Former Louisiana Gov. Blanco dies
Former Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, who became the state’s first female elected governor only to see her political career derailed by the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, has died.
After struggling for years with cancer, Blanco died Sunday in hospice care in Lafayette. She was 76.
“Our hearts are broken, but we are joyful in knowing that she is rejoicing in her heavenly reunion with Christ. Please pray for God’s peace to carry us through the coming days and months of sorrow as we mourn her absence from our lives,” Blanco’s family said in a statement released by Gov. John Bel Edwards’ office.
Blanco had a rare eye cancer that she battled successfully in 2011, but it later returned and spread to her liver. Her death came more than a year after the Democrat who served in state government offices for more than two decades announced in December 2017 that she was being treated for the incurable melanoma. Blanco described being in a “fight for my own life, one that will be difficult to win.”
Blanco held Louisiana’s top elected job from 2004 to 2008. Until her campaign for governor, she spent much of her political career moving steadily and quietly through state politics, rarely creating waves or controversy. Katrina raised her profile nationally and forever impacted her legacy. The devastating August 2005 hurricane killed more than 1,400 people in Louisiana, displaced hundreds of thousands and inundated 80% of New Orleans.
Historians will continue to debate whether any governor could have been prepared for such a catastrophe, but Blanco (inset) shouldered much of the blame after images of thousands stranded on rooftops and overpasses were broadcast to the world, and the government was slow to respond. Blanco was criticized as unprepared, overwhelmed and indecisive. The recovery she guided moved ploddingly.
As the devout Catholic asked in the letter announcing her terminal condition for prayers in her final months, she also thanked Louisiana residents for their “abiding love” during her years of service, and described the challenges of responding to Katrina and the followup blow of Hurricane Rita a month later. She called it an “honor and blessing” to lead Louisiana at the time.
“Katrina certainly left its mark and Rita left her mark on Louisiana. It made us tougher people though. It made us stronger,” the former governor said in July.