Gov. Jeff Landry wants a second term. His opponent will be New Orleans.
Landry clearly believes that framing the coming governor's race as a referendum on New Orleans is his best path to reelection. But is it?
We’ve all been so focused on the upcoming midterm elections — especially Louisiana’s U.S. Senate race — that it’s easy to forget that Louisiana will soon be in the midst of a gubernatorial election.
Gov. Jeff Landry, statewide elected officials, and legislators will all face voters about 14 months from now. Louisiana’s open primary system will be in effect for this election unless Landry and lawmakers decide otherwise. The open primary will be held on Oct. 9, and the general election will be Nov. 20.
You may not have noticed — amid all the press about the midterms, our Senate race, the struggle over redrawing the state’s US House districts, and President Donald Trump’s unpopularity — that Landry’s job approval rating is nothing to write home about.
The latest public polling presents a mixed but generally weak picture for Landry.
The two most comparable statewide job-approval surveys, both conducted for the conservative Pelican Institute, placed him in the low-to-mid 40s: 46% approval and 41% disapproval in November 2025, and 43% approval and 36% disapproval in February 2026, with a sizable 22% undecided.
A separate October 2025 JMC Analytics poll was even more troubling for him, showing Landry with a 39% favorable rating and 51% unfavorable, though the survey measured personal favorability rather than job performance.
Landry remains much stronger among Republican voters. An April 2026 Advanced Strategies poll found that nearly 68% of likely GOP voters viewed him favorably, with fewer than 19% viewing him unfavorably.
Taken together, these polls paint a picture of a governor with a solid Republican base, but who lacks broad statewide popularity. His overall standing appears to be stuck in the low 40s, leaving him politically secure within his party but vulnerable in a general election.
It’s those relatively anemic poll numbers that might help us understand why Landry and his mini-me, Attorney General Liz Murrill, are waging war on New Orleans.1
Every politician in trouble needs a distraction. For Trump, his reliable go-to distraction is dialing up racism and nativist fear. (Think about the migrant caravans that conveniently appear in October of election years.)
If a politician can divert your anger from his or her failures onto some other villain, that might help get them out of a jam.
For Landry, the distraction is New Orleans.
He knows that to many Louisiana voters — especially those in north Louisiana — the city is a majority-Black, crime-infested Sodom and Gomorrah. To them, it’s the most decadent and dangerous place in Louisiana.
So, when attacking New Orleans, Landry can pretend he’s taking a principled stand against crime, even though most of his rhetoric is really a racial dog whistle.
When Landry points to crime there and complains that, “New Orleans thinks it’s so special,” I believe he wants many white voters in north Louisiana to hear: “I’m going to fight crime in New Orleans and take on these corrupt Black politicians who are robbing us blind and trying to control our state. Under my administration, white people, not Black people, will run Louisiana.”
Running against someone else or something else is a common campaign strategy.
Landry seems to believe that framing the coming race as a referendum on New Orleans is the easiest way to win reelection.
This kind of thing has worked before.
Sen. David Vitter made his 2010 reelection campaign a contest between him and then-President Barack Obama (he virtually ignored Democrat Charlie Melancon). Many voters forgot about Vitter’s prostitution scandal and directed their anger at Obama, instead. It worked. He won reelection.
Bill Cassidy technically was running against Sen. Mary Landrieu in 2014, but he also made the election a referendum on Obama. Voters overlooked Cassidy’s bland personality and thin public record. The diversion strategy worked. Cassidy won.
Landry doesn’t have a Black president to run against in 2027, but he does have a Black city.
Using all kinds of dog whistles, he will likely cast himself as the white savior against the corrupt, majority-Black Babylon.
In other words, he’s counting on voters hating New Orleans more than they dislike Landry.
That strategy might work.
But one potential problem is that the New Orleans region still accounts for about 20% of the state’s voters. And I suspect that if Landry wants to make New Orleans his opponent in a reelection campaign, voters in Orleans and surrounding parishes may respond by turning out in larger-than-usual numbers.
And roughly 35% of Louisiana’s population lives within a two-hour drive of the city. To many of them, New Orleans is not an abstraction. They know the city better than people in Shreveport, Minden, and Monroe. They understand its value to the state’s economy and culture. They want the city to be safer, but they also want it to thrive.
Landry’s attacks on New Orleans may land differently with many people who live south of Interstate 10, where about two-thirds of the state lives.
Another potential problem with this strategy is that Republican leaders may not be unified in this anti-New Orleans message. Some leading Republicans think it’s ill-advised and hurts the whole state, not just New Orleans.
Republican Lieutenant Gov. Billy Nungesser is one of them. “It’s not good for the city. It’s not good for the state,” Nungesser said recently about Landry’s and Murrill’s anti-New Orleans messaging. “We’ve got too much that we need to work together.”
Nungesser also has kind words for Democratic New Orleans Mayor Helena Moreno. “We’ve got someone in there that really cares,” Nungesser said. “We should be supporting that effort.”
Nungesser isn’t the only Republican from the New Orleans area who, I’m guessing, won’t be willing to go all-in with Landry’s attacks on New Orleans.
I know Metairie isn’t New Orleans, but state Senate President Cameron Henry, a Metairie Republican, knows that as New Orleans goes, so does the region. His constituents know that, as well.
Nungesser, Henry, and other New Orleans-area Republican elected officials and conservative business leaders understand that Landry isn’t merely attacking a Democratic city. He’s attacking an international brand, a tourism engine, and a cultural capital on which a significant part of the state’s economy depends.
Many voters in the New Orleans region understand all this, and their civic pride and economic concerns could offset the gains Landry’s attacks on New Orleans bring him in north Louisiana.
Another possible problem with running against New Orleans is that Landry is counting on the racial animus of white people in other parts of the state. And that risks activating Black voters across Louisiana to turn out in larger numbers than they might if he were not making New Orleans and race central to his campaign.
Running against New Orleans might work for Landry, but in doing so, he’s playing with fire. When you play with fire, you sometimes get burned.
But what else can he run on?
Landry has been governor since January 2024. By the time of the 2027 election, he will have controlled the executive branch for nearly four years, commanded large legislative majorities, and placed his allies throughout state government. He cannot credibly run only as an insurgent attacking other people’s failures.
Among the questions voters and opponents will be asking:
What statewide problems has he really solved?
What happened to insurance affordability?
Has stuffing more and more people into our prisons made us any safer?
Has Landry done much to improve education, infrastructure, and health care?
Why is he feuding with so many people, including many leading figures in his own party? Can he get along with anyone?
Why is a governor with enormous powers whining about being victimized by New Orleans?
If he’s such a great governor, why is Louisiana still ranked as “the worst state in the nation”?
Given that sad fact, how does he have time to serve as Trump’s envoy to Greenland?
From what I can tell, Landry wants all the authority of a governor and none of the accountability. I’m not sure how well that will play in a governor’s race, even if he does continue to make New Orleans his foil.
And is New Orleans really the state’s crime capital?
Finally, New Orleans has a violent-crime problem, but the data do not support the political caricature of the city as a uniquely lawless outlier surrounded by a comparatively safe Louisiana.
In the latest FBI-based 2024 figures, New Orleans recorded about 1,361 violent crimes per 100,000 residents — high, but still well below Alexandria’s 2,714 and Monroe’s 1,892. Shreveport was not far behind at 1,229, while Lafayette and Baton Rouge both exceeded 1,000.
New Orleans ranked fifth among Louisiana cities reporting crime data, not first.
That does not make New Orleans safe. But it does show that violent crime is a statewide, urban problem, not that New Orleans is uniquely dysfunctional.
Politicians, like Landry, who use the city as a symbol of disorder rarely mention that some smaller Louisiana cities have substantially higher per-capita rates—or that Louisiana’s statewide violent-crime rate remains about 45% above the national average.
The conflict began after New Orleans voters elected Calvin Duncan—an exoneree who spent nearly three decades in prison before his murder conviction was vacated—as clerk of Criminal District Court with 68% of the vote.
Days before he was scheduled to take office, the Republican Legislature passed, and Landry signed, a law abolishing Duncan’s office and transferring its duties to the civil-court clerk. The Louisiana Supreme Court upheld the move, 4–3, and blocked the city’s attempt to hold a special election
The dispute then escalated when Attorney General Liz Murrill sent letters threatening consequences for New Orleans officials who resisted the consolidation. An Orleans Parish grand jury indicted her on 16 felony counts of intimidation and malfeasance, but the charges were later dismissed after city leaders asked the special prosecutor to end the case.
Landry and Murrill responded by demanding further investigations and raising the possibility of expanded state control over the city’s court system.
I rarely quote Buddy Roemer, but I believe my paraphrasing a story that he often told about prospecting for business in Japan is appropriate here. He would ask the assembled businessmen, "How many of you have visited Louisiana?" No hands would go up. Then he would ask, "How many of you have been to New Orleans?" Almost all hands would be raised. Only a desperate politician, as Bob points out, would attack the golden goose of Louisiana tourism.
Louisiana Lieutenant Governor Billy Nungesser expressed his view that when the State’s Governor Landry all
of a sudden is starting to denigrate the State of Louisiana’s best known and most financially productive City of New Orleans that criticism is not going to reflect well on the State of Louisiana. The City of New Orleans is still special to its residents and tourists. The Governor should not knock it.