Attorney General Liz Murrill has fired all of the outside lawyers working for Secretary of State Nancy Landry in an extraordinary high-stakes legal battle between two of Louisiana’s six statewide elected officers.

Murrill said she acted to protect her primacy as Louisiana’s chief legal officer after Landry, in her view, challenged that authority in advance of an upcoming U.S. Supreme Court hearing on whether Louisiana will have to redraw its congressional voting maps.

Landry believes Murrill has overreacted and questions whether the attorney general has the right to end her outside legal contracts. She declined to answer when asked whether she might go to court to block Murrill.

Adding to the legal and political drama, Murrill and Landry, while not close friends, grew up a block from e

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