The GOP field in next year’s Louisiana governor race is beginning to take shape, with U.S. Sen. John Kennedy saying he is seriously considering a run and the state Republican Party giving an early endorsement to state Attorney General Jeff Landry.
The Democrat now occupying the governor’s mansion, John Bel Edwards, is term-limited and cannot seek another term. No Louisiana Democrats have announced that they are running for the state’s top elected office.
Robert Collins, a professor of urban studies and public policy at Dillard University in New Orleans, said he doubted that the early GOP endorsement of Landry would offer the attorney general much of an advantage going forward.
“It’s been tried in the past, and it never works,” Collins told the Louisiana Record. “The Louisiana Republican voters really don’t care what the Republican State Central Committee does. … They don’t want to be told by the elite of the Republican Party what to do.”
The prospect of Kennedy getting into the governor’s race would be significant because the U.S. senator would have an edge over other hopefuls, Collins said. Kennedy would enter the fray with the most name recognition of any candidate, he said, and the senator also would have more money on hand, having been in fundraising mode prior to his recent re-election to the Senate.
No Democrat with Edwards’ appeal to Republican-leaning Louisiana voters is expected to get into the governor’s race, according to Collins.
“We don’t see anyone like him on the horizon,” he said, noting that Edwards is a unique politician and a throwback to traditional Southern Democrats who were socially conservative but moderate on fiscal and economic issues.
There’s also an outside chance that two GOP candidates could be the top vote-getters in the state’s jungle primary, Collins said, meaning that Democratic voters would ultimately have to decide between two Republicans in the general election.
Louisiana’s other U.S. senator, Bill Cassidy, said earlier this month that he would not be a candidate for governor, explaining in a statement that he wanted to concentrate on advancing legislation which he sees as critical to the state’s future.
Collins said it’s likely that Cassidy declined to enter the governor’s race due to the likely entry of another moderate Republican, Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser. Cassidy was among a handful of Republicans who voted to convict former President Donald Trump in his last impeachment trial.
“They would cancel each other out,” he said, adding that it wouldn’t make sense to have two GOP moderates in the race.
If Kennedy were to win the governor’s race, he could put himself in the unusual position of selecting his successor in the U.S. Senate. Under Louisiana law, Kennedy would not have to resign his Senate seat until the day he’s sworn in as governor.
“That would kind of put John Kennedy in a Huey Long situation where at least temporarily he could control both the governor’s mansion and the U.S. Senate seat,” Collins said, referring to the colorful populist Louisiana governor elected in 1928 who accumulated unprecedented executive authority during his term in office.