During her first 20 months as governor, Blanco was a popular, can-do governor who was pro-business, pro-life, pro-guns and focused on improving the state’s education system. She seemed likely to cruise to re-election.
But Katrina’s arrival on Aug. 29, 2005 changed everything. The federal levees failed catastrophically and water swallowed up low-lying neighborhoods. The city and the state seemed woefully unprepared.
On early-morning television shows, operating on little sleep, Blanco looked haggard and overwhelmed in the immediate aftermath of what was by some measures the worst natural disaster in U.S. history. TV images captured bedraggled people stranded on Interstate 10 and others suffering in the Louisiana Superdome, which lost part of its roof, ran out of food, saw its bathrooms fail and had no air conditioning in sweltering humidity.
Government looked incompetent, and Blanco suffered much of the blame.