When you’re a lefty in a red state, a sense of hopelessness can set in: Your districts are likely gerrymandered to shit and your lawmakers often pass harmful bills and seem determined to use your tax dollars for malicious ends—to say nothing of the profound lack of influence your state’s Democratic Party has in the state legislature. However, there have been signs that the GOP’s grip on power is slipping. In Georgia, two Democrats won landslide victories for statewide office in a state that went for Trump in 2024. And in Florida, two recent elections saw Republican-held seats flip blue. The Democrats are 10-0 in special elections since Trump 2.0 began, and have flipped 30 statehouse seats to the Republicans’ zero in the same timeframe, leading to some GOP figures “sounding the alarm bells” that the GOP brand is in crisis. The leftward trend has led to talks amongst political observers that there could be a blue wave in the November midterms that will allow the Democrats to take back the House and maybe even the Senate. With recent elections showing voters in typically Trumpy territory shift towards the left, and the growing unpopularity of Governor Jeff Landry in Louisiana specifically, I find myself asking: Will Louisiana see a leftward trend in the near future? Will Louisiana ever turn blue? These questions were foremost on my mind when I spoke on the phone with Louisiana Political Hall of Famer Robert “Bob” Mann. Mann has written a collection of books on the topics of politics and history. A former columnist for The Times-Picayune, he has also written for national publications like The New York Times and The Washington Post, and was a tenured professor of mass communication at LSU—until he retired in protest over Gov. Landry’s insistence to the university that Mann be fired because of a tweet. A veteran of Louisiana politics, having worked as a senior aide to Louisiana U.S. senators and Governor Kathleen Blanco, Mann had some insightful thoughts on my questions, as well as some blunt observations about the state of the Louisiana Democratic Party and the failures of its leadership.
My first question—is it feasible for there to be a blue Louisiana?
I think there’s always hope that a state’s politics can evolve or change. I look at states like Georgia that have become more progressive over the years. North Carolina is a pretty conservative Southern state that’s been able to elect Democratic governors, and its politics are distorted mostly by the gerrymandering… but [Democrats are] clawing some of that back. There’s Virginia, which went pretty far to the right, and they’ve turned that around. So those things happen. I think what I look at when I think about Louisiana, there’s events that happen to make that change occur, like Hurricane Katrina, which I think did a lot to undermine the Democratic statewide officeholders in Louisiana. There were a number of Democrats who [were] statewide elected officials, and then post-Katrina that just got all wiped out. So sometimes there’s these events that cause this kind of shake-up. That could certainly happen again in Louisiana. When you look at Georgia or even Virginia, it’s usually because of demographic changes in the state. I think a lot of Georgia’s move toward the blue column is not because people have changed their minds about politics because of some event, but because just a lot of people from the outside have moved in. A lot of those new people have gradually changed the politics of the state. So that one I don’t see happening in Louisiana. I mean, we’re losing people here. So I think if anything’s going to change in Louisiana, it’s going to be some event, some huge scandal… a natural disaster or something that shakes things up.
So you believe essentially that it will require a larger event that will have to change political tides, I guess you can say.
Yeah, I’ve written a couple of times on a Substack about that. I don’t understand why Landry and Republicans in the legislature aren’t moving more decisively to shore up the homeowners insurance market, for example, because they’re still nibbling around the edges and they don’t seem to recognize the threat that the collapse of the insurance market in the state poses to their political futures. It’ll take one really bad hurricane season with one really bad hurricane like a Laura or a Katrina. It may never happen, but I think it’s something like that where the existing leadership in the governor’s office and the legislature is seen as having mismanaged or been asleep at the wheel when something really bad happened to the state, either natural disaster or something economically. Let me add one other thing: James Carville said this to me a long time ago. I was saying something like, “Damn, the state’s never going to change. We’re just sort of spiraling down into deeper and deeper conservatism and moving backwards.” And I’m just paraphrasing here, but he says: Things change slowly and then they change suddenly. I don’t know if he still believes that about Louisiana, but I think he’s right.
John Bel Edwards was a bit of a phenomenon at one point. I remember reading an article a while back that he may have been the only Democratic governor of a state that traditionally votes red. Would John Bel Edwards win in this current political environment?
I was talking to some [Republican] political consultant friend of mine yesterday who was saying how politically weak he thought Jeff Landry is, and how beatable he is if the right candidate comes along. I’ve thought for a while that John Bel Edwards, if he decided to run again, would be a really strong candidate. It doesn’t look like Edwards is going to do that. He was a bit of a unicorn. There aren’t many people like him. But somebody like that, I think, could possibly mount a successful campaign for governor next year and really shake things up. But the next question is: Well, who is that person? You can’t come up with a name. I’ve had these conversations for months and no one has another name. But I told my friend I’d never heard of John Bel Edwards until a year-and-a-half before he became governor. So maybe that person is out there. But at least Edwards was out there running. I don’t hear anybody saying that about any member of the legislature, or Mitch Landrieu, or anybody like that. I think it’s interesting, though, that people acknowledge that Landry is not a shoo-in. Not having a strong opponent at this time or someone who looks like he’s going to run against him is a huge advantage. But the people still say that he’s vulnerable, that he could be beaten if the right person came along. It does tell me that the conservative majority [doesn’t] have a durable conservative majority, necessarily.
This is something you kind of alluded to, and I’ve actually also reported on this before years back, but I know at one point the Democrats used to dominate the South pretty much. Why do you think the Democrats have lost Louisiana, both in terms of state and the national party?
Well, I think it’s race. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965, but more so the Civil Rights Act really changed the politics of the state. There was a backlash against the party. Even though a lot of Southern Democrats opposed the Civil Rights Act in Louisiana and elsewhere, there was still a sense that the national party and Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey and all those people that came after them were pro-civil rights. And you started to see this shift after that. Now, no one under the age of 80 is sitting around griping about the Civil Rights Act today. But racial resentment is still a very significant characteristic of Louisiana politics and politics throughout the country, but particularly in the South. Trump so skillfully exploited it. It’s still very much in our bloodstream. And I think it’s still the dominant force in Louisiana politics and politics throughout the South. The politicians have learned to talk about it in ways that might not sound like Theodore Bilbo [former Mississippi governor and U.S. senator] or Herman Talmadge [former governor of Georgia and U.S. senator], but the messages are still largely the same. They’re just using coded language that the faithful still understand pretty clearly.
Yeah, that makes me think of this quote, and I’m going to paraphrase because it was some pretty ugly language that Reagan’s campaign manager Lee Atwater said in the ‘80s, about how you don’t say the N word anymore, you can just say cut taxes or cut social programs—
—”Welfare queen.”
Yeah, they’re still gonna know who you’re talking about in, say, Mississippi.
Oh yeah, absolutely, that’s right. Bobby Jindal did it when he was governor, talking about, we got too many people riding in the wagon. Everybody knew what that meant. Politicians are still using that language. Trump actually made the dog whistle a little less necessary because he’s done everything but say the N word in public—and gets away with it. So he’s given a permission structure for a lot of Republicans to not have to feel like they got to be so careful about how they express their retrograde views and their racism, and it really is disheartening to see how far backward we’ve slid.
Oh yeah, definitely just in my own political observations I’ve noticed the same thing. You have some senators in the federal government like Andy Ogles [Tennessee Republican congressman], he’s pretty explicit. So there’s definitely a pendulum swing.
Tommy Tuberville, another one, is pretty explicit. Yeah.
What are your feelings about the current state of the Louisiana Democratic Party?
It’s a shell of its former self. It’s in disarray. It’s being totally mismanaged—unmanaged maybe is the better word. The party leadership, especially Randal [Gaines, Louisiana Democratic Party Chairman], is just AWOL. He’s just a non-factor. He seems to be very comfortable with just not doing the job. He seems to want the title, but not the responsibility. And it’s really sad because it doesn’t appear there’s any way to dislodge him from the position and there doesn’t seem to be any way for the party to, even though I think there are good people on the executive committee and on the DSCC [Democratic State Central Committee], and on some of these parish executive committees. There’s only so much you can and can’t do when you’re being thwarted and undermined by either the actions or the inaction of the chair. I think it’s just really tragic. I go to these No Kings rallies, and there are troops out there and they want to see their leaders fighting for them and he’s the only person in the state who can say, “I’m the leader of all the Democrats.” He may not be an elected official anymore. He may not be a senator or a governor or a member of Congress, but he is the one person who can lay claim to representing all Democrats in the state, and the fact that he’s unwilling to speak for us in a powerful way or in a sustained way, it’s just really disappointing. And I think, if I were looking to run for statewide office or something, I probably wouldn’t do it because I would know that I have an inept, absent Democratic Party behind me—or not even behind me, just totally out to lunch. Even when they decide to do something, I think they often do the wrong thing. For example, we have a closed primary system. There’s going to be a primary to choose the nominee of the party for the Senate. And what do these guys do? They go ahead and they give the nomination to Jamie Davis. They preempt the public process. They tell the rank-and-file of the party: Your participation in the Senate election doesn’t matter to us; we’ve already decided who your nominee will be. I just find that to be a big stick in the eye of all the rank-and-file saying, you don’t matter—what we think matters. And I think Jamie’s a fine guy and he’d make a great senator. I happen to like him a lot. I’m not blaming him. If it were me, I’d probably take the nomination too. But the fact that they felt the need to intervene in a process that’s going to involve people voting, it just undermines their credibility. It’s a self-inflicted wound. It shows you not only the mismanagement of their jobs, but just the bad faith involved in how they’re doing that job.
I definitely agree with you when you say there’s a good opening for the party when it comes to these No Kings rallies, because to me that means there’s an energized base. But when there’s no visibility of a leader, there’s just a bunch of energy and people don’t know where to put it.
Yup. I mean, you got people like Dustin Granger who I think are doing [great] work and really trying to make up for the deficiencies of Randal Gaines, but the treasurer of the party can only do so much. He just can’t speak with the same authority that a chair could, or even a vice chair. Most of it’s on Randal’s shoulders and he’s just choosing not to do the work.
As far as the national landscape of politics, if you could give any advice to the Democratic National Committee, how would you tell them to approach putting Louisiana back in play for the party?
It’s gotta come organically from Louisiana. I don’t think the party can come in here and save us. I’m not sure this would help much because the leadership of the party here in Louisiana would need to change, but I think that—and [Democratic National Committee Chairman] Ken Martin is actually doing some of this—strengthening all the state party organizations by giving them seed money or giving them a certain amount of basic funding to keep their doors open and have a few full-time staffers to do the work, I’d like to see more of that, in the way that Howard Dean did it when he was chair of the party and he had a 50-state strategy that a lot of people criticized. But it ended up paying dividends in states like Alaska. It’s the party that’s got to decide for itself that it wants to be more effective. Even when we had a Democratic governor, John Bel Edwards—he could have made that party his own if he wanted it. He could have made that party a stronger organization. He didn’t do anything to strengthen the party. I think part of the problem with the party is that the two most prominent Democrats in the state, Cleo [Fields, Louisiana U.S. representative] and probably [Louisiana U.S. Representative Troy] Carter more than Cleo, are perfectly happy with the way things are going. They don’t see any reason to change because the status quo helps them.
Protesters gather for a No Kings rally in Covington, Louisiana on June 14, 2025. Photo by Julie Dermansky.
Do you believe that the Blue Reboot initiative accomplished its mission or is moving the party in the right direction?
Yes and no. They accomplished their mission of getting rid of Katie Bernhardt, who was terrible, but they replaced her with someone who’s just as terrible, just in a different way. I guess you could say it’s a marginal improvement. At least Randal’s not out there campaigning for Republicans. He’s not out there actively helping the Republicans. He’s just helping them through his passivity. I don’t think anything’s really fundamentally changed. The party is no more effective. But they couldn’t know that. Blue Reboot made the case that the party needed new leadership. I’m not blaming them for this, but they did fall short in their ability to win a majority of the DSCC. They don’t control enough votes on the DSCC to really have their way. It’s going to take a DSCC membership that really wants fundamental change. They could get rid of Randal tomorrow if they wanted to, but there’s not enough people who want that change. And when I started to ask, when I started talking to some of these people on the executive committee about this a year ago, and before I got more public about my dissatisfaction with the party, they were telling me: You can’t say this publicly. You shouldn’t say that because you’re just going to sow dissent and we need to all stand together and things are going to change. You just need to have patience. And after a while, I realized they were just lying to me. They didn’t have any intention of changing anything. They were perfectly satisfied with the status quo. They’re just, I guess, happy having a title. In a couple of years, there’ll be another effort to elect more people, but at some point, people are just going to give up on the party and walk away. I’m glad there’s some people who are hanging in there, but I know they’re all very dispirited and not optimistic about the likelihood of any real change.
There was recently this state legislature election where a Democratic candidate, Chasity Verret Martinez, flipped a red district that Trump won pretty handedly. Should this be seen as tides turning in the state, or do you think this was just a one-off situation?
I think a lot of people outside Louisiana misread that election as some sort of repudiation to Trump. I think that Trump’s less popular here in Louisiana. I think the polls clearly suggest that he is not as strong as he was, but that district’s been held by a Democrat for decades. The presidential election may have gone for Trump, but that’s been a Democratic House seat for a long time. I think there are plenty of elections that have happened across the country where there’s been a big swing toward the Democrats that do suggest something about Trump’s standing, but I just don’t think that was one of those.
I have noticed that there have been a lot of these state and local elections that the Democrats have won that in the past they should have not won—like Florida, they flipped two seats. They flipped a seat in Iowa last year. Most notably, the November 4th, 2025 state elections that took place around the country that night were pretty much bad all around for the GOP and anyone aligned with them. I think the most notable candidate who won that night was Zohran Mamdani who beat Andrew Cuomo [in the New York City mayoral election], who had endorsements from Republicans. Do you think that a Mamdani-like candidate could ever win in a place like Louisiana, either statewide or even on a local level? Or is he too progressive?
I think that it would be difficult for someone exactly like Mamdani to win statewide. Muslim is probably the biggest thing he [would have] going against him in a state like this. But even his progressive policies might be a little too far to the left for a state like Louisiana. If I were advising someone who’s thinking about running, what I would say is: Learn from him. He certainly has a way of campaigning that I think should be emulated and learned from. His use of video, his general demeanor, his joy that he exudes, I think is really infectious and helped him a lot. I think he definitely has policies that would be popular here. But I think that there are a lot of candidates that could learn a lot from his use of video. I was speaking to one of the Democratic Senate candidates a few weeks ago, and I told this person, you gotta be on video. I mean, that’s where it’s at, especially if you want to engage younger voters… you gotta meet them where they are.
Overall, as far as the national landscape of politics and the Democratic Party, it seems as though there have been Democratic politicians, and even organizations aligned with the party, that believe that the party focuses too much on social issues. This even exists within state parties like the Louisiana Democratic Party, who believe that defending queer rights, for example, is a losing issue. Do you think the Democrats should move away from social issues and focus on “kitchen table” issues only?
No, I don’t. Just morally, I don’t think a party that claims to be representing the values that the Democratic Party has always represented can claim to be the same party if it walks away from those issues… not just because they’re a constituency, but because they’re human beings. The party’s got to stand for human rights. And I don’t think we should take the bait that Republicans throw out there, that somehow the [2024 presidential] election turned around on transgender issues. [The GOP] have suckered a lot of consultants and some politicians like Gavin Newsom into thinking that somehow the election was over transgender issues. And Kamala Harris lost by 1.5 [percentage points]. The main issue was clearly inflation. I don’t know how smart people get hoodwinked into thinking that this election was about transgender [issues] and we’ve suddenly got to abandon all these people to win the next election. I just think it’s madness. The other thing I would say is, don’t make the mistake of fighting the previous war. The next war is not going to be over transgender [issues]. It’s going to be over something else. It’s going to be another issue. I just don’t think we should play their game because they’re always going to come up with some group to be fearful of. We shouldn’t let them yank our chain around like that. We should recognize that’s what they do, and not be embarrassed to defend minority and vulnerable populations from discrimination and harassment. If the Democratic Party doesn’t do that, then I’m not interested in being a Democrat anymore. I don’t know why else I would be a Democrat if I didn’t believe in defending the civil and human rights of all people. I hope that the rank-and-file rejects that because I don’t think we have to do that to win elections.
It almost seems like the Democratic Party on a national level feeds into the lies that the Republicans tell. It’s almost like they watch the same right-wing media that most Republican voters do.
Right. I had this breakfast with a friend of mine yesterday. He’s 80 years old. In his 60s and 70s, he had a complete change of view of the world and everything. He was telling me that he’s got these wealthy friends who all voted for Trump in 2024. They all said that they voted for Trump because they didn’t want transgender girls playing on their granddaughter’s high school basketball team or something. He said, basically, that’s all just bullshit. He said that was a convenient thing for them to say, but what they really meant was, I’m voting for this guy because I’m greedy and I want to pay less taxes. He said they won’t say that because it makes them sound terrible. It makes them sound greedy. Trump and the Republicans give them something else to say that makes them seem less awful than they are among their friends, which is, really: I’m just a greedy bastard.
Jeff Landry’s popularity in this state is sinking. Is there anyone that comes to mind who would run against him, who you think could beat him?
I kind of referred to that earlier. I just don’t have a name. I couldn’t tell you who that would be. I would be comfortable voting again for John Bel if he would run. I don’t think he is. I’d also be very comfortable voting for someone like Mitch Landrieu, who is a possibility. I don’t know. I haven’t heard much from him when it comes to commenting on Louisiana state issues. Maybe in a few years if she has a good experience as mayor of New Orleans, somebody like Helena Moreno. It wasn’t that long ago that the major cities in the state had Democratic mayors and that was one of our last remaining incubators for potential governor candidates. I think Shreveport, Monroe, Baton Rouge have all elected [Republicans]. Lafayette’s [Mayor-president] is Republican. But you look around, it’s just a really, really short bench. There’s only one white Democrat left in the state Senate, and that’s Jay Luneau… I think it’s unlikely that a Black Democrat is going to win statewide in this state. I think you have to face facts that this is still a very racially divided state and it’s just a steep road to climb. So if you’re looking for electability, you’re probably going to be looking a little more toward white Democrats. Maybe somebody like [Louisiana State Rep.] Mandie Landry… but I don’t see in her any desire to run statewide. But she’s very good. She’s a very good communicator. I’m very impressed with her personally and politically. I haven’t seen any evidence that she’s thinking about running statewide, but somebody like her. Coming from New Orleans has its own set of problems, so ideally I think you’d want to find someone who’s not from New Orleans but I don’t know who that is.
Do you have any optimism about the prospects of a blue Louisiana happening anytime soon?
I don’t think it’s impossible. I think it’s unlikely in the short term, but I think in the long term, Trump and the way that he’s managed this first year of his second term suggests to me that the Republican brand is sliding into disrepute. Trump’s problems are rubbing off on Republicans everywhere. So I think that’s why I’m so despondent about the unwillingness of the Democratic Party here to take advantage of that and be more aggressive. I think there’s an opportunity if we set ourselves up to seize on that opportunity when—if—Trump really does crash and burn [that] at least people are open to hearing our side a little more than they have been, which I think is happening. But we got to have a messenger. We gotta have somebody, and you just can’t beat somebody with nobody. And until we’ve got a strong statewide candidate who can emerge as the consensus leader of state Democrats, I don’t see that happening. We got all the ingredients. You can have all the ingredients for a great meal, but if you don’t have someone who can come in the kitchen and whip it all together and throw it in the oven and present it to the customers, they’re just ingredients that are lying there. We need a good cook, and we just don’t have that yet.
For more info and writing by Robert Mann, check out robertmann.substack.com and robertmannbooks.com.
Top photo by Katie Sikora: Mann in his Baton Rouge home office in April
