BATON ROUGE -- Former Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, the state's first female elected governor, died Sunday in hospice care in Lafayette after struggling for years with a rare form of cancer. She was 76.
Blanco, a Democrat, held Louisiana's top elected job from 2004 to 2008. Until her campaign for governor, she had spent the previous 20 years moving steadily and quietly through state politics, serving first as a state representative before working her way to lieutenant governor.
But Hurricane Katrina effectively derailed her political career. The devastating August 2005 hurricane killed more than 1,400 people in Louisiana, displaced hundreds of thousands and inundated 80 percent of New Orleans. The next month, Hurricane Rita worsened the effects of the storm.
Blanco shouldered much of the blame for the state government's slow response to the hurricanes, and she was criticized as unprepared, overwhelmed and indecisive. She later abandoned plans to seek a second term.
"While she knew that her name would forever be linked with Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, it was her dying wish that she be remembered for her faith in God, commitment to family and love of Louisiana," Blanco's family said in a statement.
A Section on 08/19/2019