With Billy Nungesser Out, What Does The Governor’s Race Look Like Now?

Elsewhere at the site this morning, Jeff Sadow has a lot of analysis on the late developments in the evolving field that is the 2023 gubernatorial race, and specifically with Lt. Governor Billy Nungesser’s surprising/not surprising decision to run for re-election rather than the state’s top job. I’m not going to spend too much time on Nungesser, but his opt-out makes for an interesting dynamic going forward.

I could speculate that the Rebecca Hamilton kerfuffle might have had something to do with Nungesser staying put in his current job. Rather than that, we’ll just go with his stated reasons for not running atop the ballot. From a press release he put out yesterday…

Louisiana Lt. Governor Billy Nungesser today officially announced his intention to seek re-election to the Office of Lt. Governor.

In a statement sent to supporters, Nungesser said, “It is an honor and one of the great privileges of my life to welcome the world to Louisiana as your Lt. Governor. We have enjoyed record-breaking success in tourism, saved our State Parks, saved our museums, and built a hospitality industry in Louisiana that delivered almost $2 billion in annual taxes for our state that our citizens didn’t have to spend. But the worst pandemic in our lifetime and a series of devastating storms leaves me with unfinished business to bring tourism back to its peak performance, especially for the near 250,000 families who rely on this industry for their livelihoods. For that reason, and after much thought and prayer, I have decided to seek re-election to the Office of Lt. Governor.”

Earlier this month, news operations across the state reported results from a poll conducted by demographer Greg Rigamer taken in early December which showed Nungesser leading a field of contenders for Governor. The poll indicated Nungesser (R) 23%, Secretary of Transportation and Development Shawn Wilson (D) 23%, Attorney General Jeff Landry (R) 22%, Senator Sharon Hewitt (R) 3%, Treasurer John Schroeder (R)2%, and businessman Hunter Lundy (I) 2%. The poll also showed that if Nungesser were to run for re-election, 62% of respondents said they would vote for him for another term with only 13% indicating they would consider another candidate.

How believable the “I want to keep promoting tourism” angle is, I can’t say. It doesn’t really matter at this point. Nungesser is out.

John Schroder is in

Louisiana Republican Treasurer John Schroder is running for governor, joining Attorney General Jeff Landry as the second statewide-elected GOP official in the race, while Republican Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser is opting out to run for reelection.

Schroder, who launched a soft campaign last year, had originally set an official announcement date of Jan. 12, but he let supporters know Monday he’s making the race.

“This campaign is not going to be an easy one,” he said. “We expect a crowded field and know we will have to buck the entrenched political establishment to win, but it is a fight worth fighting for the future of Louisiana.

“(Wife) Ellie and I did not come about this decision lightly. When looking at the challenges our state is facing, we feel we can no longer sit on the sidelines.

“We must build faith in government through transparency and accountability. We have suffered long enough for our reputation as a politically corrupt, crime-ridden, unhealthy and uneducated state!”

…but we knew he would be. Schroder’s bid for governor is interesting, because by one theory he could have a lot of upside as the non-Landry Republican.

If you believe that Jeff Landry can’t close the deal with the voters and his campaign is doomed, then Schroder becomes a more viable possibility. He’s not that well known, he comes from St. Tammany Parish, in the New Orleans area where there’s a lot of population to draw from, he’s positioned himself as conservative but not radical the way some have painted Landry.

But Nungesser’s poll had Schroder at two percent. Other polls we’ve seen have him at similar numbers. He’s starting with an almost nonexistent base to draw from, which means he’s got a long way to go to become a major candidate in the race.

That isn’t a fatal problem. Lots of winning candidates start with zero support and earn it on the campaign trail.

But there are things which do raise doubts.

First, Schroder is a statewide elected official. As such, he really shouldn’t be at two percent. Six or seven percent, maybe. Not two. One wonders whether Schroder’s base supporters all like Jeff Landry better; if that’s the case, it’s a real problem for him to find a lane to run in. And that might well be where he’s starting from.

The second problem Schroder has is geography. State representative Richard Nelson and state senator Sharon Hewitt are both from St. Tammany just like Schroder is, and so to an extent they’re going to cancel each other out if Nelson and/or Hewitt run. All three are branded, for the most part, as conservatives.

Somebody has to run as a moderate Republican. Honestly, Landry’s base is probably larger than the 22 percent reflected in Nungesser’s poll. It’s probably closer to 28-30 percent. And if Wilson is the Democrat candidate, he’s likely to lock up somewhere between 30-35 percent of the vote. That leaves somewhere in the neighborhood of 30-35 percent of the vote available, which is just enough that a perfectly-run moderate GOP candidacy might be able to edge Landry out of the runoff.

Can it be done?

Well, the thought was that Nungesser, or maybe Bill Cassidy (somebody else had the thought about Cassidy; I certainly didn’t subscribe to it), would be able to pull that off. Is it possible that Garret Graves could? Yes, but Graves has an awful lot going on in Congress right now so I wouldn’t expect him to get in.

Can Schroder morph into the moderate in the race? Can Hewitt?

Or does somebody else get in?

Lots of people are going to now look at Craig Greene, the public service commissioner representing the Baton Rouge and Lafayette areas. Greene could fit a centrist lane in this race. But would he be willing to give up his medical practice to run for governor? There isn’t much evidence he’s interested in doing that.

The other question is the Democrat side of the equation. We’re all assuming that Shawn Wilson, who is apparently the choice of John Bel Edwards’ political machine, will be the candidate. But that might not pan out. There are people attempting to push state Democrat party chair Katie Bernhardt as a candidate, though she seemed to throw water on the idea. State senator Gary Smith of LaPlace is consistently bandied about as a possibility, though there doesn’t seem to be a lot of support behind his candidacy.

And then there was the fresh rumor yesterday, which had it that Hillar Moore, the district attorney in East Baton Rouge Parish, is looking at the race.

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Moore would be perplexing as a candidate. For one thing he’s 68 years old, which is a bit long in the tooth to make a jump to statewide office. For another, he’s a district attorney, which is a bit down the political food chain from governor. We can’t remember there ever being a DA in a statewide race who made even so much as a ripple.

And the third thing is that Baton Rouge’s crime rate is astronomical, and lots of people blame Moore for that fact. Whether that’s fair or not, he would seem to have a pretty rough optical problem when opponents start blaming his office’s ineffectiveness for Baton Rouge becoming a shooting gallery. And with crime almost certainly going to be a big issue in this race, Moore doesn’t seem like a great fit.

Finally, Hillar Moore is not going to head off the entry of a black Democrat in this race. It’s entirely likely that Gary Chambers, who embarrassed Luke Mixon in last year’s Senate race by getting in and outpolling Mixon 18 percent to 13 percent as John Kennedy walked away with a primary victory, would see Moore in the race and immediately jump in against him. Chambers has attacked Moore for supposed racism repeatedly, while demanding that Baton Rouge have a black district attorney. It would be too good an opportunity to pass up for Chambers if Moore were to run.

That also would apply to Bernhardt, who Chambers accused of screwing his campaign by refusing a sole endorsement of the party in the Senate race.

Wilson makes the most sense to quiet the potential chaos on the Democrat side. But his strengths are also weaknesses. First, while it makes very good sense for Edwards’ machine to back a black candidate and therefore quiet the rift Chambers caused on the “D” side last year, so far there’s no indication that a black Democrat can get past 45 percent of the vote in a Louisiana statewide election. But second, while Wilson can point to the fact he’s run a large state agency as proof of his management skills, that agency is DOTD – which is a mess. He’s been on the job for seven years now and Wilson will struggle to show a single major highway project that he’s taken from the drawing board to completion during that time. Worse, the plans are for I-1o through Baton Rouge to be shrunk down to a two-lane road as part of an upgrade project, and this disaster could be happening while this year’s election cycle is going on. It’s inconceivable that the man responsible for the mind-blowing traffic mess that would cause would get elected to anything.

Talk to Republican activists and Landry supporters, who are increasingly the same people, and you get a sense of giddiness from them. One can very reasonably see that the stars are aligning for him. He pulled the state GOP endorsement late last year in a feat of smart political aggression, and then Kennedy and Nungesser declined to run, then Landry pulled a big endorsement from Congressman Mike Johnson yesterday, giving him the two best North Louisiana endorsements (the other was former Congressman Ralph Abraham) that you can get. Landry even has Donald Trump, Jr. behind him and it’s a matter of time before The Donald himself weighs in for him, and he’s got Eddie Rispone’s endorsement as well.

This is why Schroder is talking about “the Establishment” lined up against him. It isn’t really “the Establishment” that’s at issue; the issue is it’s the conservative base which is lining up for Landry. If anybody is going to stop him from getting into the runoff with a Democrat, and most likely Wilson, which would result almost certainly in a runoff a lot like the 1995 and 1999 Mike Foster wipeouts of Cleo Fields and Bill Jefferson, the x-factor now is the moderate base.

And the clock is ticking for someone to get in and begin mobilizing that segment of the vote.

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