Grass definitely isn’t growing under the feet of Louisiana’s governor-elect, Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry as the nightmare extends for the state’s political left.

Thursday, recently reelected GOP state Sen. Cameron Henry announced senators of the 2024-28 term — all but two already known after last weekend’s elections — had settled on him to helm the Senate. Jockeying had been going on before the election between him and Republican Mike Reese, like him finishing his first term, for the president’s post.

The decision came so quickly not only because almost all seats had been filled but also given who won a number of seats. Several intraparty matchups candidates featured limited government conservatives serving presently in the House who consistently voted that way, against other Republicans who at critical junctures defected from that worldview or other get-along-go-along social conservatives recruited from outside state government, with the more conservative triumphing in every case. They had worked with Henry, one of the stauncher fiscal conservatives in his career, in the past when he spent the 2016-20 term there as chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and are ideologically compatible with him.

Not that Reese isn’t. In his past term, Henry averaged about 86 on the Louisiana Legislature Log voting scorecard while Reese was just under 89; higher scores mean more fidelity to conservative and reform legislation. However, this isn’t Henry’s first rodeo, having sought the House of Representatives speakership there in his last term but falling short. One of the more visible conservatives during his three terms in the House, in his Senate term he remained fairly low-profile. Reese had no previous legislative service prior to his election along with Henry.

But what pushed Henry over the finish line was Landry’s endorsement, with him letting it be known he preferred Henry. The Senate has a long history of consensus picks, because it has been more resistant to change, although term limitation has put it that balkiness on life support. The trickle-up effect from the House, with the first wave of its legislators elected as a consequence of limits now like Henry having served one term in the Senate are generally are significantly more ideologically conservative than their predecessors. So, expect this to be another unanimous vote for Henry come January, but for undoubtedly the most conservative head of the Senate ever.

This marks somewhat of a return to a tradition of governors influencing the composition of legislative chamber leadership. Until almost a half-century ago, the liberal populist political culture of the state had most elected officials differing only in extremity of lengths to which government would go to redistribute wealth and power, and among different elites and their client groups which would receive more of the largesse. Gubernatorial insertion mainly addressed personalities, not ideology.

The only real challenges to that came when parties differed between governor and Legislature. The first instance, with Republican Gov. Dave Treen’s election in 1979, hardly produced a ripple, as at the time there were none of the GOP in the Senate and only 10 in the House. He had to have Democrats as leaders and exerted only had the barest influence in having Democrat (who would switch to the GOP a few years later) state Rep. John Hainkel named speaker. Needless to say, he had little sway over the Legislature in his four years.

Then came Democrat Gov. Buddy Roemer, who switched towards the end of his term to the GOP, who did succeed in installing his own leaders, only to have them dumped halfway through the term and replaced with allies of past and future Democrat Gov. Edwin Edwards. After that, Republican Gov. Mike Foster took over, but as he didn’t differ much on fiscal issues with the still Democrat-dominated Legislature, there wasn’t much conflict over leadership.

Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal came into office as the transition occurred from Democrat to Republican majorities, and with the trend in this direction (with his Senate president preferences being first a Democrat and then former Democrat state Sen. John Alario who hadn’t grown much more conservative over the years) faced little dissension. Outside of the Roemer interlude, the most recent period really has been the only time open conflict broke out between a governor and Legislature – Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards’ terms, of course – where you had ideological polar opposites between the fourth floor and a legislative majority and Edwards obviously couldn’t put the far left in charge. But he did manage to scrape off enough less conservative Republicans to support leaders that would attempt to moderate the products coming from the Legislature.

Properly understood, a governor can provide legislative leadership in harmony with his views when the Legislature as a whole is predisposed to these in the first place. Landry took advantage of that, signaling that he will make a priority to see that the century-old era of big government in Louisiana may not be over immediately, but that it’s only a matter of time before it is. That promises a right-sizing agenda, one that has government retreating from individuals’ lives, and promulgating common sense social issue preferences that amplifies the heartburn Louisiana’s political left has had since votes were counted on election day.