Liz Murrill
| Elizabeth "Liz" Baker Murrill | |
 | |
Louisiana State Attorney General
| |
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office January 8, 2024 | |
| Preceded by | Jeff Landry |
|---|---|
| Born | December 6, 1963 New Orleans, Louisiana |
| Political party | Republican |
Elizabeth Baker Murrill, known as Liz Murrill (born December 6, 1963), is the Republican state attorney general of her native Louisiana. She succeeded Jeff Landry on January 8, 2024, as Landry took the oath of office as governor. Since the Reconstruction era, she is the first woman and the third Republican to have served as attorney general.
Background
Murrill was born in New Orleans and resided in Lafayette, where she graduated from high school. She obtained a bachelor's degree in journalism from Louisiana State University and a Juris Doctorate from the LSU Paul M. Hebert School of Law. In 2010, she received a master of laws degree from Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. She now resides in the capital city of Baton Rouge.[1]
Political life
When Landry announced for governor in 2023, a plethora of candidates ran to succeed him as attorney general, including Landry's Republican choice, Liz Murrill; two other Republicans, Marty Maley and state Representative John Stefanski, a Moderate Republican, and the two Democrat choices, Lindsey Cheek, a graduate of the South Texas College of Law in Houston, Texas, and Perry Walker Terrebonne. Murrill led the primary with 463,108 votes (45 percent) and faced Cheek, who drew 239,653 primary votes (23 percent)[2] In the general election runoff contest on November 18, Murrill was an easy winner over Lindsey Cheek, 444,081 (66 percent) to 225,011 (34 percent). She will become attorney general when Landry is inaugurated as governor on January 8, 2024.[3]
Murrill is a former state solicitor general, the first to fill the post, under Landry. She worked in the governor’s office from November 2008 and served for two and a half years as the deputy executive counsel to then Republican Governor Bobby Jindal. She was thereafter elevated to Executive Counsel, the chief legal advisor to the governor. While working for Jindal, Murrill became involved in a dispute with LouisianaVoice over the release of public records related to the LSU Board of Supervisors’ decision to cut health care spending and to make state hospital private. Shelby McKenzie, an attorney retained by LSU, said that Murrill had advised him that the board should invoke the so-called “deliberative process” in order to deny the release of the records.[4]
She is a conservative and is widely expected to operate the office much as Landry had done for the preceding two terms.
References
- ↑ Liz Murrill - Ballotpedia, accessed November 21, 2023.
- ↑ Louisiana Secretary of State, Election Returns, October 14, 2023.
- ↑ Louisiana Secretary of State, Election Returns, November 18, 2023.
- ↑ Like a recurring dream, the ghost of Jindal Past haunts Louisiana as holdover Liz Murrill contemplates AG run | Louisiana Voice, accessed November 21, 2023