LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Louisiana's new law requiring the Ten Commandments to be posted in every public school classroom was championed by Republican Governor Jeff Landry. That law faces court challenges, but eight years of Landry's influence has moved the state further to the right. WWNO's Matt Bloom reports.
MATT BLOOM, BYLINE: Landry has become a regular guest on conservative media outlets. Standing in front of an American flag and wall-mounted rifle, he spoke about his Ten Commandments policy on Fox News.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JEFF LANDRY: Look, when the Supreme Court meets, the doors of the Supreme Court, on the back side, have the Ten Commandments. Moses faces the U.S. speaker of the House. What's the big problem? That's the part that I don't understand.
BLOOM: The problem, critics say, is it's a violation of the separation of church and state. Landry is currently defending a court challenge to the policy. It's just one of many changes he's ushered in, with the help of a Republican supermajority in the state House. He signed first in the country legislation that labels abortion drugs as controlled substances, rolled back bipartisan criminal justice reforms, and he sent hundreds of the state's National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.
BRANDON DAVIS: He's also just taking power to appoint the heads of over 150 boards.
BLOOM: Brandon Davis is a political science professor at Tulane University in New Orleans. He says Landry's takeover from the state's previous Democratic administration has felt like whiplash.
DAVIS: It just goes to show that when someone with this type of ideology and also know-how get into office, they're able to capitalize on a very, very supportive constituency in the state House.
BLOOM: The 53-year-old lifelong Louisianan grew up in a small sugarcane farming town outside of Baton Rouge. Landry worked as a sheriff's deputy and went to law school, eventually running and winning a seat in Congress and serving as Louisiana's attorney general for eight years. There, he emerged as a vocal supporter of former President Donald Trump. He lashed out against Joe Biden and Louisiana's former Democratic governor, John Bel Edwards, on a range of issues, like COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
LANDRY: If implemented, Biden's unconstitutional overreach would directly harm the state of Louisiana.
BLOOM: An endorsement from Trump helped Landry win over the state's Republican voters during last year's election. One of his first actions as governor was to hold a special tough-on-crime legislative session. Out of that, he expanded the death penalty and lowered the age that juveniles can be tried as adults.
ELBERT GUILLORY: I believe that he's done, overall, a pretty good job.
BLOOM: Elbert Guillory is a former Republican state senator, and current Congressional candidate for the state's new majority Black district. He says he likes Landry because he's brought solutions to high crime rates in his community.
GUILLORY: Too many serious criminals spend a very short period of time in a very comfortable jail, and then they come right back into the community, do the same things again.
BLOOM: Democrats, meanwhile, say that Landry's ideas on crime and other issues undo years of bipartisan efforts the historically Republican state saw under a Democratic governor.
RANDAL GAINES: My fear is that we no longer have the guardrails.
BLOOM: Randal Gaines is chair of the state's Democratic Party. He says Louisiana Democrats became complacent under the previous governor. He calls Landry an authoritarian and says the state has lost its system of checks and balances.
GAINES: I mean, it's no holds barred. You know, at some point, we're going to have to rein it in.
BLOOM: His party is now in crisis mode, trying to rekindle enthusiasm among independent and Black voters ahead of the November election. He says his job is to convince Democrats that their vote matters under the new Republican supermajority.
GAINES: At some point, it's going to go too far, and I think that it's going to generate a corrective reaction.
BLOOM: Gaines says he hopes that reaction inspires more Democrats to turn out or consider running for local offices to restore some political balance in the Bayou State. For NPR News, I'm Matt Bloom, in New Orleans.
(SOUNDBITE OF RRAREBEAR'S "MOON") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.