NEW ORLEANS — The upcoming race for Orleans Parish district attorney was already shaping up as a free-for-all, with incumbent Leon Cannizzaro seen as vulnerable and his chief challenger, City Council President Jason Williams, under federal indictment, charged with tax fraud.
The race got even more intriguing on Monday with sources saying that Criminal Court Judge Keva Landrum-Johnson expected to join the fray. And she’s not the only major challenger eyeing the race.
“We are hearing that Judge Keva Landrum-Johnson is going to run,” said WWL-TV legal analyst Clancy Dubos. “It is expected that former Judge Arthur Hunter will announce tomorrow. And I expect former Senator J.P. Morrell to make a decision by the end of this week.”
Insiders had all but ruled out Landrum-Johnson running against her ally Williams. But DuBos says Williams' legal troubles appear to have changed all that.
“I have never seen a citywide race for a big office like this in more than 40 years get so scrambled and have everything thrown up in the air,” Dubos said. “The DA is underwater, his major challenger is now under federal indictment. It's like everybody took all the marbles and threw them up in the air at one time."
Another unusual element of the race is Cannizzaro’s silence about his intentions. Dubos said he can’t remember a contested citywide race in which the incumbent failed to signal his intentions so late in the game.
“For an incumbent to wait this long, to me, is a sign of weakness,” Dubos said. “That doesn’t mean he can’t recover from it, but it makes the money and the support look elsewhere.”
Arthur Hunter resigned from the bench in February to run and Landrum-Johnson would have to do the same with the qualifying period coming July 22-24. A sitting judge is prohibited by the Louisiana Judicial Code from engaging in anything perceived as political while on the bench.
J.P. Morrell had been expected to announce his intentions to run, but on Friday announced he would not be pursuing the office. Read his full statement here.
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