Mitch Landrieu

Former mayor of New Orleans

• Born: August 16, 1960
• Place of Birth: New Orleans, Louisiana

Education: Catholic University of America; Loyola University New Orleans College of Law

Mayor of New Orleans. Mitch Landrieu was the sixty-first mayor of New Orleans, Louisiana, serving from 2010 to 2018. He was the city’s first White mayor since his father, Moon Landrieu, left office in 1978. He studied at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law, where he received his juris doctorate. After graduation, he started his own law firm, Mitchell J. Landrieu, International Mediation & Arbitration, Ltd. There he practiced as an expert mediator who focused on alternative dispute resolution.

In 1987, Landrieu was elected to the Louisiana State House of Representatives. He served there for sixteen years and, during that time, championed several major reforms, including health care, education, and environmental reform, and the streamlining of local political offices. As a legislator, Landrieu also supported several African American causes and worked to reform the state’s juvenile detention system so that it focused on rehabilitation rather than punishment.

Landrieu was elected lieutenant governor of Louisiana in 2003. In that capacity, he helped expand the office’s role as a promoter of Louisiana’s musical, culinary, and architectural heritage. When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, Landrieu helped distribute aid and supplies. After two unsuccessful runs, Landrieu was elected mayor of New Orleans in 2010 and reelected in 2014.

Background

Mitchell Joseph Landrieu was born on August 16, 1960, in the Broadmoor neighborhood of New Orleans, Louisiana. He is the fifth of Moon and Verna Landrieu’s nine children. The family is deeply rooted in New Orleans politics. His father, Maurice Edwin "Moon" Landrieu, was mayor of New Orleans from 1970 to 1978 and secretary of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development under President Jimmy Carter. During his time as mayor, Moon desegregated city hall and helped African Americans gain jobs with the city. Landrieu’s older sister Mary Landrieu became a senior Democratic senator from Louisiana. He was raised Catholic and developed his love for New Orleans as a child, particularly the area around South Prieur Street in Broadmoor.

Landrieu attended Jesuit High School of New Orleans, where he graduated in 1978. There he had many leading roles in school plays including, Man of La Mancha and Jesus Christ Superstar. Even at a young age, Landrieu had a strong work ethic. He continued his education at Catholic University in Washington, DC, where he studied political science and theater.

After receiving his BA in 1982, Landrieu worked for a short time as a professional actor, playing in local New Orleans venues. His father urged him to let go of his dreams of being an actor and focus on law school instead. Landrieu took his father’s advice, and he received his postgraduate juris doctor degree from the Loyola University New Orleans College of Law in 1985. His background in theater did help him develop oratorical skills that benefited his later political career.

Landrieu campaigned in 1986 for US Senator John Breaux (D-LA). Around this time, Landrieu also began working as a lawyer and as president of his own law firm, Mitchell J. Landrieu, International Mediation & Arbitration. There he worked as an expert mediator who focused on alternative dispute resolution. Landrieu also became part-owner of the real-estate holding company Nineland, LLC. In 1988, he campaigned for Louisiana Supreme Court Justice Pascal Calogero.

Landrieu later served on the Supreme Court Task Force on Alternative Dispute Resolution, which developed and implemented a pilot program in the Orleans Parish courts. He has also taught alternative dispute resolution as an adjunct professor at his alma mater, Loyola University.

Young Turk

The same year he began practicing law, Landrieu started his political career. In 1987, he was elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives, where he served for sixteen years under three different governors. Working with both Democratic and Republican governors, Landrieu earned respect in both parties for his ability to build and negotiate coalitions and close consensus in order to get results.

As a legislator, he led the way in pushing for major reforms. He was part of a group of legislators called the Young Turks, who were focused on reform. The first issue on the Turks’ agenda was taking on the state’s fiscal problems. Landrieu and the Turks pushed for lobbyist disclosure, ethics reform, campaign finance reform, health care, education, and environmental reform, as well as the streamlining of local political offices. Their efforts resulted in significant budget cuts.

Much like his father, Landrieu also supported numerous African American causes. He led the opposition to the political agenda of state representative David Duke, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan. In 2003, Landrieu championed a bill to refocus Louisiana’s juvenile justice system on the rehabilitation and reform of juveniles rather than incarceration.

Mayoral Ambitions

In 1994, Landrieu ran for mayor of New Orleans for the first time. He finished in third place, with the office going to Marc Morial, the son of another former mayor. In 2003, Landrieu ran for lieutenant governor of Louisiana. He beat out five other candidates with 53 percent of the vote. He spent six years as lieutenant governor, during which time he vigorously promoted the state’s musical, culinary, and architectural heritage as part of the office’s role in encouraging tourism.

When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in August 2005, Landrieu was on the front lines. He traveled through the flooded streets in a boat, handing out supplies. At the Houston Astrodome in Houston, Texas, where the least fortunate of hurricane survivors were given shelter, Landrieu gave comfort to many, recognizing a number of them by name. He also negotiated with organizers of the Essence Music Festival, an annual tradition of New Orleans music and culture, to ensure that the festival stayed in the city following the disaster.

He attempted to run for mayor again in 2006 and narrowly lost to Ray Nagin in a runoff election. While he initially was unsure whether he would run again, Landrieu announced in December 2009 that his name would be on the ballot for the 2010 New Orleans mayoral election on a platform of unity and reform. He won with 66 percent of the vote, making him the first White candidate to be elected to the office since his father in 1978. Many believed Landrieu won because the city had lost faith in Nagin, who was still struggling with problems from Katrina five years earlier.

Reform in New Orleans

After becoming mayor, Landrieu presented several priorities for his administration’s agenda. The agenda focused on reforming the city’s jail and police department, cutting costs, and increasing confidence in city government. Other priorities included reforming the governance of the Sewerage and Water Board, reconditioning the city firefighters’ pension plans, and dissolving two of the six seats on the Orleans Parish Juvenile Court bench in order to save money.

Despite the Landrieu administration’s crime prevention efforts, New Orleans experienced 199 murders in 2011 and 193 in 2012. In response, Landrieu launched the NOLA for Life strategy, making it one of the city’s top priorities. The plan called for a multiagency gang unit that focuses on indicting individuals in gangs and monitoring gang activity.

As part of NOLA for Life’s Group Violence Reduction Strategy, at-risk individuals were given access to assistance with job placement, job training, and housing; preparation for the GED test; and counseling for substance abuse or mental health issues. About one thousand New Orleans residents participated in the annual NOLA for Life Day efforts to clean up high-crime areas, reduce graffiti, and improve infrastructure. Following the launch of NOLA for Life and reforms in the New Orleans Police Department, the murder rate dropped to a forty-year historic low.

To help spur economic development and create new jobs, Landrieu established the New Orleans Business Alliance, a public-private partnership, in 2011. The alliance resulted in more than three thousand new jobs, new retail stores across the city, and new investments from high-profile investment banking companies such as Goldman Sachs.

Landrieu was reelected on February 1, 2014, beating out two other candidates with 64 percent of the votes. He planned on keeping New Orleans’s recovery going through investment in infrastructure such as streets, parks, playgrounds, and police and fire stations. This recovery agenda was intended to build on the success of leveling over ten thousand blighted properties during his first term.

Following the Charleston, South Carolina, church shooting in 2015, Landrieu called for three Confederate statues and a monument to a failed 1874 white supremacist coup to be removed as public nuisances. The unannounced nighttime removals took place in 2017, with city council approval. This effort earned him national fame and the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. He also wrote the best-selling memoir In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History (2018).

Landrieu's second term concluded in May 2018. That July, he founded the E Pluribus Unum Fund to address race, equity, economic opportunity, and violence; his 2019 report for the initiative, Divided by Design, found racial divisions over the effects of discrimination on black advancement and attitudes about reparations. Landrieu was a visiting fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School for 2018–19 and joined CNN's stable of political commentators in July 2019.

In 2021, President Joe Biden tapped Landrieu to help implement a massive bipartisan infrastructure bill. In January 2024, Landrieu stepped down as infrastructure implementation coordinator to take up a role as co-chairperson of President Biden’s re-election campaign. After Biden withdrew from the race in July, Landrieu remained co-chair for the campaign of his replacement, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Impact

When Landrieu took over as mayor of New Orleans, the city was still reeling from Hurricane Katrina five years earlier. Thereafter Landrieu’s drive, consensus building, and love of the city helped the city dramatically turn around on numerous fronts. The US Census Bureau named New Orleans its fastest-growing major US city in 2010, and it was also named among the top ten metro areas for economic recovery by the Brookings Institute, an independent think tank, in 2014.

Landrieu helped create thousands of new jobs through the establishment of the New Orleans Business Alliance, the city’s first public-private partnership for economic development. He also helped expand economic opportunities for the city’s underprivileged through the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program, which increased the number of certified businesses eligible for financial support by more than 70 percent.

Along with private-sector partners, Landrieu established the New Orleans Recreation Development Commission and Foundation to provide safe, educational, and culturally engaging opportunities to citizens. Landrieu also advocated for educational reforms such as charter school accountability and school choice for families,

He has been honored numerous times throughout his political career. In 1998 he received the Friends of the Parishes Award from the Louisiana Police Jury Association. He received the Chamber of Commerce Business Champion Award in 2001 and 2002. Victims & Citizens Against Crime presented him with the 2002 Outstanding Legislator Award. For his leadership as a state legislator, the Orleans Parish Medical Society honored him with the 2002 Legislative Leadership Award. The same year Landrieu was named the Legislator of the Year by the Alliance for Good Government. In 2015 Governing magazine named him Public Official of the Year, and in 2016, he was voted America’s Top Turnaround Mayor in a Politico survey.

Bibliography

Chang, Cindy. "Mayor-Elect Mitch Landrieu Finds He Is a Beacon of Hope for Many New Orleanians." Times-Picayune [New Orleans], 25 June 2019, www.nola.com/news/politics/mayor-elect-mitch-landrieu-finds-he-is-a-beacon-of-hope-for-many-new-orleanians/article‗c0b23989-fdf4-57d5-a6e7-5da2473ae3fa.html. Accessed 2 Oct. 2024.

Collins, Kaitlan, et al. “Biden Taps Former New Orleans Mayor to Oversee Implementation of Massive Infrastructure Bill.” CNN, 14 Nov. 2021, www.cnn.com/2021/11/14/politics/mitch-landrieu-biden-infrastructure/index.html. Accessed 2 Oct. 2024.

Gray, Steven. "New Orleans’ Mayor: Can Mitch Landrieu Revive the City?" Time, 30 Aug. 2010, content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2012217‗2012252‗2014413,00.html. Accessed 2 Oct. 2024.

Egan, Lauren. "Mitch Landrieu, Biden’s Infrastructure Czar, Steps Down to Join Campaign." Politico, 8 Jan. 2024, www.politico.com/news/2024/01/08/mitch-landrieu-joins-biden-campaign-00134273. Accessed 2 Oct. 2024.

Mock, Brentin. "What Mitch Landrieu Learned about Racism in the American South." Citylab, 2019, www.citylab.com/equity/2019/11/mitch-landrieu-racism-south-latinos-blacks/601129. Accessed 2 Oct. 2024.

Robertson, Campbell. "Mitch Landrieu Re-Elected Mayor of New Orleans." New York Times, 2 Feb. 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/02/02/us/politics/mitch-landrieu-is-re-elected-mayor-of-new-orleans.html. Accessed 2 Oct. 2024.