The ideological left and political consultants were the biggest losers in Louisiana’s 2023 general election, as the state went back to the future with new heights attained in the political career of Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry, who fewer than a dozen years ago looked to have little future in politics but now becomes the lodestar for genuine, far-reaching conservative policy change.
Landry assumed an additional title this past weekend: governor-elect, when he bested a field of a 15 with 52 percent of the vote, avoiding a runoff. Nobody else came close – Democrat former cabinet member Shawn Wilson (26 percent) barely got half of Landry’s total and the combination of Republican former gubernatorial official Stephen Waguespack (5.9 percent), Republican Treas. John Schroder (5.3 percent), independent trial lawyer Hunter Lundy (4.9 percent), Republican state Sen. Sharon Hewitt (1.7 percent), and Republican state Rep. Richard Nelson (0.3 percent, comprised of voters who didn’t get the memo that he had withdrawn about a month ago) that drew barely more than a third of Landry’s haul even as collectively they spent in 2023 $9.2 million through nearly the end of September, only $400,000 fewer than did Landry.
This result reverberates on different levels. Perhaps the outright general election win, only the second by a newcomer to the Governor’s Mansion after Republican Bobby Jindal’s second try in 2007, was predictable. Landry’s first campaign in 2007 saw him fall fewer than 600 votes short from defeating a sitting Democrat state representative for a state senate seat, and in his next in 2010 he knocked off a former speaker of the House on the way to winning a congressional seat.
His only sharp defeat came in 2012, when reapportionment put him in a district that didn’t favor him geographically. He passed on a Senate run in 2014 as sitting GOP then-Rep. Bill Cassidy consolidated support while GOP then-Treas. John Kennedy deferred while patiently waiting on GOP Sen. David Vitter to run for governor the next year that, whether Vitter won, would create an open seat.
With Kennedy still serving as treasurer in 2015, which if open could have served as an easy landing spot for Landry and with his political shelf life deteriorating, he planned a bold move to keep his hoped-for career going. He took on Republican, formerly Democrat, Atty. Gen. Buddy Caldwell in that year’s elections, and, again displaying prodigious campaign skills, took him down.
Fates aligned for him with this win. With Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards’ surprise win over Vitter that year and the subsequent policy-making pressure he applied to expand government sometimes through unlawful, if not unconstitutional, means, Landry was presented with many chances to use the powers of his office to thwart these, giving him a natural policy megaphone and ability to demonstrate fidelity to conservatism in action. That slew of opportunities only increased when Democrat Pres. Joe Biden took office and began doing much the same.
The free publicity and ensuing consistent deliverables by his winning many legal battles against leftist overreach (one that played out the day before the election) – and even his losses confirmed his willingness to tackle without reservation the rot of leftism – combined with his formidable campaign skills made his general election win possible. Although this will disappoint political consultants, who looked to suck a few more million bucks from a gubernatorial runoff. Instead, Landry now has a considerable war chest for 2027.
That thought only will add to the heartburn suffered by the left that now must endure at least four years of policy misery, as without Edwards the trickle of conservative policy gains over the past several years will intensify into a dam burst over the next few with Landry leading on likely legislative and certainly Board of Education and Secondary supermajorities along with his appointments. And it harkens back to 2007, when Jindal came to office with similar enthusiasm behind his ascension.
Yet things back then were somewhat different that, in retrospect, should have tempered enthusiasm. While reformist sentiments were well present in that election, another major part of Jindal’s win came as a buyer’s remorse reaction to his narrow loss in 2003 and subsequent bungling in office by Democrat Gov. Kathleen Blanco. This shallowness of conservative policy-making soil translated into his not having a Republican majority in the Legislature until almost the end of his first term and on BESE only by the grace of his appointments to it.
However, insufficient conservative numbers wasn’t the only problem that limited how much of a conservative agenda Jindal could achieve. After a year into his second term, Jindal began to orient his policy-making more towards a national audience that subverted progress in favor of potential electability. For example, this interference ended up sabotaging tax reform and stopping progress in educational reform.
That premature curtailment of conservative gains seems set to end in 2024 with Landry at the helm. He is every bit as ideologically committed as was Jindal but without the distraction of desiring a career past state boundaries. To the political left, that makes him even more dangerous and likelier to succeed in finally turning the ship of state away from foundering waters into smoother seas.
Jindal was the precursor needed to start an extensive demolition of the liberal populism that has held Louisiana back for so long (some minor efforts and short-lived achievement of this having occurred under Republican Gov. Buddy Roemer). The legacy Landry promises to leave, especially if having eight years to do so, would be to build a far different and much improved edifice on the rubble of Louisiana’s dysfunction that the left has foisted onto it for so many decades. Maturation leading to post 20th-century politics finally may have arrived in Louisiana.
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