The only Democrat governor in the South, Louisiana’s John Bel Edwards, is about to be replaced by Republican Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, who is now the governor-elect. Edwards, who was term-limited out, could not seek reelection.
To the surprise of many, Landry won the gubernatorial election outright. He was expected to perform well enough to easily make a run-off, but he was not expected to win, so this is quite a (welcome) surprise.
Attorney General Jeff Landry, a Republican backed by former President Donald Trump, has won the Louisiana governor’s race, holding off a crowded field of candidates.The win is a major victory for the GOP as they reclaim the governor’s mansion for the first time in eight years.Landry will replace current Gov. John Bel Edwards, who was unable to seek reelection due to consecutive term limits.Edwards is the only Democratic governor in the Deep South.“Today’s election says that our state is united,” Landry said during his victory speech 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.”
Jeff Landry will be the 57th governor of Louisiana after scoring a surprise outright victory in Saturday’s primary that gives him a mandate to move Louisiana to the right with a like-minded Legislature.Landry, the Republican attorney general for the past eight years, will succeed Gov. John Bel Edwards in January. Edwards has been the new governor’s Democratic foe.Polls had forecast Landry to be forced into a runoff by Shawn Wilson by capturing less than 50% of the vote.. . . . Landry won about 51.5% of the vote, compared to 26% for Wilson.
As Louisiana’s AG, Landry fought against Democrat policies from DEI to the mutilation of children to kiddie porn in Louisiana public schools to Biden’s attempts to ‘work around’ the Constitution to silence free speech.
The New York Times (which hilariously calls Landry a “hard-liner”) reports:
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.. . . . 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.. . . . 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.
All of that sounds pretty good to me.
Plus, there’s this (via Beege at Hot Air):
Full text:
“We tore up one ’17 pretty good when we ran out of gas,. Our alternative airfield was in France, because at the time we didn’t have enough gas left in the tank to make it across the Channel to England. So we went to our alternate, and when we got there it was zero visibility—just totally fogged in. I don’t know how many hundreds of planes might have gone down that day trying to find their alternate field. We were skimming the treetops and the roofs of the houses, trying to find an airfield. We’d know about where it was from our navigator; he’d tell where it was, and then we’d have to drop down through the fog to find the field. Well, finally we just ran out of gas. We moved everybody to the back of the plane, cut the motors, and looked for a field to land in. But fields over there are lined with trees, not fences. We overshot the field we picked and went right into the trees. The trees knocked the wings off, and when the plane stopped, there was a tree trunk sitting about a foot in front of us where we sat as pilots. Everybody just got up and walked off the plane. Nobody got hurt because there was no gas to explode.”—— Tom Landry in a 1981 interview with Mark Oristano
It sounds like Louisiana is going to be in good hands. Though, to be fair, Edwards wasn’t nearly as tyrannical as other Democrat governors during covid. But he was also checked (hard, at times) by the Republican legislature in the state.
Here’s Landry’s victory speech from Saturday night:
Needless to say people have thoughts:
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