Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome at the mayor’s office on Friday, December 27, 2024 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
East Baton Rouge Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome, left, is thanked for her service by councilman Rowdy Gaudet, who once served as her assistant chief administrative officer, during the last meeting of the metro council for the year, Wednesday, December 11, 2024, at City Hall in Baton Rouge, La.
East Baton Rouge Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome reacts to conversation during the last meeting of the metro council for the year, Wednesday, December 11, 2024, at City Hall in Baton Rouge, La.
Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome at the mayor’s office on Friday, December 27, 2024 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
East Baton Rouge Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome, left, bows her head in a prayer led by councilwoman Laurie Adams, center, and other council members, during the last meeting of the metro council for the year, Wednesday, December 11, 2024, at City Hall in Baton Rouge, La.
East Baton Rouge Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome, right, sits next to her chief of staff, Julie Baxter Payer, during the last meeting of the metro council for the year, Wednesday, December 11, 2024, at City Hall in Baton Rouge, La.
Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome at the mayor’s office on Friday, December 27, 2024 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome at the mayor’s office on Friday, December 27, 2024 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome at the mayor’s office on Friday, December 27, 2024 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
For the first time in 36 years, Sharon Weston Broome is about to be a private citizen.
Broome, 68, has spent more than half her life in elected office. Now, with Sid Edwards set to take her job as East Baton Rouge mayor-president on Jan. 2, she is left to reflect on eight years as the leader of Louisiana’s most populous parish.
The mayor is proud of some of her administration’s accomplishments, like the billion-dollar MoveBR traffic and infrastructure program. She is proud of how her administration navigated crises like the Alton Sterling protests, police officer killings, Baton Rouge’s devastating floods and the COVID-19 pandemic. And she is glad to have blazed a trail as the parish’s first female president.
“I think people will say that ‘she was a dedicated public servant who cared deeply about this city, this parish and who worked to bring progress,'” Broome said.
But Broome has also faced criticism for stubbornly high crime rates and her opposition to the incorporation of the new city of St. George. Those are among the issues that may have led voters to choose Edwards instead of a third term for her.
“There are a lot of people who love to focus on the negatives and what’s wrong,” Broome said. “They don’t see the glass as half full; they always see it as half empty.”
For Rowdy Gaudet, the MoveBR project is a window into Broome’s leadership.
Now a member of Metro Council, Gaudet previously served for three years as an assistant chief administrative officer under Broome.
In 2018, Broome persuaded voters to add a half-cent sales tax to fund new road construction, repairs, and other efforts to improve traffic. The tax is expected to raise $1 billion over 30 years, some $51 million of which has already been spent.
East Baton Rouge Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome, left, is thanked for her service by councilman Rowdy Gaudet, who once served as her assistant chief administrative officer, during the last meeting of the metro council for the year, Wednesday, December 11, 2024, at City Hall in Baton Rouge, La.
But Gaudet says it didn’t come easily. An early iteration called Better Transportation and Roads failed to pass through Metro Council. Instead of taking the loss and moving on to other things, Broome didn’t give up, he said.
“She called the team in the next day and said, ‘This just means we’re ready to take the next steps and come back with a bigger and better proposal.’ And I always valued that,” Gaudet said.
Her relentlessness on the issue and revision of the project eventually led to MoveBR, which Gaudet calls her “signature” accomplishment as mayor-president.
“That, to me, is what good leaders do,” he said. “Even if you take (a loss), you say ‘How do we learn from it and build from it?'”
Broome points to MoveBR as an example of positive collaboration she wants to be remembered for. Though the first project failed council approval, its second iteration turned out to be a larger, more comprehensive infrastructure project, she said.
“We were able to get support from the business community as well as the community at large around it,” she said. “Community leaders helped us navigate it and affirmed the need for it … It’s certainly a lesson learned and not given up when something is important.”
Broome is also proud of significant improvements the parish made to its flood protection using federal money. And she touts job growth in the parish, particularly the massive new Amazon fulfillment center that has already hired 500 workers and plans to have more than 1,000 workers at the facility later on.
The most-mentioned issue on the campaign trail over the past year — and perhaps the primary critique of Broome’s tenure — is crime.
Homicide rates reached unprecedented levels in Baton Rouge during Broome’s time in office, especially in the last four years.
While homicides rose sharply across the U.S. during the COVID pandemic, most cities have seen killings ebb in the years after. Not in Baton Rouge: Homicides rose this year compared to last year.
Edwards’ campaign leaned hard on the issue, as did Broome’s other opponents like Ted James prior to the November primary.
East Baton Rouge Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome, right, sits next to her chief of staff, Julie Baxter Payer, during the last meeting of the metro council for the year, Wednesday, December 11, 2024, at City Hall in Baton Rouge, La.
Broome does not shy away from the criticism and said the “mayor does have a responsibility” in keeping the community safe. But she also points to factors that impact crime like the judicial system or education, which she doesn’t have control over, as well as poverty.
“We don’t make progress just pointing the finger and laying crime at the feet of the mayor,” Broome said. “It’s great to be an armchair quarterback, but what are (people) doing to be part of the solution?”
District Attorney Hillar Moore also questions the idea of blaming heightened crime rates on the mayor.
“I think that statement is overstated and not accurate to a large degree. The mayor … does not have as much impact on crime as folks would think,” he said.
The sheriff is the chief law enforcement officer of the parish. The courts are responsible for deciding who gets out on bond — and law enforcement leaders often blame those decisions for allowing people to repeatedly commit crimes.
East Baton Rouge Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome, left, bows her head in a prayer led by councilwoman Laurie Adams, center, and other council members, during the last meeting of the metro council for the year, Wednesday, December 11, 2024, at City Hall in Baton Rouge, La.
In East Baton Rouge Parish, the mayor does set certain policies for the city’s police department, Moore said, but aside from that, the DA believes external factors play a larger role.
“Overwhelmingly, the majority of the crime that we see, and the reason why we have the increase we have, is directly related to education … and the family structure and life for the young people that are committing the majority of the violence,” Moore said.
The DA said the issue of violence in Baton Rouge will not be fixed quickly, and urged the public to not expect a quick turnaround from the Edwards administration.
For Metro Council member Cleve Dunn Jr., the high crime rates are a result of unequal resources for some communities, something he credits Broome with trying to fix.
“There’s also a collective responsibility. We cannot have a large portion of the resources going south of Florida (Boulevard) and wonder why crime is rising north of Florida and spilling over on the other side of town,” he said. “We have to make investments in the vulnerable population to stop them from turning to a life of crime.”
The incorporation of St. George proved to be a polarizing issue through much of Broome’s tenure.
A vote to create the new city succeeded in 2019, but a major lawsuit — which Broome joined as a plaintiff — tied the issue up in the courts until this year.
Critics of St. George argued it amounted to affluent White voters abandoning the lower-income, majority-Black parts of the parish. But supporters argued they were being neglected by city leaders and wanted more control over how their tax dollars were spent.
Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome at the mayor’s office on Friday, December 27, 2024 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Broome acknowledges some see her as a villain obstructing a community’s push for independence.
“I never saw myself as an obstructionist. I saw myself as fighting to keep this parish united,” Broome said.
The mayor said she never neglected resources or attention for St. George. Her concern was and remains the impact St. George’s incorporation will have on the parish’s disinvested communities, now that $40 million in sales tax revenue will be gone from the parish budget.
District 9 Metro Council member Dwight Hudson, whose district includes St. George, believes that Broome was operating in good faith. But he said her administration “mishandled” the saga, unnecessarily prolonging it after St. George residents voted to incorporate in 2019.
“I think what really upset folks in the St. George area was that their vote was not respected by their mayor-president,” Hudson said.
Even after the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled in favor of the new city earlier this year, Hudson said the city-parish dragged its feet in transferring services to St. George.
“It brought a lot of frustration to the issue,” he said. “Folks in this part of the parish were very excited about getting their new city started and addressing a lot of the concerns that they felt like had been lingering for decades.”
For her part, Broome said she would not have done a single thing differently when it comes to St. George.
Though she did not get the result she hoped for with her reelection bid, Broome says she still has plenty of reasons to smile.
This holiday season, she was finally able to travel to Virginia and meet her fourth grandchild, 5-month-old Sabina, and is looking forward to spending time more time with her three children and three other grandchildren.
Will she run for office again? Broome says “never say never,” but that she is “not inclined to be on anybody’s ballot anymore.”
East Baton Rouge Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome reacts to conversation during the last meeting of the metro council for the year, Wednesday, December 11, 2024, at City Hall in Baton Rouge, La.
She says she has a story to tell and is planning to get started on a book that she has long planned to write about her legacy as mayor-president.
“Sometimes in the present form, you’re not as appreciated as you are in the past form,” Dunn said. “She has done some great work and made some great investments in people, infrastructure and in businesses in this city. I think history will be kind to her.”
“You put yourself in a leadership role and, inevitably, folks are going to disagree with you,” Gaudet said. “She’s a woman of faith. I admire that she continuously leaned on her faith and leaned on God for guiding her and guiding her decisions.”
Broome said she hopes to be remembered as a leader with authentic compassion for her constituents.
“A title and a position is not the only way you can make a difference,” Broome said. “At the end of the day, it is our demonstration of our care and concern for others that will be defined as the true measure of our greatness.”
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