Francis C. Thompson

Francis C. Thompson (born October 29, 1941) is an American politician from Louisiana who has represented District 19 in the Louisiana House of Representatives since 2020, as well as between 1975 and 2008. Thompson additionally represented District 24 in the Louisiana State Senate between 2008 and 2020. A Republican, Thompson switched from the Democratic Party in March 2023 after having been an elected Democrat for 48 years.^[2] Thompson became the longest-serving state legislator in Louisiana history in January 2023 and is one of the longest-serving in the country.^[3]

Born in his hometown of Delhi, Louisiana, Thompson was elected to the Richland Parish School Board in 1968.^[4] In 1975, Thompson won a special election for District 19 in the Louisiana House. Voters have re-elected Thompson 11 times since then, even when Thompson was forced to run for State Senate in 2007 due to newly enacted term limits. Thompson won back his old House seat unopposed in 2019.^[3]

Thompson ran in the 1996 United House of Representatives elections in Louisiana's 5th congressional district, but lost in the runoff to Republican John Cooksey.^[5]

On March 17, 2023, Thompson announced he was switching to the Republican Party. Thompson's district had become significantly more Republican in recent years, and Thompson had already been voting with Republicans on several key issues.^[3] Thompson stated that his switch was in response to Democratic leadership pushing issues that did "not align with those values and principles that are part of my Christian life".^[2] The move gave Louisiana Republicans a two-thirds supermajority in both chambers of the Louisiana Legislature for the first time in history.^[6] 24 days later, another Democratic state representative in a Republican-heavy district, Jeremy LaCombe, followed Thompson into the Republican Party.^[7]