Just as the previous president of one party helped to keep as Louisiana governor someone of the other party, the current president of one party looks to be giving a leg up to someone of the other party winning the state’s governor’s race later this year.

Without someone like Republican former Pres. Donald Trump in office, Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards never would have stood a chance to win reelection. Trump’s championing tax cuts through Congress and his easing of regulatory burdens put the nation’s economy into another gear from the historically-worst recovery under his predecessor Democrat Pres. Barack Obama. Despite Edwards doing the opposite and inflating the size of government, which resulted in a shrinking population, job loss, and rising proportion of able-bodied adults choosing not to work while almost every other state saw more people, more jobs, and higher personal income increases, he squeaked back into the Governor’s Mansion on the strength of Trump’s economy that blunted his policy mistakes.

Four years later, the same dynamic but in a different way has come into play. With inflation ravaging the savings and retirement nest eggs of Americans, triggered by the massive borrowing and hyper-spending of Democrat Pres. Joe Biden and (until this start of this year) a compliant Congress, Biden has ignored rectifying this and he and his administration continue to lob campaign slow softballs to Republicans seeking to succeed Edwards, in the form of executive actions that promise only to drive the cost-of-living even higher for no good reason.

To this point, Biden’s actions in the main have benefitted the campaign of Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry. His job provides a perfect perch to issue judicial challenges to Biden’s executive overreaches that promulgate policies at odds with Louisiana’s majority, and on several occasions he has joined with other state top legal officers to have courts reverse these.

He may have to go to bat again for the rule of law. Previous judicial decisions having frustrated attempts to put the administrative state in control over environmental policy (in which Landry intervened on the winning side) superseding Congress, it seems imminent that Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency will try to force into regulatory law a reduced version that attempts to curb carbon emissions at the source. If implemented, this could compel utilities to have to engage in extremely expensive compensations such as carbon capture and storage, switching away from fossil fuel to renewable energy sources, or use green hydrogen. Naturally, to absorb these costs this only will add to the fiscal agony of ratepaying households.

This comes on the heels of Biden’s EPA proposing a rule that limits vehicle tailpipe emissions in an effort to force more expensive electric vehicles onto the marketplace. This mimics California’s rules, which has a waiver in federal law to be able to do this, essentially trying to extend that nationwide. Landry joined a suit challenging the EPA’s recent invocation of that waiver, and one challenging that extension seems certain if the rule as written becomes promulgated.

Perhaps more than any other state, Louisiana would suffer a body blow from rules like these after the indignities Edwards policies have heaped on its residents’ economic fortunes. The state is the sixth-highest total carbon dioxide emitter and fourth-highest per capita, with the states ranked above it and immediately below much smaller in population. It relies less on renewable energy than almost any other, and only a higher-than-typical reliance on nuclear energy doesn’t make it the highest user of fossil fuels for electricity generation. As it is, it’s the highest consumer of energy per capita and the fossil fuels industry makes up the largest part of its economy.

So, Landry’s assistance here could prove crucial in preventing illegal, if not unconstitutional, executive branch actions from injuring Louisianans from the repercussions from Biden’s faith in mythical catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. But on another related matter, Landry hasn’t had to wait.

Another Republican gubernatorial candidate who has been able to leverage his elected office to fight Biden Administration extremism on this issue is Treasurer John Schroder. Over the past year, Schroder has crossed swords with advocates of environmental, social, and governance criteria for investing. He rightly has noted mandating these non-financial criteria, particularly environmental, in investment decisions likely leads to worse economic performance and violates the fiduciary duty to maximize the state’s return on investments. As a result, he changed an investment advisor and investment firm because they relied too heavily on ESG criteria in performance of their duties.

In that respect among candidates, Schroder had the field to himself – until today, when Landry announced a probe into an investing industry association aligned with ESG criteria and two of its members. The civil action will determine whether, in the use of ESG criteria, the parties involved employed unfair or deceptive practices because ESG criteria detract from their fiduciary duties.

The Biden Administration has egged on ESG use. Last year, his Securities and Exchange Commission promulgated a rule forcing companies to incorporate ESG as a factor in financial reporting, which constitutionally may run afoul of the same U.S. Supreme Court decision that attenuated the Biden carbon emission rule likely to be announced.

Biden is the gift that keeps on giving for at least two of Louisiana’s Republican gubernatorial candidates. If only Louisianans didn’t potentially have to suffer the consequences from Biden’s CAGW fever as a result.