WASHINGTON — Former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu has made it official: He is leaving his post as the White House infrastructure czar, according to a Monday morning statement by President Joe Biden.
Landrieu is expected to step down Friday as Senior Advisor to the President for Infrastructure Implementation Coordination and afterward take up the cause of publicizing the accomplishments of the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill as Biden seeks a second term.
“I will miss his counsel greatly,” Biden said.
Two months ago, numerous outlets reported that Landrieu was leaving, citing sources, but he declined to confirm it then.
Landrieu spent Monday on the road with Biden, whose stops included Charleston, South Carolina, and Dallas.
Passed in 2021 with minimal help from Republicans — Sen. Bill Cassidy, of Baton Rouge, was the only Republican member of the Louisiana delegation to vote for the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act — the bill has been considered one of the triumphs of Biden’s time in the White House.
The hope was that it would make a dent in improving the country's long-neglected infrastructure needs while giving a boost to the economy. However, recent polls have shown that more than half the nation’s voters are either unaware of the massive bill, or don’t give Biden credit for the work.
Landrieu, who can’t comment on future political roles until he leaves office, is expected to become co-chair for the reelection campaign of Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Biden campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez said she was “thrilled” that Landrieu was joining the president’s reelection effort. “His work at the White House to lift up how President Biden is investing in America and rebuilding the backbone of our economy is critical to our reelection effort,” she said in a statement.
In recent interviews, Landrieu had talked about how all-consuming the infrastructure job was — not as a complaint, but as an aside on how many hours he spent on the road while logging 119,000 miles crisscrossing the country.
Biden praised the work Landrieu did in coordinating the award of billions in federal grants for local projects to repair and expand bridges, highways, ports, water systems, airports, high-speed internet and other infrastructure that had been left to decay for decades.
Landrieu and his team developed a system through which state and municipal officials could anticipate and quickly address the myriad demands that different agencies make before they award federal dollars.
In the two years Landrieu served as Biden’s adviser, the administration helped fund and begin about 40,000 projects in 4,500 communities.
“As my senior adviser, Mitch has helped oversee the most transformational investment in American infrastructure in generations,” Biden said. “We’ve expanded affordable high-speed internet access to over 22 million people, and started improvements on over 135,000 miles of roads in America.”
Landrieu, 63, was mayor of New Orleans from 2010 to 2018. He served as lieutenant governor of Louisiana from 2004 to 2010.
In 2016, Landrieu was touted by some prominent political observers as a possible presidential contender, largely owing to his legacy as mayor, which included the removal of Confederate statues in New Orleans.
His name still pops up among commentators as a possible presidential contender in 2028, along with others including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Harris, the vice president.