Heading in to the governor race, the biggest unknown was how much the contest would become nationalized.

This wasn’t just a matter for academics to ponder. Recent Louisiana history has shown us that, when national politics drive an election, Republicans win. When the focus is on Baton Rouge, the playing field levels and Democrats have a chance.

Consider the back-to-back elections of 2014 and 2015.

In 2014, three-term Democratic U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, who made delivering the goods back home a personal brand, was no match for Republican U.S. Rep. Bill Cassidy, whose entire campaign hinged on her shared party identity with President Barack Obama. But a year later Landrieu’s Senate colleague David Vitter, a Republican who had written the Cassidy playbook in his own 2010 reelection, was trounced by Democrat John Bel Edwards in the race to succeed unpopular GOP Gov. Bobby Jindal.

Unlike Jindal, Edwards’ ratings have remained strong. A recent Morning Consult poll pegged his approval rating at 52%. A preelection survey by pollster Verne Kennedy found that his favorability surpassed his unfavorability by a whopping 25 points. Numbers such as these have been pretty constant throughout his term, and clearly contributed to the sense that he could win in the primary.

That he fell short is a sign that the dynamics of state elections have changed, at least this year. And one reason for that could well be the man who replaced Obama, President Donald Trump.

I admit I’ve been skeptical of the prospect that Trump could tilt the election. But some things have changed.

One is that, up in Washington, Trump is as beleaguered as he’s ever been. With the impeachment inquiry chugging along and even many Republicans tiring of defending his behavior, most dramatically his abandonment of the country’s Kurdish allies in Syria, Trump is looking for cover wherever he can find it. Gubernatorial races don’t tilt the balance of power in Congress, but they do send signals, and it just so happens that the three governor elections this fall — in Mississippi and Kentucky as well as Louisiana — are in the red states that make up the president’s dwindling safe spaces. A new story by Politico explains that Trump is planning to spend the next few weeks going all in on all three.

“Trump badly needs a boost right now, and the White House sees the elections in the conservative states as the best near-term hope of achieving it,” Politico reporter Alex Isenstadt wrote. “With the impeachment inquiry intensifying and congressional Republicans increasingly vocal in their criticism of the president, the elections give Trump the opportunity to demonstrate his political strength and shift a narrative that’s turned sharply against him.”

That Trump's strategy dovetails with Edwards’ runoff opponent Eddie Rispone’s is just lagniappe. Rispone, a wealthy Baton Rouge businessman with no prior electoral experience, has gambled big on Trump’s coattails. His introductory commercial, the one where he showed off the Trump bumper sticker on his truck, invoked the president’s name four times. He spent much of the primary campaign likening his own outsider status to the president’s, and criticizing fellow Republican Ralph Abraham for having once dared voice offense at Trump’s boasts of kissing and grabbing women without their consent. It all worked well enough to push him past Abraham, a sitting congressman, into the second runoff spot.

So if Trump wants to turn the Louisiana governor’s race into a referendum on himself, he’ll have a willing and eager partner on the ballot.

And according to Politico, that’s exactly the idea. More visits like his primary-eve rally in Lake Charles are likely, and an aggressive and costly Republican National Committee get-out-the-vote effort is being planned.

Related Trump to head to Louisiana on Friday to stump for GOP candidates on election eve WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump will make an 11th-hour trip to Louisiana to stump for Republican candidates who are attempting to unseat G…

It’s a high-risk strategy, since all three elections are at least somewhat close and a loss in any of these states would carry the president’s fingerprints. But his advisers think the impeachment inquiry is energizing his die-hard supporters, and know he’s better on offense than defense.

As for Trump himself, the plan plays to one of his most transparent and deep-seated needs, to make everything about himself.

The question for Louisiana voters is whether they want to go along.