It must have been nice to be U.S. Rep. Garret Graves this past month or so, with the phone ringing and dinging constantly as fellow Louisianans told him how badly he’s needed back home, even as he’s poised to climb the ladder in Washington.
The talented and at-times combative Baton Rouge congressman was already positioned to be a powerful subcommittee chair overseeing aviation (fasten your seat belt, Secretary Buttigieg), with a line on a full Transportation Committee chairmanship in the not-so-distant future. And last week brought news that Graves has got still more going on in the nation’s capital: House Speaker Kevin McCarthy chose him to be chair of the Elected Leadership Committee and member of the House Republican Steering Committee, according to Punchbowl News.
The report, which broke as the state’s political class gathered for the annual Washington Mardi Gras festivities, took the air out of speculation that Graves would join the developing 2023 governor field. Even if McCarthy’s hold on power looks tenuous, Graves “can’t turn that down,” his former boss Billy Tauzin, the congressman-turned-lobbyist, told my colleague Mark Ballard.
So while he hasn’t made it official, it’s safe to assume Graves will join the state’s two U.S. senators, Bill Cassidy and John Kennedy, on the campaign's sidelines. And that would appear to bring an end to the widely shared hope that some big dog out there can unite the diverse constituencies that don’t want Attorney General and culture-warrior-in-chief Jeff Landry to win.
In other words, so much for the A-list. It’s time for the B-listers to take center stage.
First among them is Landry, who’s got quite a few advantages — high name recognition, a defined political niche as a social issues scold, and a controversial endorsement, for what that’s worth, by the state Republican Party — but also the distinct disadvantage of being unacceptable to most Democrats, plus quite a few independents and fellow Republicans.
Then come the other announced Republican candidates, none of whom can match Landry’s high profile: Treasurer John Schroder, state Sen. Sharon Hewitt and state Rep. Richard Nelson. More bad news for them: They’re all from St. Tammany Parish, which means they can’t even claim a distinct geographical constituency.
A Lake Charles lawyer named Hunter Lundy is running as an independent; he’s supposedly hoping to cash in on the trial lawyer money that helped fuel outgoing Gov. John Bel Edwards’ campaigns.
The Democratic side doesn’t have a candidate with a recognizable name to date, but it does have its own variation on the GOP disarray. Party chair Katie Bernhardt last week put out a poorly conceived (and even more poorly received) PAC ad suggesting she’ll run. Edwards’ transportation secretary Shawn Wilson is another possible entrant.
None of which is to say that second-tier status is permanent. Recent Louisiana governors include quite a few who were dismissed or ignored early on: Buddy Roemer. Mike Foster. Bobby Jindal. And most recently, John Bel Edwards.
All seemingly came out of nowhere to take the election by storm; Roemer, Foster and Edwards won on their first tries, while Jindal got into a runoff against a more seasoned field and lost to Kathleen Blanco, only to win decisively the next time around.
And all rose as the A-listers on the ballot, people like David Vitter, Mary Landrieu, Bob Livingston, Tauzin and many more with impeccable on-paper credentials, failed to close the deal.
What these governors have in common is that, at some point along the way, they managed to catch voters’ attention and build momentum, in a way that few who weren’t blood relatives might have predicted. Each did it his own way, but they all did it.
And although their terms in office played out differently — Roemer and Jindal left office at the lowest points of their careers, while Foster was still generally well-regarded at the end and Edwards is, too — each fully inhabited the big, powerful job, and each reshaped state government in some significant way.
For better or worse, the next governor — whoever he or she is — will too. Even if that seems hard to envision right now.