Will Bunch: Louisiana shock election sends message to Trump Will Bunch Newsletter

[Dennis Donovan]

Will Bunch - (archived: https://archive.ph/PJTQh ) Louisiana shock election sends message to Trump | Will Bunch Newsletter

Plus, Sen. Cory Booker’s real-life ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington’

Published April 1, 2025, 11:17 a.m. ET

Why an obscure statewide election in La. ought to terrify Team Trump

It’s hard to imagine that anyone could suggest that the great state of Louisiana was soft on crime. In an America that sets the world standard for locking up its own citizens, the Bayou State somehow manages to incarcerate people at roughly twice the national average. Folks convicted of the worst crimes are dispatched to the notorious Angola State Prison, whose critics call it a perpetual hellhole, which made the transition from slave plantation to state penitentiary way too easily.

Yet Gov. Jeff Landry — America’s most right-wing governor that you may never have heard of — came into office last year arguing exactly that, that the nation’s most punitive criminal-justice system needed to get tougher. Last year, Landry — a former prosecutor — convinced the GOP supermajority in Baton Rouge to roll back some modest 2010s reforms that had lowered incarceration rates and saved tax dollars. As a result, Louisiana lengthened prison sentences, allowed 17-year-olds to be charged with more adult felonies, and ensured the state could resume executions.

That still wasn’t tough enough for Republicans in a state Donald Trump won last November with 60% of the vote. On Saturday, Landry and the GOP went straight to the voters of Louisiana with a ballot initiative to amend the state constitution to make it easier to charge even more teenagers with adult crimes. One state lawmaker insisted the measure, which could have paved the way to locking up 14-year-olds for crimes like stealing a phone, was needed because “[s]ome of these kids are already lost when they’re 2 years old.”

The ballot measure — one of four that would have given enormous power to Landry and his Republican juggernaut — was supposed to cement Louisiana’s reputation as one of the Trumpiest states in America, where any concession on crime would be too “woke.”

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[Demovictory9]

1. Almost as soon as the polls opened in arguably the most obscure statewide election -- with no human candidates on the bal

Almost as soon as the polls opened in arguably the most obscure statewide election — with no human candidates on the ballot — in an “off” election year, folks in the more Democratic corners of the state lined up to cast their ballots. In majority Black Orleans Parish, which includes New Orleans, some 91% cast “no” votes. Statewide, 66% of the electorate rejected the four measures, including majorities in parishes that are mostly white and Republican as well.