LOUISIANA - Residents in the 21st Judicial District will choose a new top prosecutor for the first time in 30 years. The district covers Livingston, St. Helena, and Tangipahoa parishes.

Two Republicans, Brad Cascio and Sherman Mack, want to succeed Scott Perrilloux, who decided this year to step down.

Cascio has served as an assistant district attorney since 2013. He also serves as city prosecutor for Denham Springs and French Settlement, and he says he has prosecuted more than 4,000 cases in that role.

"This is a job I never thought that I would be doing, and I truly just fell in love with the work that we do and the impact that we make on our community," Brad Cascio said.

Cascio said his priorities include expanding the drug court, which puts people through a supervised treatment program. He also wants to create an in-house investigations department.

"Investigators, post-certified law enforcement guys and girls that are going to go out to crime scenes and make sure we're getting all the information that we need, we get it in a timely fashion and we make immediate contact with the victim or victim's family," Cascio said.

Mack serves as a civil and criminal defense attorney with more than 25 years of experience. He also served in Louisiana's state House of Representatives from 2012 to 2024, where he was chairman of the House Criminal Justice Committee.

"I've worked with prosecutors, I've worked with district attorneys across the state, I've worked with the attorney general, but I also worked on the defense side. I believe my experience of more than 25 years makes me uniquely qualified for the position," Sherman Mack said.

Mack said his priorities include creating a liaison in each parish to regularly meet with law enforcement agencies about community concerns. He also said he wants to implement a screening unit to find best practices at various investigative agencies.

"So that investigative agencies can better know what we're looking for to build stronger cases and so they can let us know as the district attorney's office, what we can do to make their jobs easier," Mack said.

Both candidates said they want to lower crime rates in all three parishes.