who is gov. landry?

the governance-agitation continuum

I keep wondering who Janky Jeff will prove to be as Governor of Louisiana.

So far, we’ve only seen him as a sheriff’s deputy (when they found 10k worth of cocaine underneath his house), a one-term Congressman (who was best known for holding up a sign reading Drilling = Jobs while President Obama gave a speech), and as Attorney General (who spent his timing filing a bunch of culture war lawsuits against John Bel and losing). We’ve only seen him as an agitator who agitates in the interest of his own political gain, which has served him well—he has, after all, risen to Governor of Louisiana.

But we’ve never seen him in this kind of role—a position where he actually has to govern. Where he actually has to balance competing political interests and factions within his own party and weigh the risks and benefits of governing vs. agitating. It’ll be interesting to see which way he goes.

As of now, we’ve seen a bit of both. We saw him govern when he didn’t fight the courts in creating a second Black congressional district during special session, and we saw him agitate this past week when he endorsed Governor Abbott’s inhumane immigration measures in Texas and directed state agencies to collect and publish data on immigrants.

We’ll know more as we move forward and can better gauge where he’s decided to land on the governance-agitation continuum. We have another special session on crime on Feb. 19 and then a regular session on March 11, during which he’ll have to deal with an impending fiscal cliff—both of which are potentially agitation-rich policy areas that need real governance.

The good news is that moderate Republicans (those who govern) seem to have edged out the far-right Republicans (those who agitate, aka The Freedom Caucus) in our Republican-dominated Legislature up until now. Not only did they appoint a handful of Black Dems to committee chair positions, but they also pushed back on Janky’s closed primary scheme by allowing Independents to participate in closed primaries. So far, moderate Republicans have proven that Janky Jeff does not have a clear mandate among his fellow partisans, which is something he will have to factor into his political strategy as Governor and will hopefully reduce his propensity to agitate.

I suppose we’ll know soon enough who we’re dealing with—whether it’s Dr. Jankyll or Mr. Jyde.