SHREVEPORT, La. (KTAL/KMSS) – Shreveport Mayor Adrian Perkins is looking to serve another four years on the job.
“Our administration, we still have work to do,” said Perkins when interviewed at his campaign headquarters on Jewella Avenue.
Perkins is a Shreveport native who grew up in Cedar Grove and went on to graduate from West Point and attend Harvard Law School. When he was sworn in as Shreveport’s 56th mayor in December 2018 at the age of 33, he became the second-youngest in the city’s history.
Despite implementing many changes during his time in office, Perkins says the pandemic, global economic turmoil, and a once-in-a-lifetime winter storm kept him from accomplishing his first-term goals.
“We’ve made a lot of improvements with public safety, economic development, and implementing technology that the city has never seen before, but we still got work to do,” said Perkins.
Sitting atop Perkins’ to-do list if he wins a second term as Shreveport mayor is workforce development, now that several mid-to-large size companies, most notably Amazon, have brought jobs to the area.
“I’m really working with the school board, that is the pipeline. The school board and our institutions of higher learning and I’m working with those big companies that are coming in and a lot of our just homegrown companies as well,” said Perkins. “The economy is always evolving. The economy and the workforce requirements are always evolving. We got to make sure that K through 12 systems, our higher education systems, are just as flexible.”
Perkins has made changes with those heading economic development and the police force. He brought in Drew Mouton to head up the Office of Economic Development and promoted Wayne Smith to serve as police chief.
Crime is down. Hiring is up. Both moves have paid dividends for Perkins, but he says getting the city on solid financial footing has been his administration’s biggest accomplishment.
“When we came in, there was a deficit of negative $1.3 million in our operating budget. In the last audit, we have accumulated $36 million without any federal funding. In just 3.5 years.”
Still, there have been fumbles, including a failed bid less than two years into his term to unseat incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy in 2020. At the time, Perkins said he was motivated by the government’s response to the pandemic.
But Perkins says his biggest regret was learning on the job.
“Hey, we make mistakes. If you point to any of those mistakes that I made, you can’t say that we’ve done it twice,” he said. “As soon as we made that mistake, we came together as a team. We made sure that we went over it and we accepted it. We acknowledged it, and we grew from it. And we got better.”
One of those mistakes came early in Perkins’ administration when he changed the city’s insurance agencies from ones the city had long used for worker’s compensation and property coverage to new, out-of-town insurers without approval from the city council. An investigative audit released on Monday found that decision violated the city charter and policy. The audit also found Perkins may have violated travel and procurement policies and procedures.
Perkins said Monday he would reimburse the city for all improperly submitted expenses and said the city is taking steps to improve the implementation of purchasing policies.
And while Perkins announced his intention to run for a second term back in May and qualified in July, it wasn’t until mid-August that Perkins learned if he would even be in the mayoral race. His bid for re-election was halted following a district court and appellate court ruling which disqualified him from the race based on Perkins submitting an incorrect candidate filing form.
The Louisiana Supreme Court ultimately reversed the lower courts’ decisions, allowing him back on the ballot.
Perkins says he had confidence in the process the entire time.
“We did what we needed to do as a legal team. We got reinstated to the race and I never panicked. My team never panicked,” he said. “And that way when the Supreme Court made its ruling, we just jump right back into things as seamlessly as possible.”
He says support from citizens during the time the case was being heard was strong.
“You have no idea how many supermarkets I was in, churches I was in, walking down the street where people came up to me and was just like, ‘I don’t know who to vote for,'” said Perkins. “They didn’t think that it was fair. So there was a huge amount of public support that was really coming to me day in and day out.”
Perkins has plenty of challengers for the job. There are ten candidates running for Shreveport mayor, including Democrat and longtime District 39 state Sen. Greg Tarver and local attorney and former Shreveport City Councilman Tom Arceneaux, who is a Republican. Dist. 10 Caddo Parish Commissioner Mario Chavez is also running as a “no party candidate,” along with Democrat Dist. D councilwoman Levette Fuller, retired Shreveport police officer and Democrat Tracy Mendels, Libertarian Lauren Ray Anderson, Independent “Julius” Romano, Republican Melvin Slack, Jr., and Democrat Darryl R. Ware II.
Early voting begins Oct. 25 and continues through Nov. 1, except for Sundays, from 8:30 a.m.-6 p.m. Election Day is Nov. 8.
