisiana, unlike in several other states with elected utility regulators, it is legal for candidates to receive money from interests that commissioners regulate. Regulated utilities that gave directly to candidates included American Electric Power (AEP), Entergy, and Cleco.
District 1 candidates
District 1 covers parts of southeastern Louisiana; mostly suburban New Orleans, with parts of eastern Florida Parishes and River Parishes. Commissioner Skrmetta currently holds the seat and has faced accusations and investigations into his close ties with utilities and other PSC-regulated businesses.
Two out of the three largest recipients of utility contributions in the upcoming election are running for the District 1 seat – John Young and Stephanie Hilferty. Young previously served as President of Jefferson Parish, while Hilferty is a member of the Louisiana state legislature.
Independent candidate Christopher Justin, also running for District 1, will be on the ballot for the general election. Candidates registering as a party other than Republican or Democrat cannot participate in the closed primaries.
Stephanie Hilferty
Republican State Representative Stephanie Hilferty, a New Orleans commercial realtor, announced her candidacy for the seat held by Skrmetta in February 2026 after she termed out of her seat in the Louisiana State Legislature, where she has served since 2015.
Over half of her contributions, $50,000, came from PSC regulated entities or people or entities associated with them. A total of $41,250, or nearly 42 percent, of campaign contributions to Hilferty came from utility PACs or from lobbying firms that have utility clients.
A senior consultant with Cornerstone Government Affairs, a lobbying and government affairs firm, contributed $5,000 to Hilferty. Other contributors include:
- Jones Walker, a law firm which has represented NextEra in PSC dockets;
- The Picard Group, a lobbying firm with Entergy as a client;
- Adams and Reese, a law firm that has represented Entergy and Cleco as clients;
- Capital Strategies Group, which represents Atmos Energy and Calpine.
Hilferty has also received a substantial amount from oil and gas industry firms—$8,500, or 8 percent of her contributions — which operate or utilize the intrastate pipelines regulated by the PSC. These contributions include those from LOGPAC, the Louisiana Oil and Gas PAC, Valero PAC, a petroleum refinery company PAC, and Cantium LLC, an oil and gas company.
Hilferty has positioned herself in the PSC race as someone who will act as a “watchdog” who will work for the public interest, noting her history in the state Legislature of sponsoring a bill reforming the Sewage and Water Board of New Orleans.
Hilferty called data center buildout in Louisiana “positive,” but said that it “puts a burden on the PSC to ensure” ratepayers are not footing the cost, according to the media outlet Gambit.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, plans to build a $27 billion data center in Louisiana. A lobbying firm that represents, among other clients, Meta, State Capital Solutions LLC, contributed $500 to Hilferty’s campaign on February 24, 2026.
Hilferty did not respond to questions from the Energy and Policy Institute (EPI) about the contributions and potential conflicts of interest.
John Young
Republican John Young received nearly 30 percent of his $107,854 in contributions from people and entities associated with PSC-regulated utilities, according to a review of his campaign filings. Young has held several elected positions prior to his PSC candidacy, including parish president, councilman at-large, and assistant district attorney.
The Louisiana electric utility Cleco was Young’s largest utility contributor, with executives – including CEO William Fontenot and President of Cleco Power LLC Shane Hilton – contributing to his campaign.
Young also received $5,000 from the Entergy employee PAC (EnPAC) and $250 from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) PAC.
Young did not respond to questions from EPI about the contributions and potential conflicts of interest.
Wallace Cooper
Republican Wallace Cooper is a chef and entrepreneur who framed himself as an outsider and businessman who will hold utility companies accountable.
His campaign appears financed by self-funded loans totaling $2,803.26.
John Mason
Republican John Mason (D-1) reported mostly self-funded loans and individual contributions, some of which were reported in a 2025 annual filing despite being transacted in 2020 and 2021; Mason was unsuccessful in a bid for Public Service Commission in 2020.
Mark Wright
Republican Candidate Mark Wright (D-1) received 26 percent of his contributions from people or entities associated with the towing industry, which is regulated by the PSC. Wright worked in the towing industry for 15 years before he was elected to the Louisiana state legislature in 2017.
Wright did not respond to questions from EPI about the contributions and potential conflicts of interest.
Connie Norris
The sole Democrat running for the District 1 seat, Connie Norris, is a retired educator from Slidell, LA and so far, has financed her campaign with a single personal loan totaling $20,000. She will face the Republican primary winner during the general election in November.
District 5 candidates
The District 5 seat has two Democrats and two Republicans vying to replace Commissioner Foster Campbell, who has occupied it since 2003.
John Atkins
Republican John Atkins reported nearly 28 percent, or $141,950, of his contributions from businesses or entities associated with entities regulated by the PSC, including utility executives and the oil and gas industry, where he has long-standing ties.
The Shreveport Times reported on February 11, 2026 that Atkins “said he won’t accept campaign donations from the utilities he might regulate if he wins the District 5 Louisiana Public Service Commission seat.”
“I think it’s best to keep them at arm’s length,” Atkins told the newspaper. The article reported that Atkins “knows of one utility donation that was accepted by his campaign early in the race, but that he instructed his campaign to return it.”
That donation referred to a $1,000 contribution from AEP to Atkins in 2025, which Atkins’ campaign refunded.
In an email response to an inquiry from EPI, Atkins said that the AEP contribution “was deposited in our campaign bank account and held there until it was refunded in March or April of 2026 after I made the decision not to take campaign contributions from regulated entities.”
Atkins’ campaign also refunded a $2,500 contribution from Magnolia Water, a regulated water utility.
Atkins received contributions from other individuals and entities associated with regulated utilities.
One contributor, former President and CEO of Entergy New Orleans, Charles Rice, gave both personally and via his company, Rice Farms Ltd., to support Atkins’ candidacy. Rice came under scrutiny in 2018 after a news investigation revealed paid actors and non-profits who received donations from Entergy’s Charitable Foundation testified in favor of Entergy’s proposed gas plant.
Overall, Atkins received $42,200 in contributions from the people or entities associated with PSC-regulated utilities, or nine percent of his total funding sources. Six separate partners from the accounting firm Heard, McElroy, which focuses on oil and gas accounting and conducts utility audits, contributed a combined total of $1,500 to Atkins’ campaign.
Atkins received $85,250, or over 16 percent of his total contributions, from the oil and gas industry. People and entities associated with the towing and common carrier industry contributed $14,500, around three percent, of Atkins’ total fundraising.
Atkins currently serves as a Board member of Aeropres Corporation, a Louisiana-based industrial gas manufacturer and Maven Royalty Partners LLC, an acquirer of oil and gas mineral interests. He also serves as the Principal and Partner at Atco Investment Company LLC, where he primarily handles oil and gas asset management. Previously, Atkins worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Company with a focus on energy companies, including electric utility companies, and as a geophysicist for ConocoPhillips.
Aiden Joyner
Republican Aiden Joyner’s campaign contributions included $2,525 from himself and $1,660 from a Louisianan towing services company owned by his family; that company is regulated by the PSC.
Joyner did not respond to questions from EPI about the contributions and potential conflicts of interest.
James Green
Democrat James Green reported only two campaign contributions, one from a former utility executive. Willie Bradford, Jr., who previously served as Vice President of External Affairs at SWEPCO, and now is employed by Blanchard, Walker, O’Quin & Roberts, a vendor used by CenterPoint Energy contributed $200 on February 6, 2026.
Green did not respond to questions from EPI about the contributions and potential conflicts of interest.
Austin Lawson
Democrat Austin Lawson filed to run in mid-February 2026 and as of May 6, 2025, has not reported any contributions.
Methodology
EPI analyzed contributions to each Republican and Democratic candidate for the Louisiana Public Service Commission to check for ties to regulated entities, examining the period from Jan. 1, 2025 to April 16, 2026.
Regulated entities are those who have rates set by PSC proceedings, whose operations are subject to PSC oversight, or who have business before the PSC. EPI counted the following as “associated” with a regulated entity:
- Law firms and employees of law firms representing regulated entities
- Lobbyists registered to represent regulated entities
- Employees and retirees of regulated entities
- Companies, and the people who work for them, with financial ties to regulated entities or their affiliates
Some contributions did not contain sufficient information to ascertain the nature of the contributor. EPI treated those as contributions as not being associated with a regulated entity.
All figures are based on public filings, current as of April 16, 2026. To view the original source data and EPI’s classification of each contribution, please visit this link:
