Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Jamie Davis has launched a new 30-second television ad accusing Republican Rep. Julia Letlow of buying stock in companies tied to a massive Meta data center in Richland Parish and then sitting on the disclosure for more than a year. The ad lands in the final stretch of a race to succeed Sen. Bill Cassidy, with early voting set to begin in Louisiana next week.
The spot leans on reporting from WWNO, which found that Letlow signed a non-disclosure agreement on June 29, 2024, with Laidley LLC, a shell company Meta used to conceal its identity behind the project codename “Project Sucre” while negotiating its Richland Parish data center. According to that reporting, Letlow purchased stock in Meta and Nvidia after signing the NDA, with Meta trades continuing through July 2, 2025, and the latest specified Nvidia trade on January 31, 2025. Nvidia makes the chips that power Meta's data centers. Gambit reported that Davis's ad accused Letlow over the NDA and stock trades.
Letlow did not publicly disclose any of the trades until August 11, 2025, well past the 45-day window required under the federal Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, per the same WWNO account. A spokesperson for Letlow has said she did not know about the trades, and her campaign maintains her portfolio was managed independently without her direct knowledge, according to the Gambit report.
Ethics Watchdogs Say Penalties Are Toothless
Even if a late filing were flagged, the consequences are minor. The 2012 STOCK Act requires members of Congress to report stock transactions over $1,000 within 45 days, but first-time fines begin at $200 and penalties are often minimal, according to the Campaign Legal Center. Ethics watchdogs argue that fine fails to deter lawmakers from sitting on high-value trades, the group notes.
The Davis ad features a clip of WWL radio commentator Newell Normand describing the alleged conduct as a “truly crooked stench,” per Gambit's reporting. In the spot, Davis pledges not to trade individual stock while serving in the Senate, to push for a ban on insider trading by members of Congress, and to focus on regulating AI data centers rather than profiting from them.
That pledge echoes a broader national push that has stalled in Washington. The U.S. House passed H.R. 7008 in July to ban lawmakers from buying individual stocks, but a procedural vote on a companion Senate bill failed 53-47 on September 30, according to the America First Policy Institute. Support for legislation banning members of Congress from trading individual stocks has been put at 86%. Nearly 100 lawmakers have been found trading in companies influenced by their committee work.
A $50 Billion Project at the Center of the Fight
The data center at the heart of the controversy is no small undertaking. Meta expanded its commitment to the Richland Parish project to more than $50 billion in July, turning it into a 5-gigawatt facility and the largest private capital investment in Louisiana history, according to Louisiana Economic Development. The site will house Hyperion, described as Meta's largest AI training cluster.
Letlow's NDA was not an isolated arrangement. More than 100 Louisiana state employees and Gov. Jeff Landry signed non-disclosure agreements tied to major industrial and tech developments, an investigation found, a practice that has drawn criticism from ethics advocates for obscuring public utility and job negotiations. The Hyperion build has also fueled friction closer to home: rural landowners filed an opposition petition on August 27, 2026, in a fight over Entergy's power line, citing property rights and environmental concerns along a proposed 500-kilovolt transmission route needed to power the facility. Louisiana had secured more than $150 billion in investment since 2024 as of July 2026, leading the nation, though that boom has sparked statewide debate over infrastructure and who bears the utility burden.
The Race to Replace Cassidy
Davis, a farmer from Tensas Parish, has said he hopes his son, grandchildren and great-grandchildren will one day make it six generations farming the land.
He and Letlow are competing for the seat held by Cassidy, who voted to convict President Donald Trump during the 2021 impeachment trial. Both Trump and Gov. Jeff Landry backed Letlow's primary challenge to Cassidy, which she won. Former Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards has endorsed Davis and is scheduled to join him Thursday at a Veterans for Davis event at the WWII Museum starting at 5 p.m. Nick Albares, Davis's policy director, previously worked on Edwards's staff.
Louisiana's early voting period runs October 20-24 and October 26-27, ahead of Election Day on November 3.
