Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana issued an executive order delaying House primary elections on Thursday, a day after the Supreme Court ruled Louisiana\u2019s congressional map unconstitutional. He also requested that the Legislature reconvene and pass new congressional maps.<\/p>\n
All other Louisiana races, including a hotly contested Senate primary, will continue, with early voting set to begin<\/a> Saturday ahead of the state\u2019s May 16 primary. Mr. Landry cited an emergency declaration<\/a> from Nancy Landry, the secretary of state (who is not related to the governor), as justification for an official postponement of the House primary.<\/p>\n \u201cAllowing elections to proceed under an unconstitutional map would undermine the integrity of our system and violate the rights of our voters,\u201d Mr. Landry said in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n The ruling has set off a chaotic scramble as Republicans assess where they can redraw districts for partisan advantage ahead of the fall midterms. A new congressional map in Louisiana could undo the creation of at least one majority-Black district, costing Democrats at least one seat in the Congress. That would help Republicans at a moment when they face significant headwinds in their quest to retain control of the House in November.<\/a><\/p>\n The court\u2019s ruling on Wednesday declared the entire Louisiana congressional map an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, upending a key tenet of the Voting Rights Act. Democrats and civil rights leaders decried the ruling, which they said would allow for the elimination of majority-Black districts that have been essential in ensuring minority representation in Congress. Republicans applauded the ruling, and suggested they would seek new maps in other states.<\/p>\n President Trump lavished praise on Mr. Landry for his \u201ctremendous Vision, Strength, and Leadership\u201d in responding to the decision.<\/p>\n The president appeared to join a pressure campaign in another Republican-led state, Tennessee. In a separate post, Mr. Trump said he had spoken to the state\u2019s governor, Bill Lee, about redrawing its congressional map. Mr. Trump wrote that Mr. Lee had said \u201che would work hard to correct the unconstitutional flaw\u201d in the maps, something that \u201cshould give us one extra seat, and help Save our Country.\u201d<\/p>\n A spokeswoman for Mr. Lee did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and it wasn\u2019t clear if a new map would materialize before the state\u2019s August primary. But other Republicans in the state, led by Senator Marsha Blackburn, a front-runner to replace Mr. Lee as governor, have also pushed to redraw its map, despite Democratic objections.<\/p>\n The court\u2019s ruling will likely be felt first in Louisiana, the state at the center of the case. Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, a Republican, also weighed in with reporters Thursday morning at the Capitol, saying that Mr. Landry \u201chas no choice but to suspend\u201d House primaries because the map was ruled unconstitutional.<\/p>\n Others in the state warned about additional confusion and jeopardizing voter representation. It is also possible that the delay of the primary election will prompt legal challenges.<\/p>\n \u201cI really think that the Supreme Court has opened a Pandora\u2019s box,\u201d Representative Cleo Fields, the Democrat whose district is at the center of the Supreme Court case, said in an interview Thursday. He said he had urged Louisiana leaders to keep the map in place for the midterm elections, warning against \u201ca hastened decision to move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n Representative Troy Carter, the other Democratic lawmaker from Louisiana, warned that \u201cour soldiers at war, the elderly, and anyone who requires accommodations to vote will face irreparable harm if we change course midstream.\u201d<\/p>\n Those majority-Black districts in Louisiana and other states have long supported Democratic candidates. Eliminating them could tilt the future balance of partisan control in the narrowly divided House of Representatives.<\/p>\n Some officials close to Louisiana leadership and candidates said discussions were ongoing about how to give lawmakers time to approve a new map. But those officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to disclose private conversations, cautioned that plans were still in flux, in part because of legal and logistical questions.<\/p>\n Unlike those in other states, Louisiana\u2019s State Legislature remains in session. Some lawmakers had already filed draft legislation to help speed the process of debating and approving a new map. Any changes to the primary schedule or the congressional map could further scramble and confuse voters, who were already facing a new closed-primary system.<\/p>\n \u201cThe governor\u2019s decision to move ahead with the Senate race during a confusing time is disappointing,\u201d said Senator Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican facing a tight primary race against Representative Julia Letlow and John Fleming, the state treasurer. \u201cNow, it\u2019s up to all of us to help people understand what\u2019s happening.\u201d<\/p>\n The secretary of state, Ms. Landry, said that a notice would be placed at early voting sites to inform voters of the change<\/a>. And while the House races would remain on the ballot, those votes would not be counted<\/a>.<\/p>\n At the Capitol, Mr. Johnson suggested that lawmakers were considering reverting to the state\u2019s longstanding practice of an open primary in November, in which Republicans and Democrats would compete together and the top two vote-getters would advance to a runoff in December.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s the way it was typically done in Louisiana, so far as I\u2019ve been in politics, and looks like that may be the way they\u2019re headed,\u201d Mr. Johnson said. \u201cBut again, my fingerprints aren\u2019t on it. It\u2019s the decision of the State Legislature.\u201d<\/p>\n It is the second time in recent years that Louisiana, facing a court ruling, will have had to redraw its congressional map. In 2024, just weeks into Mr. Landry\u2019s term, lawmakers gathered to redraw the map after a federal court said the state had illegally diluted the power of Black voters.<\/p>\n That is the map that was at the center of Wednesday\u2019s Supreme Court ruling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana issued an executive order delaying House primary elections on Thursday, a day after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":215934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[17075,416,3678,859,85190,85189,1775,75,84,83,46937,9,24,63,1671,1875,58310,1876],"class_list":["post-216027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-decisions-and-verdicts","tag-elections","tag-governors-us","tag-house-of-representatives","tag-jeffrey-martin","tag-landry","tag-louisiana","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-midterm-elections-2026","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-politics-and-government","tag-primaries-and-caucuses","tag-redistricting-and-reapportionment","tag-united-states-politics-and-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}