For Jeff Landry and countless other politicians across the state, Oct. 14 was the first of many great days to come. For our democracy and all that it protects, Oct. 14 was the latest in a long chain of terrible days.
Much has been said about the horrifyingly-low voter turnout and the depressingly high number of unopposed candidates, but the choices made by those voters who actually came out are even more upsetting.
Landry won 51.6% of votes cast; that’s almost 548,000 people. That means hundreds of thousands of our fellow Louisianians went to the polls and deliberately cast a ballot for a man who’s spent his entire career in public office inhibiting or even ignoring those he deems unworthy.
Landry has demonstrated that he doesn’t believe in the project of governing. He’d rather transform the state (and the country) into a weak husk that gleefully allows itself to be trampled by the private sector and only lifts a desiccated finger to advance the interests of a select few. And this is apparently popular.
In short, the voters who participated in our democracy decided to use that democratic process to select a candidate whose beliefs, words, policies and actions are all fundamentally undemocratic.
Landry and his allies in the Legislature will proceed to steer the state away from democracy and towards his narrow view of the scope of government. Fewer people will have a voice and more people will feel emboldened to silence those who manage to speak up. His will—and that of those like him—will reign above those who are different from him.
If (and when) he crashes the state further into the ground and squanders his unfortunate popularity, would he even accept a possible loss in 2027? It’s doubtful, but it’s even more doubtful that enough voters would be willing to try to put him in his place.
Remember that Landry was a signatory to an amicus brief supporting Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s efforts to swing the 2020 election to Donald Trump through the courts. Voters knew this and either didn’t care or fully supported it. They saw an election denier and elected him.
None of this is to condemn voters for choosing Landry. If he’s going to be challenged, then his supporters need to be persuaded, not pilloried. This is simply a warning.
Jeff Landry is what happens when democracy is killing itself. This is a slow process. It’s largely an unconscious process. But paltry turnout, nonexistent political efficacy and the open embrace of people like Landry and Trump all point towards a frail democratic order. There’s no denying it. The only question is whether we’re going to just allow it to happen.
So, are we?
As John Adams observed, “There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”
Matthew Pellittieri is a 19-year-old history and political science sophomore from Ponchatoula.
