Touting policy chops, Sharon Hewitt says she’d work with Democrats as Louisiana governor

If her underdog bid for Louisiana governor succeeds, Sharon Hewitt would be the first Republican woman to head the state’s executive branch.

But Hewitt, a former Shell engineer who entered politics through her local parent-teacher association, ascended to the Louisiana Senate and now leads the chamber’s GOP delegation, will tell you that’s low on the list of reasons she should be governor.

Working as the only woman on deepwater rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, Hewitt remembers how she “didn’t want to ask for anything special.” Life on the male-dominated rigs presented hurdles she had to navigate in unorthodox ways: Shower doors didn’t lock, for instance, so she tied them off with a strip of rope to bathe privately.

“I wanted to earn my stripes like everybody else and be judged on my performance, not given anything because I was female,” she said in a recent interview. “I still very much feel that way in everything I do. Don’t take away from me the things that I have earned by putting an asterisk next to my name.”

Hewitt casts herself as a “doer” who knows better than anyone how to pass policy and lead big teams. She touts her resume in the Legislature and her work at Shell, where she says she obtained a patent to bring a key drilling technology to the Gulf. At times, she has struggled to cut through the noise in part because of the size of the five-candidate GOP field, which has for months been led by Attorney General Jeff Landry, a prolific fundraiser.

The field is expected to solidify this week when candidates qualify in Baton Rouge for the race to replace the term-limited Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards.

Analysts say the race has an open lane for a more moderate conservative — a strategy no candidate has yet to embrace in earnest. In a recent interview, Hewitt made a bid to seize that lane by pledging to appoint Democrats to cabinet positions if she’s elected.

 “I mean, I have left-leaning friends who are part of my inner circle,” she said. “You can’t surround yourself with only like-minded people, because you don’t get all the best ideas when you do that. It will be a diverse cabinet, and everybody will have a seat at the table.”

Though fundraising tallies suggest Hewitt faces an increasingly narrow path to victory, she has remained a dogged presence at campaign events and forums, aiming to challenge Landry’s brand of fiery, culture-war politics with her own policy-focused pragmatism.

At a West Baton Rouge Chamber of Commerce forum on Wednesday, she worked the room methodically, chatting with small business owners and local politicos.

After working at Shell, “I honestly had never thought about running for office,” she told the crowd at the Addis Community Center. “But I felt like the state was headed in the wrong direction, and that if good people did not run and sat on the sidelines, complaining, we were never going to move forward.”

Getting things done

Hewitt, who grew up in Lake Charles, has the conservative bona fides that are animating Republican voting drives in the current election cycle. She sided with conservatives last month to override Gov. John Bel Edwards’ veto of a ban on gender-affirming medical procedures for transgender youth. As chair of the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee, which oversees legislation affecting elections and the Secretary of State’s office, she played a leading role last year in crafting new GOP-backed Congressional maps that did not include a second majority-Black district — a decision that appears likely to be overturned by the courts. 

But in an interview at a Baton Rouge hotel last week where she was preparing to join another candidate forum, Hewitt said she would not prioritize fanning “culture war” debates as governor.

She prefers instead to discuss improvements to the state’s education system and ways to breathe life into Louisiana’s tech workforce, two issues addressed in laws she’s worked with colleagues to enact in recent years.

Among her proudest accomplishments, she names her 2021 literacy law that aimed to improve reading scores by making phonics — a way of teaching people to read by correlating sounds with letters — the state’s method for teaching reading. And her Computer Science Education Act, which passed the following year, requires schools to offer computer science courses to better prepare students for tech jobs.

In this year’s session, she also carried a bill to lengthen prison sentences for people who run fentanyl labs. The law creates escalating penalties for increasingly severe offenses, including 99-year maximum terms for third-time arrestees, and works in concert with another bill that would toughen sentences for dealers.

Her affinity for policy comes from her engineering background, Hewitt says.

 “We’re problem solvers, and you can’t turn that off,” she said. 

Narrow window

Landry remains the front-runner in the race, followed by Democrat and former state Transportation Secretary Shawn Wilson, polling shows. A recent survey placed Hewitt among four candidates who have yet to take off and had 5% or 6% of likely voters supporting them.

Backed by some of Louisiana’s biggest GOP donors, Landry also holds a sizable fundraising lead. He posted $9.1 million cash on hand in filings due in mid-July, which cover April to early July. He was followed by Treasurer John Schroder with $2.2 million; Independent trial lawyer Hunter Lundy, who has financed much of his campaign with his own money and had $2.1 million; and business lobbyist Stephen Waguespack, who had $1.8 million on hand.

Wilson had just under $600,000. Hewitt and State Rep. Richard Nelson posted $350,000 and $280,000, respectively. 

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Asked what she views as her path to victory in the race, Hewitt said she’s noticed her story resonating strongly with women. But there is a wider group of voters, she believes, who have yet to learn about her campaign and are looking for a candidate with a more measured and collaborative approach than Landry, who has embraced former President Donald Trump and right-wing issues.

It will be exceedingly difficult to compete as campaigns and political action committees spend millions on television ads, which are seen as the best way to reach voters. There is precedent for favored candidates being toppled, however — such as when Edwards won election in 2015 over the better-known former Sen. David Vitter, who was tainted at the time by a prostitution scandal.

“I think Jeff is going to be more, ‘My way or the highway,’” Hewitt said. “That is his leadership style. I bring legislative experience that he does not have, and I have been part of working to make the Legislature a little more independent.”

A Landry campaign spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.