On October 2, in a field of eight candidates, Fayard (24 percent) ran ahead of Republican Sammy Kershaw (19 percent) for second place behind Dardenne (28 percent). Dardenne and Fayard then met in the November 2 general election. Fayard received 43% of the vote (540,000 votes) in the November 2nd runoff. With such a strong showing in her first statewide race, she was considered a rising star among Democratic politicians. Kershaw and Saint Tammany Parish President Kevin Davis (an eliminated Republican candidate who drew 8 percent of the vote) endorsed fellow Republican Dardenne while Fayard gained the endorsement of eliminated candidate and fellow Democrat State Senator Butch Gautreaux (4 percent).
Fayard grew up in Denham Springs. She was the valedictorian of the Class of 1996 in nearby Episcopal High School in Baton Rouge. She participated in Navy Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps. She received a baccalaureate degree from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire in 2000 and a juris Doctor from the University of Michigan Law School at Ann Arbor in 2005. She is licensed to practice law in Louisiana and New York State. She served as a congressional page and interned in the White House under President Bill Clinton and then worked for Goldman Sachs and Williams & Connolly before returning to Louisiana as a law clerk for Stanwood R. Duval Jr., a judge for the Federal Eastern District of Louisiana. She has served on the law faculty of Loyola University New Orleans and as of 2010 is in private practice. She has been actively involved in Louisiana Appleseed, Federal Bar Association, Junior League of New Orleans, and Delta Delta Delta.
As evidence for her effectiveness as a legislator should she be elected, Fayard touted her role in the settlement negotiations following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Fayard has compared the process of negotiating settlements in plaintiff's cases to policymaking in the U.S. Government, saying that "In reaching the settlement, you never get 100 percent of everything that what you want, but often a good compromise is almost always better than a bad win." She has also made the case that her experience in the private sector, including her role in GLO Airlines, has given her an appreciation for the need to find Common ground and cut deals with people with whom she disagrees.
In 2015, Fayard worked alongside her brother Trey Fayard to launch Glo Airlines, a regional airline based at Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans (MSY) with daily flights Shreveport, Little Rock, Memphis and Destin, FL. Fayard currently serves as legal counsel for the airline. Glo Airlines has created 40 new jobs.
Fayard opposes the practice of solitary confinement for Juvenile offenders, which remains legal in 10 states, including Louisiana. This puts Fayard in line with President Barack Obama, who banned the practice in federal prisons in January 2016. Moreover, Fayard believes that private prisons are detrimental to society and produce inhumane conditions for prisoners while not substantially reducing costs. As a result, she believes that private corporations should not be able to profit off of the incarceration of American citizens.
Despite being in favor of overhauling the Criminal justice system, Fayard has billed herself as a partner with the Law Enforcement community. Fayard supports additional funding for community policing and using federal dollars to implement programs to better train officers on effective engagement in the community to stem the tide of tensions between police and the communities they serve and restore a sense of trust and cooperation. In the aftermath of the July 17th shooting of five police officers in Baton Rouge, Fayard wrote on Facebook "This vile, unimaginable violence must stop. Attacks on any of us are attacks on all of us, including the memories of those we've lost, and this simply cannot stand. My family and I stand shoulder to shoulder in prayer with the Baton Rouge Police Department, the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office, the people of Baton Rouge, and the entire state of Louisiana."
