Representative Garret Graves

Garret Neal Graves (born January 31, 1972) is an American politician who served as the United States representative for Louisiana’s 6th congressional district from 2015 to 2025. A member of the Republican Party, he represented a Baton Rouge–area district for five consecutive terms, participating actively in the legislative process and advocating for the interests of his constituents during a significant period in American political history. After redistricting dismantled his district, he declined to run for re-election in 2024.

Graves was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to John and Cynthia (née Sliman) Graves and is of partial Lebanese descent. He was raised in the Catholic faith and attended Catholic High School in Baton Rouge, graduating in 1990. He went on to pursue higher education at several institutions, attending the University of Alabama, Louisiana Tech University, and American University, gaining exposure to public policy and national politics that would shape his later career in government.

Graves began his career in federal public service as a congressional aide, building expertise in energy, environmental, and infrastructure policy. He served for nine years as an aide to U.S. Representative Billy Tauzin of Louisiana’s 3rd congressional district and worked as a legislative aide to the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which Tauzin chaired. In 2005, he moved to the U.S. Senate, becoming an aide to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation under Senator David Vitter of Louisiana. He served as staff director for the Senate Subcommittee on Climate Change and Impacts and also worked for Democratic former U.S. Senator John Breaux, a predecessor of Vitter and a protégé of former Governor Edwin Edwards. In addition, Graves served as a chief legislative aide to the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, further deepening his involvement in environmental and infrastructure policy.

In 2008, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal appointed Graves to chair the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA), the state entity responsible for coastal restoration and hurricane protection. In that role, he became a key figure in negotiations with BP following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, representing Louisiana’s interests in securing resources for environmental and economic recovery along the Gulf Coast. He served as CPRA chair until his resignation on February 17, 2014, by which time he had established a statewide profile on coastal, environmental, and disaster recovery issues.

In March 2014, Graves announced his candidacy for the U.S. House of Representatives in Louisiana’s 6th congressional district, a seat being vacated as incumbent Republican Bill Cassidy ran successfully for the U.S. Senate against Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu. In the 2014 nonpartisan blanket primary, former Governor Edwin Edwards finished first with 30 percent of the vote, while Graves placed second with 27 percent, sending both to a December 6 runoff. In that runoff election, Graves defeated Edwards decisively, receiving 139,209 votes (62.4 percent) to Edwards’s 83,781 (37.6 percent), and entered Congress in January 2015. He was subsequently re-elected four times. In the nonpartisan blanket primary held on November 6, 2018, he won his third term by leading a four-candidate field with 186,524 votes (69 percent); Democrat Justin Dewitt received 55,078 votes (21 percent), while Democrat “Andie” Saizan and Independent David Lance Graham shared the remaining vote.

During his decade in Congress, Graves became particularly active on transportation, infrastructure, natural resources, and disaster recovery policy. He served on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, where he chaired the Subcommittee on Aviation and sat on the Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency Management. He also served on the House Committee on Natural Resources, including the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources and the Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries. His committee work reflected his longstanding focus on coastal protection, energy development, and infrastructure resilience. He was a member of several caucuses, including the Republican Study Committee, the Congressional Western Caucus, the United States Congressional International Conservation Caucus, the Congressional Coalition on Adoption, the Congressional Caucus on Turkey and Turkish Americans, the Congressional Taiwan Caucus, and the Rare Disease Caucus.

Graves played visible roles in several high-profile political and policy disputes. In April 2017, he engaged in a public dispute with Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards over the pace of disbursing federal assistance to victims of the 2016 Louisiana floods. Graves, who was mentioned at the time as a potential Republican challenger to Edwards in the 2019 gubernatorial election, criticized the state’s handling of recovery funds and stated that he was “focused on flood recovery … none of the governor’s talk is helping flood victims.” Edwards and his administration attributed delays to the state’s financial shortfall and the difficulty of quickly retaining a disaster management firm, with the governor projecting a $440 million budget deficit for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2017. On January 6, 2021, Graves voted to object to the certification of the 2020 presidential election results in Pennsylvania, aligning with other House Republicans who raised objections to certain state results. He also voted to support Israel following the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel.

Following the Republican takeover of the House in January 2023, Graves emerged as a key ally of Speaker Kevin McCarthy. McCarthy entrusted him with a leadership role coordinating strategy among the five major ideological factions within the House Republican Conference, sometimes referred to as the “Five Families.” In this capacity, Graves became an important internal negotiator and strategist. He was also selected to lead the Republican side in negotiations during the 2023 United States debt-ceiling crisis, working opposite senior White House officials Counselor to the President Steve Ricchetti, Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young, and White House Legislative Affairs Director Louisa Terrell. However, after McCarthy’s ouster as speaker later in 2023, Graves’s influence within the conference diminished significantly.

Graves’s congressional career was also shaped by major legal and political developments in Louisiana redistricting. In November 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled in Robinson v. Ardoin that Louisiana must redraw its congressional maps because the existing plan unlawfully diluted the voting strength of the state’s African American population. Subsequent litigation in Robinson v. Callais, which was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, involved allegations by civil rights groups that the legislature’s revised maps remained gerrymandered and that the redrawn districts were configured in part to unseat Graves, a political rival of Republican Governor Jeff Landry. When it became clear that the new district lines would be demographically unfavorable to him and that he could not viably run in adjacent districts, Graves declined to seek re-election in 2024, ending his House service at the conclusion of the 118th Congress in January 2025. As a “parting gift” to that Congress, he joined fellow retiring Representative Abigail Spanberger in completing a discharge petition to force consideration of a Social Security bill, a procedural move that antagonized some Republican leaders in the conference.

Throughout his time in office, Graves maintained close ties to his home state and local community. He resides in his native Baton Rouge with his wife, Carissa Vanderleest, and continues to identify strongly with his Catholic faith and his Lebanese American heritage, placing him among the list of Arab and Middle Eastern Americans who have served in the United States Congress.