U.S. Senate
Elections as
United States Senator from
Louisiana Landrieu was elected in
1996 to the
U.S. Senate seat previously held by
John Bennett Johnston, Jr. of
Shreveport after winning a close and controversial
runoff election. (The runoff election is what other states would call "the general election" of a federal seat.) She defeated
state Representative Woody Jenkins of
Baton Rouge. Landrieu narrowly won re-election in
2002. She defeated state
Election Commissioner Suzanne Haik Terrell of New Orleans. Some experts and pundits had considered Landrieu as a possible running mate for presidential candidate
John Kerry in the 2004 election before he selected then-Senator
John Edwards of
North Carolina. In 2004 Landrieu became Louisiana's senior senator upon the retirement of
John Breaux, who was succeeded by Republican
David Vitter. In
2008, she won a relatively comfortable 52% to 46% re-election to a third term in a race against her challenger,
state Treasurer John Neely Kennedy. He was a former Democrat who switched to the Republican Party in 2007. Landrieu sought re-election in
2014. Former President
Bill Clinton campaigned on her behalf in Louisiana. While Landrieu garnered 42% of the vote she fell short of the 50.1% required for re-election. She was defeated in the December 6, 2014, runoff election by her Republican opponent, Congressman
Bill Cassidy, by a 56% to 44% margin.
Tenure In 2002, she voted for the
Iraq Resolution, and in 2003, she issued a statement indicating that, "The time for diplomacy has ended." She voted for the
Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 and the
Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. In 2005, Landrieu sponsored a resolution, which the Senate passed in an unprecedented action, to formally apologize for its repeated failure in the early twentieth century to pass anti-
lynching legislation. The Senate Southern white Democrats had filibustered the
Dyer bill in 1922 and two other bills that passed the House. She held high-profile hearings on the mistakes of the
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in the wake of hurricanes Katrina and
Rita in 2005. Subsequent to the 2006 mid-term elections, in which the Democratic Party gained control of both houses of Congress, Landrieu announced (along with Republican
Olympia Snowe of Maine) the formation of the "Common Ground Coalition", a group of moderate senators of both parties, with the goal of finding bipartisan consensus on legislative matters. Landrieu voted to raise the estate tax exemption to $5 million in 2008, but voted against repeal of the estate tax in 2006. On December 15, 2008, it was announced that Landrieu would become chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship for the 111th Congress when former Chairman
John Kerry left to lead the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, previously headed by Vice President-elect
Joe Biden. In September 2010, Landrieu announced she would hold up OMB director
Jacob Lew’s confirmation until the administration lifted or eased a federal freeze on
deepwater oil-and-gas drilling. Her delay of Lew's nomination came despite broad bipartisan support for appointing him to OMB. The Senate Budget Committee recommended that Lew be confirmed on a 22–1 vote. According to
The Washington Post, Landrieu "is one of the lawmakers leading for more natural gas exports". On December 18, 2010, Landrieu voted in favor of the
Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010. In 2011, she became chairman of the Senate's Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, giving her significant influence in the funding of federal agencies like the
U.S. Coast Guard,
Department of Homeland Security and FEMA. On April 17, 2013, Landrieu voted to expand background checks for gun purchases. In April 2014, the United States Senate debated the
Minimum Wage Fairness Act (S. 1737; 113th Congress). The bill would amend the
Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) to increase the federal minimum wage for employees to $10.10 per hour over the course of a two-year period. The bill was strongly supported by President
Barack Obama and many of the Democratic senators, but strongly opposed by Republicans in the Senate and House. She wanted additional debate on the timeline and the raise for tipped workers. (HR 3200) until the bill was rewritten to send a $300,000,000 payment to Medicaid for her home state. When two pages were added to the bill to place $300 million in Louisiana's Medicaid system, she changed her
web page in order to reflect her support of the program. Conservative figures referred to the deal as the "Louisiana Purchase". A typographical error in the bill resulted in $4.3 billion in additional funds for Medicaid for Louisiana. As a result, prominent conservative figures
Glenn Beck and
Rush Limbaugh called her a "high-priced prostitute". Days later, Sen. Landrieu took to the Senate floor to defend her vote by detailing the timeline of her Medicaid funding request. Landrieu noted her $300 million request was made before President Barack Obama was sworn into office. Landrieu voted for the
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (known as "
Obamacare") in December 2009. In September 2013, Landrieu voted to restore funding for the ACA that House Republicans had eliminated in their version of the funding bill. On March 1, 2012, Landrieu voted against a measure that would have repealed a birth control mandate in the health care bill. In October 2013, she introduced a bill to force health insurance companies to re-issue plans which they have cancelled.
Hurricane Katrina In the weeks following
Hurricane Katrina, Landrieu and fellow Senator
David Vitter co-sponsored the Hurricane Katrina Disaster Relief and Economic Recovery Act of 2005 (S.1765), a 440-page aid package worth an estimated $250 billion The bill was read twice by Congress, then referred to the
United States Senate Committee on Finance. Separate legislation was passed to provide $1 billion in loans to communities affected by Katrina despite Landrieu's objection to the provision insisted on by Republicans that prohibited the loans from being forgiven. In 2007, when Democrats took control of the House and Senate, they passed legislation written by Landrieu that authorized FEMA to forgive the loans. However, 40% of the loans were not forgiven by FEMA, which led Landrieu to insert addition provisions into the 2013 federal spending bill to forgive the remainder of these loans. Landrieu's national name recognition rose in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as she made multiple TV appearances to discuss the response effort. Landrieu was noted in
The New York Times as becoming "a national spokeswoman for victims of the hurricane" as she complained of "the staggering incompetence of the national government." She was particularly critical of
President George W. Bush, who, in turn, was critical of her in his 2010 memoir
Decision Points, in which he related telling her to be quiet after she interrupted him in a meeting with what he called an "unproductive emotional outburst".
Judicial nominations Landrieu voted for the confirmation of Chief Justice
John Roberts in 2005, but in 2006, she opposed
Samuel Alito; she voted in favor of
cloture to send the nomination to an up-or-down vote. She voted for both
Sonia Sotomayor in 2009 and
Elena Kagan in 2010.
USA Patriot Act On August 3, 2007, Landrieu broke ranks with Democrats when she and Louisiana Rep.
Charlie Melancon sided with Republicans and the Bush administration in voting for the
Protect America Act, an amendment to the
USA Patriot Act further expanding wiretap powers. In 2011, she was the inadvertent Senate sponsor of the four-year extension to the Patriot Act when Senator Reid amended a small business bill introduced by Landrieu as a means of avoiding a threatened filibuster by Senator Rand Paul. Landrieu joined the majority in voting for the extension, which passed 72–23.
Conservative activists convicted in failed sting attempt On January 25, 2010, four
Republican conservative activists, including Stan Dai, Joseph Basel, both 24; Robert Flanagan, son of Bill Flanagan, acting U.S. Attorney in Louisiana; and conservative
filmmaker James O'Keefe, were arrested by US Marshals and subsequently charged with entering a federal facility under false pretenses for entering Landrieu's New Orleans office under the guise of being telephone repairmen. The crew intended to record their interactions with Landrieu's staff. Two of the activists posed as telephone repair technicians in order to gain access to the telephone system. O'Keefe admitted to secretly "recording" the interactions with the staff with his cell phone and aiding in the "planning, coordination, and preparation of the operation." On March 27, 2010, the U.S. Attorney reduced the charges to entering federal property under false pretenses, a misdemeanor charge. On May 26, 2010, all four pleaded guilty before Magistrate Daniel Knowles III in a
New Orleans federal court. Three of the four received two years' probation, 75 hours of community service and $1,500 fines; while James O'Keefe received a sentence of three years' probation, 100 hours of community service and a $1,500 fine.
"Air Mary" controversy There was a controversy over Landrieu's payment of airline flights with Senate money, some of which may have violated campaign finance law. Landrieu's opponents called attention to the controversy, launching a campaign called "Air Mary". Activists dressed as pilots, flight attendants, and ground crew workers greeted her at her campaign appearances. In August 2014, after it was reported that Landrieu violated federal law by using taxpayer dollars to charter at least four private flights to campaign events, Landrieu announced that she had ordered an internal investigation into all of her flights during her time in the Senate. In September 2014, Landrieu revealed that the internal investigation into her flights had concluded that, since she had entered the Senate, she had improperly charged her Senate office $33,700 for private flights to campaign events. Landrieu originally said the charter company mistakenly billed Landrieu's Senate office instead of her re-election campaign.
Caucus memberships •
Senate Oceans Caucus • Senate Natural Gas Caucus, co-chair • Congressional Coalition on Adoption, co-chair • Senate Caucus on Foster Youth, co-chair ==Political positions==