Nancy Landry

Nancy Ruth Landry
Louisiana Secretary of State
Incumbent
Assumed office  January 8, 2024
Governor	Jeff Landry
Preceded by	Kyle Ardoin
Louisiana State Representative for District 31 (Lafayette Parish)
In office January 2008 – July 16, 2019
Preceded by	Donald Trahan
Succeeded by	Jonathan Goudeau
Born	June 10, 1962 Japan to military family
Political party	Independent (prior to 2008) Republican (since 2008)
Alma mater	Lafayette High School (Lafayette, Louisiana) Louisiana State University (B.A. and Juris Doctor)

Nancy Ruth Landry, also known as Nancy L. Matthews (born June 10, 1962), is the incoming Louisiana Secretary of State, a post to which she was handily elected in the general election held on November 18, 2003. She defeated the African-American Democrat Gwen Collins-Greenup, who had also lost the race in 2019 to Landry's predecessor, Kyle Ardoin, who did not run again in 2023. Landry is a former state representative for District 31, with service from 2008 to 2019, when she resigned near the end of her third term to become Ardoin's first assistant secretary.

Landry earlier narrowly led a multi-candidate field with 19.4 percent in the primary held on October 14, 2023, with Collins-Greenup finishing only .2 percent behind her. Well-known candidates eliminated in the primary were Mike Francis, a public service commissioner who finished third with 18 percent of the vote, outgoing House Speaker Clay Schexnayder, who ran fourth with 15 percent, and Arthur Morrell, a popular African-American politician in New Orleans, who finished in fifth place with 11 percent of the vote.^[1]

Landry, as well as Greenup, supported the purchase of new voting machines that count ballots electronically but leave a paper trail, something lacking in the state’s current technology. At the present time, only early votes have a paper trail; recounts are hence inaccurate in that most votes can't be verified.^[2]

On May 19, 2015, Landry, a former Independent, was one of four Republicans on the House Civil Law and Procedure Committee who voted to table on a 10–2 vote the proposed Marriage and Conscience Act, authored by Republican Representative Mike Johnson of Bossier Parish, now the U.S. House Speaker.^[3]

Considered a Moderate Republican, Landry was in 2017 the chairman of the House Education Committee. In that capacity, she supported legislation by Democrat state Representative Barbara Norton of Shreveport to prohibit corporal punishment in all state public schools, but the measure lost, 61 to 34.^[4]

Landry won reelection to the House in the nonpartisan blanket primary held on October 24, 2015 with 10,005 votes (84.7 percent) to Democrat Evan H. Wright's 1,890 ballots (15.3 percent).^[5]

Landry resigned from the House seven months prior to the expiration of her third term to become the chief of staff to Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin.^[6] She was succeeded in the House by the conservative Republican Jonathan Goudeau, who was thereafter defeated by Troy Hebert, a Democrat-turned-Independent-turned Republican for a second full term in 2023, when Landry was elected secretary of state.