The Republican supermajority within the Louisiana State Legislature pushed by a invoice this 12 months banning gender-transition look after minors, together with different laws banning Covid vaccine necessities in faculties and any classroom dialogue of gender identification and sexual orientation.

It was the form of aggressive social coverage agenda that has gained traction in conservative states throughout the nation. But not like in most such states, the place Republican payments glide into legislation, lawmakers in Louisiana needed to return to the Capitol this week, greater than a month after the session ended, to attempt to claw the laws again from the brink of failure.

The motive: John Bel Edwards, the lone Democratic governor within the Deep South. He has used vetoes with some success as a bulwark in opposition to conservative laws in a state the place Republicans have had a lock on the legislature for greater than a decade.

In Louisiana, governors have a historical past of efficiently wielding vetoes; most years, lawmakers haven’t even bothered making an attempt to override them.

But this 12 months, legislators determined to check that energy, reconvening to contemplate overriding greater than two dozen vetoes at a second when Republicans have tightened their control of the legislature and when Mr. Edwards, who’s ending his second time period, is on his means out.

“You voted for this before,” State Representative Raymond J. Crews, a Republican, instructed his colleagues on Tuesday as he requested them to help overriding the veto of his invoice, which might require faculties to discuss with transgender college students by the names and genders on their beginning certificates. “I hope you’ll do that again.”

Mr. Crews didn’t get sufficient votes. In reality, by the point lawmakers adjourned late Tuesday, all however certainly one of Mr. Edwards’s vetoes nonetheless stood. The single exception was the ban on transition look after minors, a invoice that the Republicans had channeled most of their power and sources into resuscitating.

The end result of the session, which lawmakers raced by on Tuesday, was one final demonstration of how Mr. Edwards, a two-term governor leaving workplace subsequent 12 months, has succeeded at checking the affect of Republican lawmakers — to an extent.

“It’s kind of hard to be too disappointed — we actually did override the veto on a very important bill,” stated State Representative Alan Seabaugh, a Republican who led a faction of a few of the most conservative lawmakers.

Still, he acknowledged, Mr. Edwards posed a formidable impediment. “It really shows what an influence a liberal Democrat governor has over Republican legislators,” Mr. Seabaugh stated.

Although many within the governor’s personal celebration would dispute the portrayal of Mr. Edwards — an anti-abortion, pro-gun rights reasonable — as a liberal, there was nonetheless widespread settlement that his departure in January might convey a couple of vital shift within the state’s political dynamic.

Many acknowledge a robust chance of a Republican succeeding Mr. Edwards, setting the stage for Louisiana to veer much more to the appropriate, after a number of a long time of the governorship flipping backwards and forwards between the 2 events.

The state has an all-party “jungle primary” in October. Polls present Jeff Landry, the state’s deeply conservative legal professional basic, because the front-runner, together with Shawn Wilson, a Democrat and former secretary of transportation and growth.

In a state the place former President Donald J. Trump received by 20-point margins in 2016 and 2020, Mr. Edwards’s political survival has hinged on the appeal of his biography — he’s a West Point graduate and a sheriff’s son — and on his mix of social conservatism and progressive achievements, including expanding Medicaid, that matches Louisiana’s distinctive political panorama.

He has angered many in his personal celebration along with his vehement opposition to abortion rights and his restraint in criticizing Mr. Trump, who as president went to nice lengths to marketing campaign in opposition to Mr. Edwards’s re-election.

Still, even Democrats who’re essential of Mr. Edwards have seen him as an important barrier in opposition to conservative insurance policies which have simply superior in neighboring states.

“I do think that there’s always room for being a more vocal ally and a more staunch ally to our community,” Quest Riggs, who helped discovered the Real Name Campaign, an L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy group in New Orleans, stated of the governor. “But on the other hand, his vetoes have been a political tool that has been necessary to offset the mobilization by the evangelical right in Louisiana.”

Last 12 months, lawmakers succeeded in overriding a governor’s veto for the primary time in three a long time, reinstating a Congressional map that Mr. Edwards had objected to as a result of it included just one district with a majority of Black voters although one-third of the state’s inhabitants is Black. Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for a legal challenge to the map to maneuver ahead.

Also final 12 months, Mr. Edwards allowed a invoice that excluded feminine transgender college students from college sports activities to become law without his signature, predicting a veto can be overridden.

Mr. Edwards stated this week that he had issued 319 vetoes in his eight years as governor, and that 317 of them had been sustained. “Usually, we have been able to find common ground to move Louisiana forward,” he stated.

On Tuesday, lawmakers blitzed by the vetoed payments, together with measures that denied parole for harmful offenders and prevented “foreign adversaries” from proudly owning agriculture land.

Overriding a veto requires a two-thirds majority vote in each homes, and the Republicans have a supermajority by only a skinny margin. Two Republican state representatives had been absent on Tuesday, and some within the House and Senate crossed celebration traces to oppose some overrides, infuriating their extra conservative colleagues.

When the ban on gender-transition care got here up, lawmakers described conflicting perceptions of what it means to guard kids. Supporters of the invoice stated it could safeguard younger folks from therapies they declare are harmful and untested, though there may be broad settlement amongst main medical associations within the United States that such care will be helpful for a lot of sufferers.

Critics of the ban argue that it could imperil a small, susceptible inhabitants of younger folks by denying them medically essential care. Most of the 20 different states which have handed comparable laws are dealing with lawsuits, and judges have already briefly blocked just a few of the bans.

In the House, the vote to override the veto handed 76 to 23, with seven Democrats becoming a member of the Republicans. In the Senate, it handed 28 to 11. Republicans seized the only real profitable override as a victory.

“We sent a clear signal,” Mr. Landry, the legal professional basic and candidate for governor, stated in a video posted on-line, “that woke liberal agendas that are destructive to children will not be tolerated in Louisiana.”

Lawmakers and observers contemplated how the political local weather can be completely different throughout subsequent 12 months’s legislative session, notably if Republicans had been to take care of their supermajority and win the governor’s race.

“What happens when they don’t have to hold back anymore?” stated Robert E. Hogan, a political science professor at Louisiana State University, referring to Republican lawmakers if Democrats lose the governor’s race. “You’ll have a governor that’s powerful and on your side.”

That prospect has impressed trepidation amongst some, particularly inside the L.G.B.T.Q. neighborhood, however has amplified ambitions amongst conservatives.

Mr. Seabaugh, who’s leaving the House due to time period limits however is operating for a Senate seat, envisions passing a few of the similar payments subsequent 12 months with out the specter of a veto and rolling again Mr. Edwards’s agenda. “I don’t think we can do it all in one year,” Mr. Seabaugh stated, “but I’m sure going to try.”