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      Trump-backed Republican Jeff Landry wins Louisiana governor’s race

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      Attorney General Jeff Landry, a rightwing Republican backed by Donald Trump, has won the Louisiana governor’s race, holding off a crowded field of candidates.The win is a major victory for the Republican party as they reclaim the governor’s mansion for the first time in eight years. Landry will replace current governor John Bel Edwards, who was unable to seek re-election due to consecutive term limits.Edwards is the only Democratic governor in the south.“Today’s election says that our state is united,” Landry said during his victory speech on Saturday night. “It’s a wake-up call and it’s a message that everyone should hear loud and clear, that we the people in this state are going to expect more out of our government from here on out.”By garnering more than half of the votes, Landry avoided an expected runoff under the state’s “jungle primary” system. The last time there wasn’t a gubernatorial runoff in Louisiana was in 2011 and 2007, when Bobby Jindal, a Republican, won the state’s top position.The governor-elect, who celebrated with supporters during a watch party in Broussard, Louisiana, described the election as “historic”.Landry, 52, has raised the profile of attorney general since taking office in 2016. He has used his office to champion conservative policy positions.More recently, Landry has been in the spotlight over his involvement and staunch support of Louisiana laws that have drawn much debate, including banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender youths, the state’s near-total abortion ban that doesn’t have exceptions for cases of rape and incest, and a law restricting youths’ access to “sexually explicit material” in libraries, which opponents fear will target LGBTQ+ books.Landry has repeatedly clashed with Edwards over matters in the state, including LGBTQ rights, state finances and the death penalty. However the Republican has also repeatedly put Louisiana in national fights, including over Joe Biden’s policies that limit oil and gas production and Covid vaccine mandates.Landry spent two years on Capitol Hill, beginning in 2011, where he represented Louisiana’s third US congressional district. Prior to his political career, Landry served 11 years in the Louisiana Army National Guard, was a local police officer, sheriff’s deputy and attorney.Landry has made clear that one of his top priorities as governor would be addressing crime in urban areas. The Republican has pushed a tough-on-crime rhetoric, calling for more “transparency” in the justice system and continuing to support capital punishment. Louisiana has the nation’s second-highest murder rate per capita.Along the campaign trail, Landry faced political attacks from opponents on social media and in interviews, calling him a bully and making accusations of backroom deals to gain support.He also faced scrutiny for skipping all but one of the major-televised debates. More

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      Jeff Landry, a Hard-Line Republican, Is Elected Governor of Louisiana

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      The victory by Mr. Landry, the state’s attorney general, secures Republican control of Louisiana after eight years of divided government.Jeff Landry, the Louisiana attorney general and a hard-line conservative, trounced a crowded field of candidates on Saturday to become the state’s next governor, cementing Republican control of Louisiana after eight years of divided government. Mr. Landry, a brash conservative who repeatedly fought Democratic policies in court as Louisiana’s top lawyer, will replace Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat limited to two terms. In Saturday’s “jungle primary,” which pits candidates of any political affiliation against one other, Mr. Landry stunned many political watchers by winning more than 50 percent of the vote and eliminating the need for a runoff. His victory guarantees a far-right government for Louisiana — a state where Republicans have controlled the Legislature for a decade but had faced resistance from Mr. Edwards, who vetoed several bills, including ones targeting L.G.B.T.Q. people. It comes at a moment when the state is confronting soaring insurance rates and dwindling population numbers. The wide field of more than a dozen candidates, which included Democrats, independents and rival Republicans, had set steep odds for Mr. Landry to win outright. Had no candidate secured a simple majority, the two top vote-getters would have faced off in a runoff election next month. But Mr. Landry won with 51.6 percent of the vote, followed by Shawn Wilson, a Democrat and the state’s former transportation secretary, who secured 25.9 percent of the vote. None of the other candidates — a group that included Stephen Waguespack, a top business lobbyist and aide to former Gov. Bobby Jindal; John Schroder, the state treasurer; and Sharon Hewitt, a state senator — reached double digits. Mr. Landry, a confrontational litigator and politician, had won over much of the Republican base by battling Mr. Edwards and the Biden administration in court over pandemic vaccine mandates, efforts to work with social media companies to limit the spread of misleading or false theories, and environmental regulations. He served as a sheriff’s deputy and two-term lawmaker in the House of Representatives as the Tea Party took hold in American government. But it was over the last eight years as attorney general where Mr. Landry flexed the power of a political office and his particular style of combative conservatism. During the coronavirus pandemic, he challenged vaccine and mask mandates on the local and national level for health care workers, students and federal workers, voicing skepticism even as the vaccines were proven to help stem the spread and toll of the virus. He has also helped lead lawsuits that resulted in a federal judge restricting the Biden administration from speaking with social media companies and saw the Supreme Court rein in the administration’s ability to reduce carbon emissions. And he has defended some of Louisiana’s more controversial decisions, including a congressional map that Black voters have challenged as a violation of a landmark civil rights law and its abortion law, one of the strictest in the nation. (At one point, Mr. Landry openly said that critics could leave the state.)During his campaign for governor, Mr. Landry vowed to address crime in the state, though critics observed that countering crime fell under the jurisdiction of the attorney general. He also pledged to stop the “woke agenda” in Louisiana schools and to support the rights of parents to make decisions for their children, a nod to a push he championed to restrict access to gender-affirming care for transgender children and literature deemed to be sexually explicit. More

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      Hard-Line Republican Leads Race to Succeed Louisiana’s Democratic Governor

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      Should Jeff Landry, the state attorney general and front-runner, win, he will likely drive Louisiana further right on issues such as crime and L.G.B.T.Q. rights.Jeff Landry, the hard-line conservative leading the race for governor of Louisiana, surveyed the crowd packed into a small restaurant in Monroe, where his staff had covered the tables and a lone Halloween skeleton in his blue-and-yellow campaign merchandise.“How would y’all like to finish this in October?” Mr. Landry, the state attorney general, said, teasing the possibility of his winning the state’s all-party primary outright this Saturday and foreclosing the need for a runoff election next month.He did not offer specifics about any issues. He did not mention any of his opponents, whom he has largely refused to debate. But his undisputed status as the race’s front-runner has suggested that for much of Louisiana, there has been little need for him to do any of that.Mr. Landry has parlayed his aggressive litigation against the Biden administration and Gov. John Bel Edwards, a conservative Democrat who is term-limited, into a huge war chest, a slew of early Republican endorsements and what appears to be a comfortable lead in a crowded primary field.Also on the ballot in Saturday’s “jungle primary” are two Democrats, four independents and seven other Republicans, none of whom have had the same visibility in recent years as Mr. Landry has had as a headline-making statewide office holder.Should he win and cement Republican dominance of Louisiana government — Republicans already have a supermajority in the state House and Senate, and former President Donald J. Trump won about 60 percent of the state vote in both 2016 and 2020 — there is little question that Mr. Landry will drive the state further to the right on issues such as crime, the environment and L.G.B.T.Q. rights.“You can’t just be for the white collar — you’ve got to be for the blue collar, the no collar, the no shirt,” Shawn Wilson, a Democratic candidate, center, told union workers in Gonzales, La. “You’ve got to be for everybody.”Emily Kask for The New York Times“I think the key to leadership is solving problems, creating coalitions, bringing people together,” said Stephen Waguespack, a Republican candidate. “In modern politics, that’s hard to sell.”Emily Kask for The New York TimesThe sea change in leadership would come at a moment when Louisiana is losing population while most of its Southern neighbors boom, with employers and families worried about growing brain drain, intensifying natural disasters and soaring insurance rates.Mr. Landry’s dominance of the field has dampened the state’s typically raucous politics, leaving the remaining candidates to essentially jockey for second place in the primary on Saturday. If nobody wins more than 50 percent of the vote, which most election watchers expect, the top two candidates will face off in a runoff on Nov. 18.Mr. Edwards, the only Democratic governor left in the Deep South, twice bucked the state’s conservative bent in elections and has retained support over his two terms. At times, he has managed to head off conservative social measures that have easily become law in nearby states run by Republicans, though he has supported stringent limits on abortion access and gun rights.The race to replace him underscores how Louisiana’s particular brand of populist, personality-driven local politics has increasingly given way to a focus on nationalized issues that split along urban and rural lines. It has also left candidates struggling to energize voters disillusioned by bitter national divisions and weary of inflation, grueling heat and the lasting toll of the coronavirus pandemic.Open to all candidates regardless of political leaning, the primary field includes Shawn Wilson, a Democrat and former state transportation secretary, and Hunter Lundy, an evangelical independent and former trial lawyer. It also includes three prominent Republicans: Sharon Hewitt, a state senator; Stephen Waguespack, a former aide to Gov. Bobby Jindal and business lobbyist, and John Schroder, the state treasurer.Hunter Lundy, left, an independent and former trial attorney, at a campaign event on Tuesday.Emily Kask for The New York Times“What we try to say is, if you want Louisiana to be different, then you have to elect a different kind of leader,” said Sharon Hewitt, a state senator, in an interview in Slidell, La. Emily Kask for The New York Times“I’m in it for the people — I’m not in it for any political party,” said Mr. Lundy, speaking to a reporter as he drove to spend time eating lamb and boudin, a Cajun sausage, with farmers in Elton, west of New Orleans. It is unclear, however, whether enough voters will accept his deep Christian nationalism or his medical skepticism.As the leading Democratic candidate, Mr. Wilson is favored to make the runoff, with multiple polls showing him in second place. Should he defy the polls, he would be the first Black candidate elected statewide in 150 years.He has emphasized his long experience working with both parties, particularly in the transportation department.“The leadership that I can provide can tamp down the extremism that only satisfies a very small portion of our state, either on the far, far left or the far, far right,” Mr. Wilson said in an interview. “That’s where the sweet spot of government is supposed to be — satisfying the masses.”At an event hosted by the Louisiana AFL-CIO in Gonzales, west of New Orleans, concerns about Mr. Landry’s views resonated with several union workers gathered to hear Mr. Wilson speak.“The next four years could be the rest of our lives,” said Sean Clouatre, 48, a Democrat and a local alderman in the Village of French Settlement. “Because of the policies they could pass and implement — it’s always harder to take them out than it is to implement them.”Mr. Landry’s fellow Republicans in the race have struggled to carve out a distinct identity.“We expected the race to be a little bit more on policy and issues,” Ms. Hewitt said. Stories of her time spent navigating the male-dominated oil and energy industries — including showering in a bathing suit on an oil rig because of a lack of doors — have resonated with some women on the campaign trail, she said.Ms. Hewitt was among those who was irked early on by the state party’s unusually speedy endorsement of Mr. Landry. Their frustration was later exacerbated by his hefty fund-raising hauls and unwillingness to participate in most candidate forums.John Schroder, the state treasurer, in the first televised debate of the Louisiana governor’s race in September.Pool photo by Sophia GermerSupporters of Mr. Landry in Monroe.Emily Kask for The New York Times“I’m trying to say you can be a conservative, but at the same time be wanting to bring people together,” said Mr. Waguespack, who has highlighted his time as the chief executive of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, rather than his years as a top aide to Governor Jindal, who quickly became unpopular as he made a failed run for president.He added, “Bringing people together is a good thing, not a weakness.”As attorney general, Mr. Landry has honed a confrontational approach, at one point suing a reporter for requesting public records related to a sexual harassment investigation into one of his aides. After a court hearing on Louisiana’s abortion law, one of the strictest in the nation, Mr. Landry said that critics could leave the state.That combative spirit has earned him support from staunch Republicans, who cheered his willingness to challenge both Mr. Edwards and the Biden administration over coronavirus vaccine mandates. He also won support for his sweeping promises to address crime and prioritize parents’ rights in education, as well as for other positions that have motivated the Republican base.“Jeff was actually fighting for us,” Kim Cutforth, a 64-year-old retiree, said of Mr. Landry’s opposition to pandemic mandates, as she waited for him to appear at a Baton Rouge restaurant on Thursday. “I loved him for it.”The other Republican candidates, she added, should “just go — let Jeff be the governor.”At his stop in Monroe, in the state’s north, he brushed off criticism that many of his stances could be too extreme for the state.Noting that Louisiana’s population has suffered one of the biggest declines in the nation, he added, “we have a structural problem here in the state, and I believe on those issues I am the most qualified person.” More

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      House speaker contender Steve Scalise reportedly said he was ‘David Duke without the baggage’

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      Steve Scalise, the Louisiana Republican who some in his party reportedly want to elect as speaker of the US House of Representatives after the stunning and historic removal of Kevin McCarthy, was once reported to have called himself “David Duke without the baggage”.Duke, 73, is a former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, an avowed white supremacist who has run for Louisiana governor, the US House and Senate and for president and who in 2003 was sentenced to 15 months in jail for mail and tax fraud.Scalise, now 57, was elected to Congress in 2008. He became Republican House whip in 2014 and was elected majority leader in 2022, as a hardline conservative acceptable to the far right of his party, which has now successfully rebelled against McCarthy.Ahead of McCarthy’s removal, Scalise implored his fellow Republicans “to keep doing this work that we were sent to do” rather than focus on ejecting the speaker.“This isn’t the time to slow that process down,” said Scalise, denying interest in the speakership.Immediately after the vote to remove McCarthy, however, the ringleader of the motion to vacate, Matt Gaetz of Florida, used his first remarks to say Scalise would be “a phenomenal speaker”. He also said Tom Emmer of Minnesota or Tom Cole of Oklahoma might be good choices.The speakership may offer Scalise a tempting prize: if he is elevated into the role, he will become the highest-ranking member of Congress ever to come from Louisiana.His fellow Louisianan, Duke, last made national headlines when he supported Donald Trump for president in 2016 – support Trump was slow to disavow.Two years before that, Scalise ran into controversy, and his remark about Duke surfaced, after a blogger revealed Scalise’s attendance at a white supremacist conference organised by Duke in 2002.Scalise, whose district includes a large suburban area of New Orleans, said he had been seeking “support for legislation that focused on cutting wasteful state spending, eliminating government corruption and stopping tax hikes”, but “wholeheartedly condemn[ed]” the views of the group concerned.He also said attending the conference “was a mistake I regret”, as he “emphatically oppose[d] the divisive racial and religious views that groups like these hold”.Citing his Catholicism, Scalise said “these groups hold views that are vehemently opposed to my own personal faith, and I reject that kind of hateful bigotry. Those who know me best know I have always been passionate about helping, serving and fighting for every family that I represent. And I will continue to do so.”Duke, however, told the Washington Post: “Scalise would communicate a lot with my campaign manager, Kenny Knight. That is why he was invited and why he would come. Kenny knew Scalise, Scalise knew Kenny. They were friendly.”That wasn’t the end of it. The controversy deepened when Stephanie Grace, a Louisiana politics reporter and columnist, told the New York Times that at the start of Scalise’s legislative career, while “explaining his politics”, he told her “he was like David Duke without the baggage”.Grace said she thought Scalise had “meant he supported the same policy ideas as David Duke, but he wasn’t David Duke, that he didn’t have the same feelings about certain people as David Duke did”.Scalise did not comment on Grace’s remarks. But Chuck Kleckley, the Republican speaker of the Louisiana state house at the time, told the paper comparisons between Scalise and the Klan leader were “not fair to Steve at all”.Nonetheless, the Duke controversy has followed Scalise throughout a career in Republican leadership which has seen him survive being seriously wounded in a mass shooting at congressional baseball practice, in 2017; become one of five Louisiana Congress members to vote against certifying some election results hours after the deadly Capitol attack of 6 January 2021; become majority leader in 2022; and, in August this year, announce a cancer diagnosis.The 2017 shooting was an assassination attempt. The gunman, a leftist extremist who was killed by law enforcement, legally bought the rifle used to shoot Scalise and three others despite a history of run-ins with police.Despite that, through legislation he has sponsored and co-sponsored, Scalise has staunchly advocated to keep guns as accessible to the public as possible, citing the right to bear arms enshrined in the US constitution’s second amendment.In the aftermath of his own shooting, Scalise told reporters: “I was a strong supporter of the second amendment before the shooting and, frankly, as ardent as ever after the shooting in part because I was saved by people who had guns.”Last month, discussing his recent diagnosis of multiple myeloma, Scalise said aggressive treatment meant his outlook was improving.Should Scalise eventually secure the speaker’s gavel, he will surpass the New Orleans Democrat Hale Boggs as the most powerful member of Congress ever to come from the state. Boggs was House majority leader before his plane disappeared over Alaska in 1972. More

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      Ad Wars in 3 Governor’s Races Leave Out Trump and Biden

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      Offering a look at both parties’ political strategies this year, the ads focus largely on issues like education, the economy, jobs and taxes, as well as local scandals and crime.Just over a year before the 2024 elections, three races for governor in Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi are offering a window into the parties’ political strategies and how they might approach statewide and congressional contests next year.Strikingly, even as former President Donald J. Trump’s indictments and President Biden’s polling struggles have consumed the national political conversation, the two men rarely show up in advertising for the three governor’s races.Since July, nearly 150 ads have been broadcast across the contests. Just one ad mentioned Mr. Trump. Three brought up Mr. Biden.Instead, the ads focus largely on issues like education, the economy, jobs and taxes, according to an analysis of ad spending data from AdImpact, a media-tracking firm. Attack ads about local scandals and controversies are frequent, and crime is the top advertising issue in the Kentucky governor’s race.Much as education was a dominant theme in Glenn Youngkin’s successful campaign for governor of Virginia in 2021, the issue remains one of the top advertising topics in both Kentucky and Louisiana, with nearly one in five ad dollars spent focusing on education over the past 60 days, according to AdImpact data.“Glenn Youngkin winning an off-year gubernatorial race in Virginia is the playbook,” said Ken Goldstein, a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco who has researched political advertising. “You go with the last playbook.”Allies of Daniel Cameron, the Republican looking to unseat Kentucky’s Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, have seized on a message about education similar to the one that helped propel Mr. Youngkin to victory.“The radical left has declared war on parents, and Andy Beshear is with them,” proclaims one ad from Kentucky Values, a group affiliated with the Republican Governors Association.Mr. Beshear has countered by praising teachers, running an ad calling them “heroes” and pledging to increase their pay and expand universal preschool.“Our teachers are heroes, and public schools are the backbones of our communities,” Mr. Beshear says in the ad, standing in the middle of a classroom.Gov. Tate Reeves of Mississippi, a Republican running for re-election, is running an ad boasting that he “got us back to school fast” during the coronavirus pandemic and criticizing other states for closing schools.In Louisiana, Jeff Landry, the Republican front-runner, is putting money behind an ad criticizing “woke politics” in schools and pledging to bring school agendas “back to basics.”No issue is getting more attention, in terms of total spending, than crime is in Kentucky. Twenty-five percent of ad spending in the state has focused on crime in the past month, according to AdImpact data.Ads from allies of Mr. Cameron warn of dangerous criminals flooding the streets as a result of a commutation program Mr. Beshear signed during the pandemic.Ads from allies of Daniel Cameron, the Republican nominee for governor of Kentucky, warn about the early release of prison inmates. School Freedom FundOf course, these three states are all deep-red bastions in the South and are not representative of the country’s broader politics.Abortion, perhaps the biggest issue in major battleground states, is barely registering in these three governor’s races; in the past 30 days, not a single campaign ad has been broadcast on the topic in Kentucky or Louisiana. In Mississippi, the only ad regarding abortion is from Brandon Presley, the Democratic nominee for governor, who has diverged from many in his party by supporting abortion restrictions.“Sometimes the family Bible is the only place you have to turn,” Mr. Presley says, sitting at a table next to a dog-eared Bible that he says is his family’s. “It’s shaped who I am and what I believe. It’s why I’m pro-life.”Given that Mr. Trump carried all three states by double digits in 2020, his absence from the airwaves shows he may not be helpful to Republican campaigns in a general election.“These campaigns are really smart and have done in-depth analytics on who their target voter is who’s actually going to move in this election, and he’s probably not helpful to that group of people,” said Michael Beach, the chief executive of Cross Screen Media, a media analytics firm.That one mention of Mr. Trump? It was in an ad from Mr. Beshear, the Democratic governor of Kentucky, boasting that he had followed the former president’s lead in releasing prison inmates early. More

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      Republicans give $101m to sports arena as myriad needs loom over Louisiana

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      Louisiana lawmakers have faced backlash for using some of their spring legislative session’s final moments not to address some of their state’s myriad needs – but instead to grant the multimillion-dollar wish of the state flagship university’s championship-winning women’s basketball coach.Poverty, poor education and insufficient healthcare have loomed over Louisiana for decades and have earned the state the country’s lowest rankings in each category, according to the US News and World Report. Louisiana ranks 50th – dead last – in crime and economy, 49th in infrastructure and 46th in education when compared to the rest of the nation, the report says.However, despite these jarring numbers, the budget approved by the Republican-dominated state legislature slated $101m to a foundation which financially supports Louisiana State University athletics – and it was earmarked to renovate the Pete Maravich Assembly Center, which is best known these days for hosting the women’s basketball team’s home games.The last-minute line funding renovations at the facility nicknamed the PMAC came at the request of Kim Mulkey, the women’s basketball team’s head coach who is known for her flamboyant fashion sense as well as her outspokenness about the venue’s need for repairs. But giving fees and self-generated revenue from the state to the private foundation in question would also be illegal, Louisiana’s Democratic governor John Bel Edwards has recently said.The commissioner of admission, Jay Dardenne, said in an interview that the PMAC could only receive such abundant funds – including self-generated revenue and non-cash state funding – if it was labeled as a university project in the budget.While that blocks the Tiger Athletic Foundation from receiving the full amount, the group is still in line to receive $50m, a substantial amount which could otherwise begin making a dent in Louisiana’s myriad other pressing needs, said former LSU faculty senate president Kevin Cope.“Such a sluicing of funds into a structure that serves primarily as a basketball court demonstrates that the leaders of our state grant a higher priority to chasing balls up and down a wooden court than to the improvement of its citizens,” Cope said.Edwards told the Louisiana Illuminator that he kept the illegal funding in the bill so that the foundation would still have money for project planning.Mulkey openly criticized the condition of the PMAC at a local meeting in April in the state’s capital of Baton Rouge, shortly after her players won the first national crown in their program’s history.“It’s time,” Mulkey declared. “That thing’s 48-years-old. It’s dangerous in there. Don’t grab a rail without holding onto somebody.”As the crowd broke out into laughter, Mulkey added, “I can say all of this now. I’ve won the national championship.”But Edwards was disinterested in Mulkey’s request. He said that his main priority for this year’s capital budget is to provide funding for a new LSU library due to the substandard status of the campus’s 68-year-old library.Robert Mann – an LSU professor, author, and political historian who frequently criticizes Louisiana’s government – said that school officials and advocates have spent years pleading for a new library. Despite those pleas, lawmakers allotted only a few million in project planning for a new library.However, lawmakers quickly delivered on Mulkey’s request for arena improvements, even though the university itself did not ask for PMAC funding.“If that disgraceful episode doesn’t convince people that our state’s priorities are out of whack, I don’t know what will,” Mann said.Stuart Bishop, the conservative state representative who authored the bill, assured that providing the PMAC tens of millions in renovation funds was not his main priority for the Louisiana budget. He said for years his top priorities for the state are improving water ports, airports, bridges and roads. But he included funding for the PMAC after multiple requests from colleagues.“It was a matter of, as it was explained to me, public safety for the PMAC, as well as having another venue on campus or in” the state’s capital, Baton Rouge, Bishop said.The Republican state representative Tanner Magee added that “women athletes deserve to know that we care just about them as we do” male athletes, including the school’s popular football team. A spokesperson for the athletic department – which generated nearly $200m in revenue last year – said helping the school’s sports teams carries a cultural and promotional benefit measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars.Edwards could veto the amount of money set aside for the PMAC. But Bishop and Magee were confident he’d avoid resorting to that measure, saying money for the PMAC doesn’t rule out eventual improvements to the library.“In a perfect world, in 10 years, we’re standing with a new library and a new event center for LSU,” Magee said. More

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      In Louisiana, Gov. Edwards Staves Off Certain Conservative Policies for Now

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      John Bel Edwards, the only Democratic governor in the Deep South, has successfully vetoed bills that have glided into law elsewhere in the region. Soon, he’ll leave office.The Republican supermajority in the Louisiana State Legislature pushed through a bill this year banning gender-transition care for minors, along with other legislation banning Covid vaccine requirements in schools and any classroom discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation.It was the kind of aggressive social policy agenda that has gained traction in conservative states across the country. But unlike in most such states, where Republican bills glide into law, lawmakers in Louisiana had to return to the Capitol last week, more than a month after the session ended, to try to claw the legislation back from the brink of failure.The reason: John Bel Edwards, the lone Democratic governor in the Deep South. He has used vetoes with some success as a bulwark against conservative legislation in a state where Republicans have had a lock on the legislature for more than a decade.In Louisiana, governors have a history of successfully wielding vetoes; most years, lawmakers have not even bothered trying to override them.But this year, legislators decided to test that power, reconvening to consider overriding more than two dozen vetoes at a moment when Republicans have tightened their control of the legislature and when Mr. Edwards, who is finishing his second term, is on his way out.“You voted for this before,” State Representative Raymond J. Crews, a Republican, told his colleagues on Tuesday as he asked them to support overriding the veto of his bill, which would require schools to refer to transgender students by the names and genders on their birth certificates. “I hope you’ll do that again.”Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards has successfully used vetoes as a bulwark against certain conservative legislation in a state where Republicans have had a lock on the legislature for more than a decade.Jodi Hilton for The New York TimesMr. Crews did not get enough votes. In fact, by the time lawmakers adjourned late Tuesday, all but one of Mr. Edwards’s vetoes still stood. The single exception was the ban on transition care for minors, a bill that the Republicans had channeled most of their energy and resources into resuscitating.The outcome of the session, which lawmakers raced through on Tuesday, was one last demonstration of how Mr. Edwards, a two-term governor leaving office next year, has succeeded at checking the influence of Republican lawmakers — to an extent.“It’s kind of hard to be too disappointed — we actually did override the veto on a very important bill,” said State Representative Alan Seabaugh, a Republican who led a faction of some of the most conservative lawmakers.Still, he acknowledged, Mr. Edwards posed a formidable obstacle. “It really shows what an influence a liberal Democrat governor has over Republican legislators,” Mr. Seabaugh said.Although many in the governor’s own party would dispute the portrayal of Mr. Edwards — an anti-abortion, pro-gun rights moderate — as a liberal, there was still widespread agreement that his departure in January could bring about a significant shift in the state’s political dynamic.Many recognize a strong possibility of a Republican succeeding Mr. Edwards, setting the stage for Louisiana to veer even more to the right, after several decades of the governorship flipping back and forth between the two parties.The Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge.Emily Kask for The New York TimesThe state has an all-party “jungle primary” in October. Polls show Jeff Landry, the state’s deeply conservative attorney general, as the front-runner, along with Shawn Wilson, a Democrat and former secretary of transportation and development.In a state where former President Donald J. Trump won by 20-point margins in 2016 and 2020, Mr. Edwards’s political survival has hinged on the appeal of his biography — he is a West Point graduate and a sheriff’s son — and on his blend of social conservatism and progressive achievements, including expanding Medicaid, that fits Louisiana’s unique political landscape.He has angered many in his own party with his vehement opposition to abortion rights and his restraint in criticizing Mr. Trump, who as president went to great lengths to campaign against Mr. Edwards’s re-election.Still, even Democrats who are critical of Mr. Edwards have seen him as a vital barrier against conservative policies that have easily advanced in neighboring states.“I do think that there’s always room for being a more vocal ally and a more staunch ally to our community,” Quest Riggs, who helped found the Real Name Campaign, an L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy group in New Orleans, said of the governor. “But on the other hand, his vetoes have been a political tool that has been necessary to offset the mobilization by the evangelical right in Louisiana.”Last year, lawmakers succeeded in overriding a governor’s veto for the first time in three decades, reinstating a Congressional map that Mr. Edwards had objected to because it included only one district with a majority of Black voters despite the fact that one-third of the state’s population is Black. Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for a legal challenge to the map to move forward.Many recognize a strong possibility of a Republican succeeding Mr. Edwards. Louisiana has an all-party “jungle primary” in October, and polls show Jeff Landry, the state’s deeply conservative attorney general, as the front-runner.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesAlso last year, Mr. Edwards allowed a bill that excluded female transgender students from school sports to become law without his signature, predicting a veto would be overridden.Mr. Edwards said last week that he had issued 319 vetoes in his eight years as governor, and that 317 of them had been sustained. “Usually, we have been able to find common ground to move Louisiana forward,” he said.On Tuesday, lawmakers blitzed through the vetoed bills, including measures that denied parole for dangerous offenders and prevented “foreign adversaries” from owning agriculture land.Overriding a veto requires a two-thirds majority vote in both houses, and the Republicans have a supermajority by just a thin margin. Two Republican state representatives were absent on Tuesday, and a few in the House and Senate crossed party lines to oppose some overrides, infuriating their more conservative colleagues.When the ban on gender-transition care came up, lawmakers described conflicting perceptions of what it means to protect children. Supporters of the bill said it would safeguard young people from treatments they claim are dangerous and untested, even though there is broad agreement among major medical associations in the United States that such care can be beneficial for many patients.Critics of the ban argue that it would imperil a small, vulnerable population of young people by denying them medically necessary care. Most of the 20 other states that have passed similar legislation are facing lawsuits, and judges have already temporarily blocked a few of the bans.In the House, the vote to override the veto passed 76 to 23, with seven Democrats joining the Republicans. In the Senate, it passed 28 to 11. Republicans seized the sole successful override as a victory.“We sent a clear signal,” Mr. Landry, the attorney general and candidate for governor, said in a video posted online, “that woke liberal agendas that are destructive to children will not be tolerated in Louisiana.”Lawmakers and observers contemplated how the political climate would be different during next year’s legislative session, particularly if Republicans were to maintain their supermajority and win the governor’s race.“What happens when they don’t have to hold back anymore?” said Robert E. Hogan, a political science professor at Louisiana State University, referring to Republican lawmakers if Democrats lose the governor’s race. “You’ll have a governor that’s powerful and on your side.”That prospect has inspired trepidation among some, especially within the L.G.B.T.Q. community, but has amplified ambitions among conservatives.Mr. Seabaugh, who is leaving the House because of term limits but is running for a Senate seat, envisions passing some of the same bills next year without the threat of a veto and rolling back Mr. Edwards’s agenda. “I don’t think we can do it all in one year,” Mr. Seabaugh said, “but I’m sure going to try.” More

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      Republican John Kennedy: southern plain-talk or Foghorn Leghorn shtick?

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      Senator John Neely Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, offended Mexicans across the world in a hearing on the FBI and DEA’s budget this month, calling for American military members and law enforcement agents to invade their country in order to “stop the cartels” while adding that Mexico would be “eating cat food and living in tent behind an Outback [Steakhouse]” if not for “the people of America”.Mexico’s top diplomat condemned the comments as “profoundly ignorant”, and the country’s ambassador to the US called for a formal apology for the “vulgar and racist” language. Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, urging the more than 37 million Americans of Mexican and other Latin American descent to “not to vote for people with this very arrogant, very offensive and very foolish mentality” in the future.The entire episode illustrated how Kennedy has emerged as a loud conservative voice in recent years in the US and in a state which has repeatedly relied on laborers of Mexican origin to rebuild homes as well as businesses following hurricanes and other natural disasters.But as the fallout from his remarks about Mexico unfolded, critics also seized on the opportunity to point out that the Republican senator was once a moderate – and some would even say liberal – Democrat before switching parties in 2007, just as the far-right Tea Party movement was taking hold in Louisiana politics.And those critics say the politician who holds degrees from Vanderbilt University, the University of Virginia and Oxford University in the UK is “playing the role of a clever hick” by doing things like making fun of Mexico in order to exploit the “bigotry and fear of his base”.Kennedy has made a name for himself by delivering “folksy”, sometimes racist statements in an exaggerated southern American accent that has been likened to being somewhere between that of Mr Haney, the con artist from the former CBS sitcom Green Acres, and Foghorn Leghorn, the cartoon rooster who appears in Looney Tunes. The latter comparison is so striking that New Orleans’s Times-Picayune newspaper once posted a quiz featuring a series of eccentric statements that was headlined: “Who said it: Sen John Kennedy or Foghorn Leghorn?”In a Senate confirmation hearing, Kennedy once told a Cornell law professor born in Soviet-era Russia: “I don’t know whether to call you professor or comrade” – insinuating that she was a communist or a foreign agent. The remark came about three years after Kennedy drew ridicule from some quarters for spending a Fourth of July holiday – which recognizes the US’s independence from the UK – in Russia with leaders of his country’s rival power.Separately, in a tough-on-crime, pro-police campaign ad, Kennedy ended the video by saying: “Look, if you hate cops just because they’re cops, the next time you’re in trouble, call a crackhead.”But back when he was a figure in Louisiana’s state politics, Kennedy’s elocution hewed more closely to a background that is typical of his estimated net worth of more than $12m in 2016. In interviews and videos of proceedings before his switch to the Republican party, Kennedy – one of the wealthiest members of Congress – appears to speak with only a slight southern accent.“Before he got to the Senate, Kennedy never pretended to be a hick,” said Robert Mann, mass communication professor at Louisiana State University and author of Backrooms and Bayous: My Life in Louisiana Politics. “Instead, he usually acted like the well-educated, affluent person that he is.”Mann said that while Kennedy was a member of the Democratic party during a prior role as the Louisiana state government’s treasurer, he was one of the most outspoken critics of the governor at the time: Bobby Jindal, a Republican. But once he switched parties and entered the national political scene, Kennedy literally changed his tune.“After he got to the Senate and realized that Fox News and its viewers enjoyed his shtick, he went all in on this new persona,” Mann said. “The Kennedy of 2005 or 2008 is a completely different person in style and tone from the one you see today on the TV.”For Mann, Kennedy’s one-liners aren’t genuine, off-the-cuff folksy remarks. They’re calculated attempts to appease his conservative base. “The relationship is simple, I think: he periodically validates and reinforces their distorted views [on] Mexicans, Blacks and other marginalized people,” Mann said. “That tells them that he’s not an urbane, rich, well-educated person, but just one of them.“It’s how politicians have pandered to the lowest common denominator for centuries. Kennedy has mastered the technique.”Mann said that Kennedy was “playing a role on TV” by delivering sometimes “nonsensical” statements and using an exaggerated accent, which appears to fall in the long tradition of ambitious people using voice alteration to further themselves. Recent examples include Elizabeth Holmes, the Theranos founder who is bound for prison after fraudulently claiming her technology could diagnose diseases with a single drop of blood and admitted that the baritone voice she used before her criminal conviction wasn’t her real voice. Another is Paris Hilton, who recently dropped the iconic, high-pitched “shy” voice she once used while appearing on the reality television show The Simple Life.“That role is of a clever hick who, while unsophisticated, is always quick with a put-down for smug city slickers,” Mann said. “If you view him through the lens of someone who is affecting an attitude, the words don’t have to make complete sense. It’s the image and the attitude that count.”But while Kennedy may be playing a character, the senator’s statements have real-world impacts, including on foreign relations. The remarks have strained the relationship between the US and Mexico.The two countries are economic partners, with more than 33 million US tourists visiting Mexico every year and over $800bn in bilateral trade. That includes the more than $40bn Louisiana exports to Mexico and $15bn the state bought, creating a surplus balance in favor of Louisiana of $25bn.Additionally, more than 2 million US citizens permanently live in Mexico, and the jobs created by trade between the countries supports more than 70,000 families in Louisiana.A senior Mexican diplomat at the Mexican embassy in Washington said the rhetoric in Kennedy’s recent remarks about his country and his people runs “counter to the needs of the US-Mexico relationship,” which he said requires “stronger dialogue and mutual understanding”.“Uninformed and ill-intentioned statements have the potential to veer us on to a trajectory that can further foster misunderstanding and miscommunication between both countries,” the official said. “The true challenge lies in comprehending and addressing the numerous shared challenges but also opportunities faced by Mexico and the US, on the grounds of respect.” More