This just hit, and it’s a bombshell…

Governor Jeff Landry issued an executive order suspending Louisiana’s closed party primary elections only for offices of U.S. Representative in response to the recent decision by the United States Supreme Court in Louisiana v. Callais. EO attached.

“The best way to end race-based discrimination is to stop making decisions based on race,” said Governor Jeff Landry. “Here in Louisiana, we’re proud to lead the nation on this charge. Allowing elections to proceed under an unconstitutional map would undermine the integrity of our system and violate the rights of our voters. This executive order ensures we uphold the rule of law while giving the Legislature the time it needs to pass a fair and lawful congressional map. I would like to thank Attorney General Liz Murrill for her hard work throughout this process”

The ruling issued on April 29 found Louisiana’s current congressional district map, enacted under SB 8 during the 2024 First Extraordinary Session, to be an unconstitutional gerrymander. The decision effectively reinstates a lower court injunction prohibiting the state from conducting congressional elections under the invalidated map.

As a result, the state’s closed party primary elections for U.S. House seats, previously scheduled for May 16, 2026, and the second primary set for June 27, 2026, are suspended. Early voting for the May election was set to begin May 2. Other offices and ballot measures scheduled for May 16 will continue as planned. This suspension will only apply to the U.S. House races.

This executive order follows certification from the Louisiana Secretary of State that an electoral emergency exists, as provided under R.S. 18:401.1. The statute authorizes the governor to suspend or delay elections to protect voter safety, participation, and the integrity of the process.

We were wrong in our initial reaction to the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Callais case yesterday. We assumed that it was too late to do anything about Louisiana’s congressional map given that early voting on the party primaries was due to begin this weekend. But it turns out that when the Supreme Court says your map is illegal, it’s illegal and that’s the end of your map.

And there were apparently some dirty tricks afoot, because Elena Kagan is rumored to have held up the Callais decision by delaying her dissent for months. We know, thanks to Mollie Hemingway’s new book about Samuel Alito, that Kagan held up her dissent in the Dobbs case back in 2022, which damn near got at least one of her colleagues killed after a draft of the majority opinion in the Dobbs case leaked out.

The conventional wisdom was that it would be too late to do anything on congressional districts in Louisiana, but Gov. Landry isn’t buying that.

Now, Secretary of State Nancy Landry is going to be under the gun, because her office is going to have to throw out everything they’ve done on House races to date and start over, while managing the Senate race as is.

First, there will have to be a new congressional map drawn up. That’s going to first involve a decision whether to draw a 5-1 map like the one that was in place before this current Rorshach-test monstrosity that the Supreme Court just threw out, or to go for broke and draw up a 6-0 map.

The guess here is that it will be a 5-1 map, mostly because to go 6-0 will mean giving most, if not all, of Orleans Parish to Steve Scalise for his district and making him give up St. Tammany Parish or some other New Orleans suburbs where he gets basically unanimous support. Steve Scalise gets pretty much whatever he wants in redistricting, and rightly so seeing as though he’s the dean of the state’s congressional delegation.

But will it be a 5-1 map that looks like the previous map? The conventional wisdom would tend that way, but if it’s the same map as before, does that bring Garret Graves back to run for his old 6th District seat? And is that something Jeff Landry, or Scalise, or Mike Johnson want?

If not, how do you draw a 5-1 map which freezes Graves out of running? How do you draw a map which makes the southern part of Baton Rouge a political irrelevancy?

Even in the current 5th district, which was drawn in no small part to chase Graves out of Congress, southern Baton Rouge is still the deciding factor in who goes to Congress. Had Graves decided to run for the 5th District against – at the time – Julia Letlow, he would have been a big favorite.

If Graves runs for his seat, it’ll put Blake Miguez and Rick Edmonds in a bit of a trick bag. And that’s the second part of this, which is that once the new map is drawn up, now the Secretary of State is going to have to set up a new qualifying period at which time the candidate rosters will completely reshuffle.

Cleo Fields’ 6th District is going away. Does Cleo Fields go away, or does he use his congressional incumbency as a business opportunity and rake some money from donors by mounting a pro-forma campaign? Additionally, Fields has a number of challengers – Republicans Larry Davis and Monique Appeaning being a couple of them. What do they do? Stay in the 6th District race and run against Graves, or Miguez and/or Edmonds?

Do Miguez and Edmonds run in the new redrawn 6th District which presumably looks like Graves’ old district? If Graves doesn’t run it would make sense. Should the 5th District go back to a Northeast and Central Louisiana-dominated district with fingers into the Florida Parishes like it used to be, it would seem like that would then become the playground for Michael Echols and Misti Cordell to fight it out. Would Miguez try to play Road Warrior and run in that seat, which if Graves ran again in LA-6 would be the only really open race? And would that work, seeing as though he’s from Erath?

Or does Miguez decide to keep his powder dry and run for a statewide office in 2027? He flirted with the idea of running against Billy Nungesser for Lt. Governor before; he might decide to fully take that plunge.

The other part of this is whether Louisiana’s congressional primaries will continue to be party primaries, at least for the 2026 cycle. Word is that Nancy Landry’s office is screaming that they’ll have to be jungle primaries, at least this year, because there isn’t enough time to run a full party primary election.

The proper response to that is, “Nancy, send us a bill for the extra cost, but do your damned job.” Whether the state legislature will adopt that tone is unclear.

Then again, as of today pretty much everything is unclear.

Except that this is Cleo Fields’ last year in Congress.

And for now, that’s enough clarity to make us quite happy indeed.