Come January, the GOP will control every elected statewide office in Louisiana after Republicans swept three runoff races for attorney general, secretary of state and treasurer Saturday night.
The GOP success, in a state that has had a Democrat in the governor’s office for the past eight years, means that Republicans secured all of Louisiana’s statewide offices for the first time since 2015. In addition, the GOP holds a two-third supermajority in the House and Senate.
Liz Murrill was elected as attorney general, Nancy Landry as secretary of state and John Fleming as treasurer. The results also mean Louisiana will have its first female attorney general and first woman elected as secretary of state.
Saturday’s election completes the shaping of Louisiana’s executive branch, where most incumbents didn’t seek reelection and opened the door for new leadership in some of the most powerful positions.
As someone who has lived in Louisiana for a long time , it used to be MUCH more balanced than it is now. We had democratic governers and state senators. It has inched further and further right over the past few decades, and they’ve run off anyone worth enough sense and money to get out of this shithole. The election results have been terrible this year and honestly I blame the Louisiana Democratic Party which seems to have either fallen apart or sabotaged our candidates this year by doing absolutely nothing and ceding control to the republicans. My friends and I all went and voted but there’s basically no uniting force in the Democratic Party here to even attempt to get the truth out anymore. Just hatred and stupidity running rampant now is what it feels like.
The LA Democrat party leadership has been a lethal mix of inept and corrupt for a while now. I would argue John bel Edwards won in spite of rather than due to their assistance. There is a rumor floating around (not confirmed) that they hosted a fairly large fundraiser for Shawn Wilson (ostensibly to funnel whatever they raised into his ongoing gov campaign) and then just pocketed the money. Given that the former dem party chair Karen Carter Peterson just got sentenced to 22 months in fed prison (on the day of the primary no less) for helping herself to campaign money, that seems more plausible a story than it might otherwise. Seriously, who is going to throw their hat in the ring for ANY statewide office if that’s the kind of support you can expect for your flagship candidate? And then you get to get your veto overridden by a repub supermajority ? Nah, way less stress to just stay in a lobbying job somewhere. Say what you want about Karl Rove and co, but the state level elections were where he and his cohort of repub strategists focused quite a bit of effort grooming candidates since the late 90s and it has continued to pay dividends for them.
The Democratic party is an absolute mess here. They practically don’t exist.