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Jeff Landry, Louisiana’s attorney general and hardline conservative, defeated a crowded field of candidates Saturday to become the state’s next governor, cementing Republican control of Louisiana after eight years of divided government.
Landry, a brash conservative who repeatedly fought Democratic policies in court as Louisiana’s top lawyer, will replace Gov. John Bel Edwards, a two-term-limited Democrat. In Saturday’s “jungle primary,” pitting candidates of any political affiliation against each other, Landry surprised many political observers 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 faced resistance from Edwards, who vetoed several bills, including some targeting LGBTQ people. It comes at a time when the State is facing a dizzying increase insurance rates and population decline.
The wide field of more than a dozen candidates, which included Democrats, independents and rival Republicans, had created high odds of Landry winning outright. If no candidate had won a simple majority, the top two vote-getters would have faced each other in a runoff election next month.
But Landry won with 51.6 percent of the vote, followed by Shawn Wilson, a Democrat and former state transportation secretary, who got 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, state treasurer; and Sharon Hewitt, a state senator, reached double digits.
A confrontational litigator and politician, Landry had won over much of the Republican base by fighting Edwards and the Biden administration in court over pandemic vaccine mandates and efforts to work with social media companies to limit the spread. of misleading or false theories. and environmental regulations.
He served as a deputy sheriff and legislator for two terms in the House of Representatives as the Tea Party gained a foothold in American government. But it was during the last eight years as attorney general that Landry demonstrated the power of political office and his particular brand of combative conservatism.
During the coronavirus pandemic, he questioned local and national vaccine and mask mandates for health care workers, students and federal workers, expressing skepticism even as vaccines were shown to help stop the spread and cost of the virus.
He also helped lead lawsuits that resulted in a federal judge restricting the Biden administration from speaking to 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 most controversial decisions, including a congressional map that Black voters have questioned as a violation of a landmark civil rights law and its abortion law, one of the strictest in the country. (At one point, Mr. Landry openly he said that critics could leave the state.)
During his gubernatorial campaign, Landry promised to address crime in the state, although critics noted that fighting crime fell under the jurisdiction of the attorney general. He also pledged to end the “woke agenda” in Louisiana schools and support the rights of parents to make decisions for their children, a nod to an initiative he championed to restrict access to gender-affirming care. of transgender children and literature considered illegal. sexually explicit.