ABSTRACT
Remnants of French and Spanish Roman Catholic politics, rather than counties, Louisiana uses parishes, which coincided with the old boundaries of the state church parishes. Sitting in Southeastern Louisiana, just outside of New Orleans, rests St. Tammany Parish, one of the fastest-growing parishes in the state, as its population has quadrupled since 1970. With a population of 264,570, the parish is predominantly white (83.2%), with smaller black (12.7%) and Hispanic (5.9%) communities. St. Tammany’s median home value is $233,300, and the median household income is $70,730. A deviant case of this study being that it is technically a county, St. Tammany is one of the 64 parishes in the state of Louisiana and utilizes a president-council form of government, with district members on the council elected under partisan elections.
