Kathleen Blanco, a Democrat who made history in 2003 when she became the first woman to be elected governor of Louisiana, died Sunday at the age of 76. Blanco was in charge when Hurricane Katrina devastated the state in 2005, and she did not seek a second term in 2007.
Blanco was lieutenant governor when she ran for the state’s top job in 2003, and she was hardly a sure bet to advance through the all-party primary, much less win the general election. Republican Bobby Jindal, the former state secretary of health and hospitals, had the support of termed-out GOP Gov. Mike Foster, and he was the frontrunner for most of the contest. Blanco, by contrast, had to compete with a number of other notable Democrats, including state Attorney General Richard Ieyoub and wealthy state Sen. Buddy Leach. Jindal ended up taking first place with 33% of the vote, while Blanco edged Ieyoub 18-16 for the second runoff spot.
Either general election candidate would make history: Blanco would have been the state’s first woman governor while Jindal would have been the first governor of Indian descent of any state, as well as Louisiana’s first nonwhite governor since Reconstruction. Blanco attacked Jindal for cuts he made to hospitals, but The Advocate’s Tyler Bridges writes that her internal polls showed her narrowly trailing in the homestretch.
However, Blanco may have turned things around at a debate three days before the election. When the candidates were asked to identify a defining moment in their lives, Blanco told the audience, “The most defining moment came when I lost a child.” As she fought back tears, she talked about how her 19-year-old son died in an accident six years before when an industrial crane crushed him. Blanco said, “I guess that's what makes me who I am today — knowing that one of the worst things that can happen to a person happened to me, and we were able to protect our family, and the rest of my children have been strong as a result of it.”
Blanco ended up beating Jindal 52-48, giving Democrats a big win in a state that had been gradually turning against them. Jindal did well in the New Orleans area and even held Blanco to a 68-32 win in the city, a large drop off from Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu’s 79-21 performance there just a year before.
But Blanco, who grew up in a French-speaking community in Acadiana, made up the ground by performing well in rural areas. Blanco’s campaign made sure to consistently refer to her by her full name, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, which likely helped her win over voters in a state with a large French-Catholic voting base. (The Bayou Brief notes that, while former Gov. Edwin Edwards was nicknamed “The Cajun Prince,” Blanco was actually the state’s first Cajun governor since 1846.)
Blanco, who was quite conservative on abortion rights and guns, was popular during the first 20 months of her governorship in this red state, but Hurricane Katrina would overshadow everything in the summer of 2005. The storm devastated the New Orleans area, and Blanco was widely blamed nationally and at home for Louisiana’s response to the crisis. Blanco also faced a difficult time securing and distributing aid money for her state to help it rebuild from Katrina and from Hurricane Rita, which hit later that year.
Blanco’s political standing never recovered after Katrina. Jindal, who was by now a member of the U.S. House, made it clear early on that he planned to run again in 2007. That year Democratic leaders pressured Blanco to step aside so they could land a stronger candidate, and she obliged in March. However, Jindal still decisively won the governorship.
Since Blanco left office, she’s earned belated praise for her performance during and after Katrina. Historian Douglas Brinkley wrote that Blanco had done “absolutely everything she could to help the storm’s victims,” and he reported that the Bush administration had made an early attempt to blame the federal government’s lackluster response to Katrina on her. In an interview with New Orleans Public Radio’s “Sticky Wicket” podcast the year before her death, Blanco also blamed the Bush White House for scapegoating her for their failures.
Two of Blanco’s high-profile critics in Louisiana media also admitted in the podcast that they’d judged her unfairly, perhaps in no small part due to her gender. Blanco has also been credited in recent years for working to rebuild the Superdome, the NFL stadium that was used as a shelter during the storm, and for helping keep the New Orleans Saints from relocating to another state. Blanco also attracted widespread sympathy in 2017 when she revealed she had ocular melanoma, an incurable type of cancer.
Blanco never ran for office again after leaving the governorship in 2008, but she still wasn’t quite done with Louisiana politics. Blanco and her husband, Raymond “Coach” Blanco, were early supporters and advisors of state Rep. John Bel Edwards when very few Democrats gave him a chance to win the 2015 governor’s race. Blanco again expressed her support for Edwards’ re-election campaign the month before she died, and he said he’d wear her endorsement “as a badge of honor.”
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