The Louisiana Democrat Weighing A 2028 Presidential Campaign

AVONDALE, Louisiana — If I could only have one dinner in New Orleans, it would be at Mosca's.

Yes, my favorite New Orleans spot isn't technically in the city. That's part of the charm. And that's why I went there last week, sitting down with former Mayor Mitch Landrieu at a groaning table filled with Oysters Mosca, Chicken a la Grande and a couple of meatballs

An unremarkable-looking red sauce roadhouse perched on the side of Highway 90 — New Orleans is one way and Acadiana the other — Mosca's somehow manages to be both a hidden gem and bucket-list icon.

Those who know know, as the saying goes. After opening in 1946, it was a fun, cash-only spot for a pair of couples or groups of friends. A young local reporter named Walter Isaacson reviewed it at the time — his clip is still framed on the wall.

Then in 2010, Calvin Trillin wrote a love letter and Oysters Mosca became foodie famous. Alongside the chicken, with its garlic bath, the pasta bordelaise, the crab-speckled dinner salad and to-die-for shrimp, Mosca's became such a destination that it's common to see sprinter vans filled with epicurious pilgrims in the gravel-and-grass highway frontage.

This is an Italian Creole mecca — yes, that's its own food genre— and it neatly captures the singularity of New Orleans. (I know what you're thinking: Red sauce in New Orleans?)

This city is in the South but not fully of the South, closer spiritually and ethnically to fellow port towns around the world than Bible Belt burgs a couple hours north. Since marrying a native, and eventually moving here, I've described New Orleans as one part Deep South, one part Caribbean and one part Western Europe. Thankfully, and tragically, it has the vices and virtues of all three.

But I’m a transplant, so I’ll let Landrieu riff about his town. This is where his dad was once mayor, too, and his sister represented Louisiana in the U.S. Senate. Landrieu was first in state politics, serving as lieutenant governor of Louisiana and then mayor of New Orleans from 2010 to 2018. Most recently, though, he served in Washington as former President Joe Biden’s infrastructure czar.

Together we talked about New Orleans, Democratic politics, why he's uneasy about the DSA and why he thinks he, and not Pete Buttigieg, could've been the breakout mayor-turned-presidential-candidate in 2020.

Laissez les Bon Temps Rouler!

You can watch the full video on YouTube or listen to it as a podcast.

The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

This is a little secret that we’re gonna reveal here, that the best restaurant in New Orleans, it's actually not technically in New Orleans, but Mosca’s is a gem, isn’t it? 

This is as New Orleans as you get.

It’s just hard to beat.

It’s unbelievable. Most people don't know about this place.

Well, now they’re gonna find out.

Right now we’re outside of the political jurisdiction of New Orleans. We’re in Jefferson Parish on Highway 90, which is on the way to the bayou. This place has been here since 1946, and you really shouldn’t come to New Orleans without coming here.

It’s my favorite place in the world to eat. If I had to pick any place, it’s Mosca’s, and that’s why we’re here. 

This is kind of out of the way. It’s about 20 minutes outside, 30 minutes outside of New Orleans. But it’s incredible.

You’re thinking about running for president. You’re in fighting shape now. Tell me when you’re gonna figure it out, and what goes into this if you do run. Why would you run? So first the when and then the why.

The when is not something that's dictated by you. Some people have decided I'm running, you know, I'm going to do what I'm gonna do. From my perspective, it's probably going to be sometime after the midterms or the first of the year. I don't think you can wait past that, just practically. Everybody keeps wanting to start these things earlier. We're two years-plus out; that's a long time.

Running and winning is different from governing. They're two very different things. And there are a lot of people who are capable of being good presidents, but they can't get elected. Both of them are critically important. So you gotta figure both of those things out. And I'm gonna try to do that. I am thinking about it. A lot of the people have said you should think about it, so it's hard not to. It's an honor for people to even think that, you know, that would even be possible.

Tell me why. 

Why is it an honor for people to think that you should run for president?

No, no, if you do run, why would you run for president? 

The country's in trouble. The country needs a lot of help. It is not just the president of the United States that's going to save this country, but obviously that position is very important. You can tell now the tone and the tenor of how people are feeling about this country is pretty much dictated by President Trump every day. So the position is an important one. That's No. 1.

No. 2, it is not the only position. And I would just say to all my fellow American citizens that waiting on the tech bros, waiting on Republican senators to save us, waiting on the pharmaceutical industries — that's not gonna happen. This thing has to be a bottom-up approach. And so the reason why I would run for president is if I thought that I was best suited to do it, I thought I could win, and I thought that I can really figure out a way to bring the country together — they're all important — you gotta have them all before you pull the trigger. I would not run as a vanity project. I would not run to hope that somebody picked me to be in the Cabinet.

And there are some folks looking at running in 2028 who you think are in fact doing this as a ticket to get a job down the road. 

Well, I don't want to cast aspersions on the intentions of people.

Well, feel free to. You're more than welcome. 

But sometimes people do that. I'm just saying that's not what I'm interested in. So one of the reasons I would not do it is if I didn't think I could really win, I'm not going to go out there just to tell my story. I talk pretty good. I can go tell my story without running for president.

You don't want to up your stock for the next best Cabinet job.

I'm not demeaning being in the Cabinet. It's a wonderful place, people should want to serve. That's not where I am in my life right now.

So what's your peg and what's your rationale? Because people will say, “Charming guy. I remember when he was mayor. I know he worked for Biden. Impressive.” But how do you get into the mix? How do you elevate yourself?

First of all, remember, I said the two different things about this. One is being the president and doing a good job while you're there. But the other one is getting elected, which is a whole new thing. How do you do that part? Well, it's very difficult. It costs a lot of money. It takes a lot of time.

How much do you have? 

Nothing. I have not set up a formal campaign structure. I don't have a super PAC. I mean, I'd basically be starting from ground zero, which is one of the things where you go, "Well, can you actually put the ball in the hoop?" It's a serious consideration that you have to make. But there have been … it's not too late to do that.

Politics moves fast now, right? It’s overnight.

It's lightning fast. Just to raise the issue of Mayor Mamdani, nobody knew who he was before he ran in that race. But because of technology, things are faster, they're better. So I think I have a little bit of time. But you can't be silly about the infrastructure that it takes to do that, which is why all these other folks that wanna run have been spending time campaigning. Now, I've been traveling the country, too. I mean, I’ve been to 230 cities, towns and counties. I've been working on this series called “Long Play” across the South. I'm doing the American Bridge project, where we have been to 21 states. I'm trying to do something that I really preach to all of us about.

It sounds like you're more inclined to do it than not right now. 

I don't know. I think that I'm, as the Jesuits would say, I'm discerning. I mean, I'm really thinking hard about it. And I'm not trying to be coy one way or the other, but it's a very serious decision.

As I have crisscrossed the country, one of the things that's so glorious about America is it's such a diverse place. And that's true about race, creed, color. It's true by geography. I mean, it's a magnificent place. And it is so very different and so very unique. Like the culture in New Orleans is so different from Maine, and Maine's different from LA. LA's different from New York and Chicago.

There's neighborhoods in New Orleans that are different. From like 20 blocks away. The accent’s different, the food's different. 

But, having said that, when you are able to do that crisscross across the country, what you realize is that most people in America are very similar. They want the same thing. They want to be safe. They want to live in a community that's clean. They want to be able to make a living so that their kids have a better life than them. They want to be free. They don't want the government up their skirt every day.

And right now, there are two things going on, in my opinion, that are completely conflicting in the American soul and psyche. One is that I live in a great country and it's the greatest it ever was. Something's really, really wrong. And I don't exactly know how to get out of it. That's part No. 1. And the second part of it is, the system does not work anymore. I'm getting screwed. I'm behind. Now this is true whether you talk to Black people, white people, brown people, men, women, gay people, straight people.

And my kids aren’t going to have it any better. 

See, this is the thing that's really jacking people up. Because most of us, as I said, I have five kids. And if you're a parent, I mean, you're giving up your left arm, your right arm, you're giving up your eye for your kid. And if you don't think your kid's got a shot, then all of a sudden you're kinda like, well, what's going on?

It's radicalizing. 

Well, let me just say this. It will piss you off, OK? And then you start thinking, “Well, I wanna do something about it.” And then you go, “Well, how am I going to do that? Who's going to listen to me? Wait a minute. My congressman doesn't listen to me, my senator doesn't listen to me, the government doesn't work. Wait, explain to me how the Supreme Court can't stop the president. This whole system doesn't work.” And I think most people, whether they believe the government can be an active agent for change or they hate government, they think that the system, the government, the private sector, is not working the way it was designed to work. And they think it's misaligned, which is why they call it corrupt — not just a corruption of stealing money and giving it to your friends, the system itself is corrupt.

Well, you're a moderate Democrat who just articulated quite nicely the rise of the DSA on your side. 

Well, first of all, DSA's not on our side. There are 155,000 members of the DSA and 55 million Democrats. Half of the stuff that DSA thinks is insane. And if they want to be socialist, they can go be socialist, and they can start their own party. If we have to have a big tent, if they wanna work on getting systems in place, work on costs, work on making sure that people have access to health care — which I think should be a right, not a privilege — then there's always room. But it doesn't mean that they oughta go try to screw everything up and then have litmus tests for other folks.

Are they hurting your party right now? 

I think that the Republicans wanna say that they're hurting our party right now. I just think the Democrats have to say to them, you're welcome if you think you wanna reduce costs, you wanna focus on good government service, you want government to be more efficient, you want to give people opportunity. You want good jobs, you want good health care. But if you're gonna go to the crazy side, which is what the platform does, they gotta go somewhere else. They can run in their own primaries. I mean, that'd be fine. They can go do whatever, but they're not Democrats.

But you articulated well why people, especially folks under 40, would turn to something very different. 

I guess what I'm trying to say in a very inarticulate way is I sense in my travels that there is something new forming in America. And you and I have been knowing each other a long time. And I have said this to you a number of different times: That in 2028, the United States of America is going to have an opportunity to set the stage for the rest of the century. That's what this presidential race is gonna be about. Right now, I think most Americans are saying, “I think Donald Trump is out of control. I think that he's abusing his power, even if I like him.” Even if you're on his side, you're going, “He's a little wacky now, he's a little bit out there. We need to limit his abuse of power.” I think that's what the midterms are like. And then, if the Democrats win the midterms, the next short period of time will be about trying to deliver on reducing people's costs.

There's two former mayors who are also looking at running for president. You may have heard of them. One's named Pete, the other is named Rahm. Buttigieg and Emanuel. South Bend and Chicago, respectively. 

One of them, Pete, ran last time, got some traction, in 2020, obviously, and has a pretty significant name ID in the Democratic Party nationally. 

Very well-liked.

Yeah, talented. 

The other, Rahm Emanuel. Relentless, been around national politics for a few decades. He has forced himself by dint of his own hustle into the conversation here for president.

How do you get in the mix? You didn't run before and you're not Rahm, who would say himself that he's insane and it takes a certain degree of insanity to do this. Well, how do you get in there? How are you different from them? 

Thank you for saying I'm not insane. Not that my friend Rahm is. But Rahm's a warrior, you know, he's a serious guy. He's been around a long time. He's got incredible credentials, not just having served in Congress, but as the chief of staff for the president when they passed Obamacare.

You're being nice. 

No, no, no. Look, they're pros and cons. The guy’s got gravitas, and I'm proud of him. People who think they still have something to contribute, he’s out there talking about it.

Rahm is doing something really important for the country right now. He's traveling around, he's talking about kids, and he's talking about classrooms. And he's gonna be, actually, in Louisiana, in the city of New Orleans, talking about the fact that the city of New Orleans found a way to teach their kids how to read faster and better than anywhere in America, in the city of New Orleans. And in Mississippi.

Thanks to who?

Well, that's not important at the moment. But he's trying to get people focused off of bathrooms and into classrooms. To me, I think most Americans go, “You know what? I kind of care more about that and care about my kids.” Pete is a particular talent and, I mean, went from running a 10,000-person city, I think, to, I mean really showing people how smart he is. He speaks five languages. He's very fluent.

How many you got? 

And I can hardly speak one. I can hardly speak English. But the thing is that what both of these guys have that I think is unique, and I think I share it as well, being a mayor brings a very different perspective. First of all, we did not grow up in Washington. That's important. Secondly, mayors do not mess around, and they have to find a way to get something done. They're not ideologically the best. So if you go to a mayors’ conference, one of the things you're gonna hear every time you go is there's no Republican or Democratic way to fill the pothole. You just gotta fill the big pothole, pick up the damn trash, fix the playground.

But the question is, how do you get in the mix like those guys already are in the mix?

So they got out there early. I mean, seriously, if I announced right now that I was running for president, all of a sudden I would be in the mix. That's how you get in the mix.

Go ahead. 

I'm not prepared to do that, but I'm just saying, it's not like you sign up and whatever. One of the issues that everybody has to think about is, are you willing to take the time, make the sacrifice and do what's necessary to give yourself a shot? And some of that takes thought, some of it takes prayer, some of it takes organization, and the bigger point that I want to make on this thing — mayors would make great presidents, just as a general rule.

There’s talk that the vice president, Kamala Harris, may run again. Do you think the party should move on, regardless of who the nominee is going to be? Should the party in ’28 have a fresh start? 

You know, you get asked that question a lot. I worked with the vice president. I liked it. We had a great time together. I thought she ran a hell of a campaign. And if she feels like in her heart she's the right person, then she ought to run. And I don't think that we ought to be in the business of telling people they can or they can't.

It's not can or can’t; what's your view of it? Like, what's your assessment, you know? Is that in the best interest of your party?

Well, it's what the voters want. It's not what I want or what she wants or what the party wants. And I mean this very sincerely.

The voters are the party. 

No, the voters are voters, and then there's the party, and sometimes the party reflects the broad —

Primary voters. 

Well, sometimes, when you say the party, like the party bosses in Washington, D.C., should not circumscribe who gets Democratic primary voters.

I don't mean that.

Let me tell you something. I have made the mistake in my life of telling people before you should run, you should not run, because this is what the voters think. And I have now realized as an older person that that is foolish. That you gotta let it ride. It would seem like you would go, “OK, well, this feels weird. She ran twice, she lost twice, is she gonna win again?” I ran for mayor twice before I won the third time. People said, “You can't ever do that again. You can't win.” How the hell are you gonna know? And so I'm not in the business of doing that anymore. And if she wants to run, let her run.

And you know what? The voters will figure it out. And voters are smart, too. And you should not put it past voters who voted for her last time to say, “I really like her, but I don't think that's what we need right now. And so I’m going to get off of her.” Or they could just say, “Hey, we think she got screwed last time, we're going back into it.” But I would not presume that the same people who voted for her last time are gonna vote for her this time. She would have to do whatever she's gonna do in a fresh new way. And you know what? Country may say yes, may say no. I just don't know.

It's the most wide-open race in decades. 

It is. Not only is it a wide-open race as to who the person's gonna be, it's a wide-open race as to what America wants to become and how we're gonna get there. It should be an exciting time for the country. We have a chance now — where we analyze the mistakes that we've all made, we self-correct, we recommit to common ground, we recommit to finding a way to get to yes. And we actually decide that we're gonna lap the rest of the world so that China and Russia are just an afterthought in our minds. And we're not there right now. We're stuck. And it's almost like we have shackles on and we're drowning. And this is crazy for America. We should not be in this position that we’re in right now, and shame on all of us for getting here. We gotta figure out how to get out. Nobody's coming to save us but ourselves.

Do you ever wonder if maybe you should have run in ’19 or ’20? Like, was that maybe your better opening? Because Obama took his chance in ’08. Chris Christie famously didn't take his chance in ’12. 

Neither did Mario Cuomo.

And Mario Cuomo never took his shot. He got on the plane. And never got to New Hampshire. 

So timing is everything in this business. Was ’20 your best shot? 

I don't know.

Would you have been Pete in ’20? I guess that's the question, right? 

Most certainly. At least. I don't take anything away from Pete. I think Pete's a superstar.

But you would've broken out, been competitive in Iowa and New Hampshire. 

I think arguably. I could have had it. …

He actually won Iowa. 

He did win Iowa. He did great. I mean, he did an unbelievable thing.

But that could have been you!

I could've been a contender!

We're gonna be at Mosca’s in like 2039, and you're gonna be like, "I should have run in ’20, damn it." 

You know, the truth is, when you look back over your life — I've had 10 elections. I've won eight of them in the first primary. But you think about the shots that you didn't take. Of course. Like, maybe I should've run for governor of Louisiana when I ran for lieutenant governor.

That was the Blanco cycle. So Kathleen Blanco runs in ’03. 

In that particular race, instead of me running for lieutenant governor, in ’03, had I chosen to run for governor. … She was from Lafayette, Richard Ieyoub was from Lake Charles. There was nobody on this side of the state. All of a sudden, you are 40 years old, you’re the governor of a Southern state. You serve, Katrina hits, you actually handle that well, and then all of a sudden, who the heck knows?

But, you know, it's like all of us folks always review it, every shot that we took.

You’ve played it out in your head, haven't you? 

All the time. I mean, you just never forget.

Tell me what's happened in the South, the Deep South especially, with white voters. 

I think race is with us all the time. Like I think race is worth 12 points in the South. And why do I say that? John Kerry ran against George Bush in Louisiana. He lost, but he was close. Barack Obama, who is decidedly more conservative than John Kerry, ran later and lost by 12 points more than Kerry lost. In a better year for Democrats. Now, people will go, “Oh, my God, I can't believe he said that.” It is in fact true, and it's demonstrated over time.

The second thing that happened is, besides the wave of conservatism across the South and the rise of Reaganism, which was happening over time, the Democratic Party stopped focusing on working-class people. Now, I didn't say white working-class people. But that's a component part of working-class people. And so after the Biden-Harris defeat, I've said to some people, we got to figure this out. We got to do something really simple. If people used to vote for us and they don't vote for us now, we ought to go see them, and we have to go ask them why.

That's what you're doing now, right? 

And that's what I'm doing now. And so I have been for the last 16 months traveling across 21 states, 21 because we took seven battleground states, seven states that we think are going to be in play and seven states that we want to challenge in. And we went to go talk to working-class people. And they basically have said, “We don't like anybody. We don't really even like Trump.” So these are not MAGA folks, which is, I guess, 30% of the electorate. These people, and particularly white working-class people that voted for Trump two or three times, are saying, “You misunderstand us. I don't like Donald Trump. I don't like Joe Biden, I don't like Clinton, I don't like anybody. It's not working for me. I'm getting screwed. I've got three jobs for a one-job paycheck. I can’t pay for my kid's stuff.” We're giving tax breaks to the wealthy when we’re closing rural hospitals. And it doesn't make any sense.

And the perception is that Democrats became the party of cultural liberalism. 

One hundred percent. And they think Democrats are weak. They think that we’re soft. They think that we're not hard-nosed enough, or we lost our common sense, and that we focus on the wrong stuff. That's what they think about Democrats right now. People want somebody that's authentic, they want somebody tough, they want someone that's decisive, but they want somebody that's gonna use their power to help them have a better life.

There's this famous moment in Louisiana at the end of the 1991 campaign that some folks here in politics will recall. 

It's the year Edwin Edwards — with the famous bumper sticker, which was “Vote For the Crook: It's Important” — beat David Duke. He on election night gives a speech, in which Edwin Edwards says, “This is gonna happen again, it's gonna happen on a national level. And by the way, it's going to be somebody who doesn't have Klan robes in his closet.” 

Is that playing out now?

It is 100% true. There is nothing going on in the federal level that has not happened in Louisiana. We're just replaying Louisiana history nationally. I mean, that's exactly what's going on, and Trump happens to be the personification of that.

Who does he remind you of? Does he remind you of David Duke, or is he more Huey Long? 

He's kind of both. He's not an overt bigot like David Duke was, who was not unafraid to use awful words and to call people terrible things. Donald Trump denies that he's a racist. But there's no question that Donald Trump and the people around him, especially Stephen Miller, think that some folks are more equal than others. There's no question about that. Islamophobia, his race baiting that he's allowing Pete Hegseth to engage in with eviscerating African American leaders in the military, what he did with the Central Park Five — it's just crazy.

What's the Huey part? 

Well, he's a populist. There's no question that he is — Donald Trump's really not even a Republican.

We have to stay on Louisiana governors for a minute because the present governor here, I know you're a big fan of Jeff Landry, he's a Republican governor. 

He's a Mini-Me. He's the Trump Mini-Me.

Can Landry be defeated in 2027 for reelection? 

He's only got a 38% approval rating.

Is it going to be you?

I don't think so.

Could he be defeated if LSU wins a national title? 

No, absolutely not. If Lane Kiffin wins, they're gonna make the governor a king!

When I was covering John Bel Edwards' reelection, the former governor here, John Bel Edwards, the Democrat in 2019 — which also was the year that the best football team in the history of college football was ever assembled, the Joe Burrow-led LSU Tigers — I remember talking to Governor Edwards when we were in downtown New Orleans. He said, “Let me tell you something, John.” And he said, “When LSU's won in football games, the people of the state are happy. And when they're happy, they vote for the incumbent.”  

I used to call Tom Benson when I was mayor. I was like, “Tom, please, God, can the Saints win this weekend?” People are so happy for the whole week. They leave me alone. They don't yell at me.