Screen shot of activist Gary Chambers’ Tik Tok page wherein he interacts with radio host Roland Martin. Chambers’ page shows, for that one feature broadcast the day before the March 29, 2025 election: 5,866 “loves,” 762 comments, and 2,734 forwards. Chambers’ strategic deployment of Tik Tok was accompanied by a small army of opponents to Gov. Landry’s proposed Constitutional Amendments who used Tik Tok to likewise lambast both Landry and his initiatives in the weeks and days leading up to a crushing defeat at the polls on election day.
When we published this feature regarding the resounding defeat of Gov. Landry’s proposed Constitutional Amendments, near the end of the video on that feature, we stressed our contention that opponents did a far more effective job of utilizing social media and Tik Tok in particular to strongly motivate opponents to show up at the polls and defeat Landry’s initiatives.
We discussed in detail that aspect opponents’ effective use of Tik Tok beginning at the 15:00 mark of this video. We took heat for our emphasis of just how effectively Amendment opponents utilized Tik Tok to, “hand our heads to us on a platter,” (using “us” because Sound Off Louisiana founder Robert Burns strongly supported Proposed Constitutional Amendment Two). The strongest sentiments were expressed by a dedicated follower of our blog who had this to say soon after we published the feature on the humiliating defeat suffered by Landry and everyone else who supported the initiatives:
I don’t think Tik Tok has a thing to do with it……I’ve never been on Tik Tok. I don’t know anybody that was influenced to vote on this either way based on TikTok.
As Burns stated on the above-referenced video, the best thing a losing team can do after a football game is learn from the loss and observe why the other side enjoyed such a resounding victory.
To us, failing to learn why the other side had the football equivalent of blowing you out of your own stadium in legendary fashion is akin to saying, “We don’t need to study the opposition’s film. We can just wing it on game day.”
If the proponents of the Amendment would take our advice (which they very well may not), they will do as Burns advised near the end of that postmortem video on the March 29, 2025 election and develop an effective Tik Tok assault of their own!
Unfortunately, what we have found is that, like the gentleman who texted us the above comment, many supporters readily admit to not even having a Tik Tok account (indicating an apprehension to its Chinese ownership) and are in apparent total denial of Tik Tok’s incredible influence in elections.
President Trump rode the Tik Tok craze and the “Pledge Tok Trump Dance” to achieve rock star status by reviving a song (YMCA) which came out when Burns was a sophomore in high school and use it to catapult his way to another term as President. Furthermore, Trump, who once spoke against Tik Tok, now appears to be hell bent on finding a way to keep it around.
Since State Rep. Julie Emerson (R-Carencro) came in second place on who endured the worst adverse impact from Constitutional Amendment Two’s resounding defeat at the polls, Sound Off Louisiana’s Burns decided to ask her if she would concede opponents to Amendment Two did a much more effective job of deploying Tik Tok to defeat the initiative. Here’s what she had to say as she appeared at the April 7, 2025 meeting of the Baton Rouge Press Club:
4/7/25: Emerson addresses whether opponents to Constitutional Amendment Two deployed social media and Tik Tok in particular to kill the initiative at the polls on March 29, 2025.
Emerson’s response sounds at least a little like there’s an acknowledgement that proponents were way behind the curve on effective utilization of a platform like Tik Tok to sway voters. What we’ll say is that we firmly believe that burying heads in the sand and pretending Tik Tok doesn’t exist is a formula for future even more humiliating defeats, at least in our opinion.
Now, at special request, Burns also asked if any church language would be removed from any future initiative. Let’s view just how succinct Emerson’s answer was on that:
4/7/25: Emerson addresses whether any “church language” is included in Round Two of she and Gov. Landry’s Rewrite of Article VII of the Louisiana Constitution.
Since Emerson is so crystal clear on that question, we see no need to even cover some of the extensive efforts by both preachers and former politicians (and at least one who is a preacher and ran for public office but was defeated) to defeat Landy and Emerson’s initiative.
Instead, we will only state our own frustration at having to literally paddle upstream to even get the message out that we did regarding Amendment Two in the final 10 days of the campaign. We cannot begin to adequately express our frustration level to see opponents getting off-the-charts numbers on Tik Tok to defeat Amendment Two and our own efforts to promote it being like pulling teeth! It’s now history, but it’s a lesson we’re not going to forget anytime soon, and we’ll let it go at that!
Now, we’re going to provide the YouTube video of Chambers and Martin’s interaction, but we’ll state that Tik Tok videos tend to be much shorter (typically 90 seconds to two minutes at most) and, if anyone is curious as to the content of the Tik Tok feature of Martin and Chambers, simply advance the following video to the 7:00 mark and that’s basically where the Tik Tok feature begins and lasts for a couple of minutes:
YouTube video by radio show host Roland Martin featuring Gary Chambers and the Power Coalition’s opposition to Constitutional Amendment Two on the March 29, 2025 ballot. To get a good idea of the Tik Tok “executive summary” of the feature, advance to the 7:00 mark and play the next two or three minutes, and that gives a good feel for Chambers’ own Tik Tok feature on the matter.
As we conclude this feature, Emerson’s second time at bat regarding the reintroduction of the “Article VII Rewrite” of Louisiana’s Constitution is scheduled for Tuesday, April 22, 2025 before the Louisiana House Ways and Means Committee (which Emerson Chairs). If the initiative makes it through both Chambers (no pun intended) of the Legislature, it will go before a vote of the people on November 3, 2026.
It’s our sincere hope that, if it does go before the people for another vote, supporters will have a vastly improved ground game when it comes to Tik Tok because, sticking with the football analogy, supporters got absolutely crushed on the field by the absence of any offense whatsoever where Tik Tok is concerned.
That fact (because it is a fact notwithstanding the gentleman’s text to us that “neither side” was influenced by Tik Tok) is something which must change before any future vote on the matter (game played on the football field) lest the same result ensue once again!
CLICK HERE for the 4/7/25 meeting of the Baton Rouge Press Club in its entirety, which included a joint appearance by State Rep. Jack McFarland.