This year’s Louisiana governor’s race underwent a radical reshuffling over the past two weeks as U.S. Sen. John Kennedy and Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser both said they would remain in their current posts and state Sen. Sharon Hewitt entered the fray as a candidate.
Meanwhile, state Republican Attorney General Jeff Landry has already launched his campaign to replace Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, and last week state Treasurer John Schroder announced he would be a gubernatorial candidate.
“The race is wide open,” Robert Collins, a professor of urban studies and public policy at Dillard University in New Orleans, told the Louisiana Record. “Everything you see in a poll now is based on name recognition.”
The candidates have yet to put out detailed platforms or had a chance to mix it up with opponents, according to Collins, so it remains too early to determine candidate strength.
“It will be several months before we really start seeing the horse race take shape,” he said.
Other candidates were certain to get into the race after others declined, Collins said this week.
“There are certain members of the state Legislature who would not have run against Nungesser,” he said. “Now that he's out, I think people see a path for a more moderate Republican to run in the middle of the road and get a lot of Bill’s votes.”
Collins termed Landry the most conservative candidate, adding that some observers see the possibility that a moderate Republican and Landry could be the top vote-getters in the Oct. 14 primary. The moderate could then attract enough votes from Democrats to finish first in the Nov. 18 general election.
The state’s transportation secretary, Shawn Wilson, could make a run for governor as a Democrat, but he now lacks name recognition and has never run for public office, according to Collins.
An announcement by Hewitt on her website this week said she has been a doer rather than a talker and would work on behalf of family values and smaller government.
“Doers don’t ask a lot of government – we just want lower taxes, good schools, safe communities and the chance to work hard and make life better,” she said. “The talkers have had their day – it’s time for a governor who will get things done. That’s why I’m running to lead this great state I love.”
Another official mentioned as a potential candidate for governor is Garret Graves, a Republican congressman from Baton Rouge.