If Joe Biden decides not to run for re-election in 2024, Mitch Landrieu might be a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. Politics runs in the Louisiana Landrieu family.
Landrieu’s father, Maurice Edwin “Moon” Landrieu, Moon Landrieu served in the Louisiana House of Representatives, Councilman-at-large for New Orleans, and Mayor of New Orleans. President Jimmy Carter appointed Moon Landrieu as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Carter. Later he served as a judge on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Like her father, Mitch Landrieu’s sister, Mary, served in the Louisiana House of Representatives. She was the Louisiana state treasurer before being elected U.S. Senator from Louisiana.
Mitch Landrieu is a Catholic. He earned his Bachelor’s degree from The Catholic University of America and his law degree from Loyola University Law School. Like his father and sister, Landrieu served in the Louisiana House of Representatives. He was elected Lieutenant Governor and helped with response and recovery efforts followin Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Landrieu defeated incumbent Ray Nagin to become mayor of New Orleans. As mayor, Landrieu addressed policing justice issues, and urban infrastructure needs. He balanced the state budget and demanded that 35 percent of city contracts be awarded to businesses owned by women or minorities.
“I do not mean to imply every white American is racist… They aren’t. But far too many of us have, in our minds, defined racism as whether you have done anything to physically harm a person because of their race or called them a nasty word.”
Mitch Landrieu
Under Landrieu’s job creation efforts black male unemployment decreased.
“The truth is I do have Black ancestry on my father’s side of the family. My great, great grandmother was an African American who was enslaved in Mississippi.”
Mitch Landrieu
In 2017 Landrieu ordered the removal of Confederate monuments in New Orleans.
“These statues are not just stone and metal. They are not just innocent remembrances of a benign history. These monuments purposefully celebrate a fictional, sanitized Confederacy; ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement, and the terror that it actually stood for.”
Mitch Landrieu
After leaving the mayor’s office Landrieu was a Visiting Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School Institute of Politics. Landrieu also served as a fellow at the University of Chicago. He has written a New York Times bestseller, In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History. In 2021 President Biden appointed Landrieu Senior Advisor and Infrastructure Coordinator responsible for coordinating the implementation of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
Issues involving law, order, and justice are critical to Landrieu. Landrieu has warned that the phrase “defund the police” does not fully explain necessary policing reforms. Any program for justice needs to explain how investments in families, community development, job training, and social services will create safer communities. Landrieu’s organization, E Pluribus Unum (Latin: ‘out of many, one’), builds programs and initiatives that cultivate and empower leaders who are committed to advancing racial equity. The organization’s mission statement says, in part, “We cannot break down the barriers of race and class as a divided nation. We can only fulfill America’s promise of justice and opportunity if we are united. This work begins in the South, where we have seen the darkest side of America’s history.”
“Our battlefield is on the street and in the heart. The mass shootings in churches, schools, movie theaters, and malls are the opposite face of the same coin: too many guns, too little preventive intervention. This is a mental health issue, a security issue, and the greatest moral issue in America today. Where are the voices of our religious leaders, calling down the failure of legislators and government to face this blight? If this is not a pro-life issue, what on God’s earth is it?”
Mitch Landrieu
Landrieu 2024? Let us know what you think.
Learn more about E Pluribus Unum at https://www.unumfund.org/.
Sources
- https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/former-new-orleans-mayor-mitch-landrieu-leader-moment-racial-reckoning-n1234468
- https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/11/14/president-biden-announces-former-new-orleans-mayor-mitch-landrieu-as-senior-advisor-and-infrastructure-coordinator/
- https://www.ktbs.com/news/mitch-landrieu-made-660-000-in-two-years-from-his-racial-justice-nonprofit-records-show/article_1fb564da-7560-11ec-b0ae-63a5787aa50f.html
- https://iop.harvard.edu/fellows/mayor-mitch-landrieu
- https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/16888174.Mitch_Landrieu
- https://ballotpedia.org/Mitch_Landrieu
- https://lapoliticalmuseum.com/inductee/moon-landrieu/
- https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/16888174.Mitch_Landrieu
- https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=mitch+landreu
- https://www.unumfund.org/
- https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/11/14/president-biden-announces-former-new-orleans-mayor-mitch-landrieu-as-senior-advisor-and-infrastructure-coordinator/
Thanks and a tip of the hat to By Infrogmation of New Orleans – Infrogmation of New Orleans, 19 May 2017. Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=59320889, By Moody College of Communication from Austin, USA – 482A7708, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=112442363 and By I, Infrogmation, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2518490 for the images.
