Quick Landry win restarts LA political evolution

Blog: Between The Lines

Abstract

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(0.3 percent, comprised of voters who didn't get the memo that he had withdrawn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.