As election time draws near, candidates are beginning to dig in their heels in final pushes to swing electorates. The latest development comes from Louisiana, where Sen. Mary Landrieu told NBC’s Chuck Todd that President Obama’s low approval rating in hers and other southern states might, possibly, maybe have something to do with racism.

“I’ll be very, very honest with you. The South has not always been the friendliest place for African-Americans,” Landrieu told NBC News in an interview. “It’s been a difficult time for the president to present himself in a very positive light as a leader.”

Landrieu didn’t just blame racism for Obama’s performance rating; she noted that his energy policy and handling of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill also left a bad taste in the mouths of many, Republican and Democrat alike.

“One of the reasons that the president’s so unpopular is because he put the moratorium on off-shore drilling. remember? After Macondo. And our state was furious about that. Now he could have shut down the BP operations but he didn’t, he shut down the whole Gulf,” she said. “When you shut down the whole gulf of Mexico it puts a lot of people here at risk and out of business. That’s number one.”

As they were likely intended to do, Landrieu’s statements sparked controversy and outrage, particularly from Republican Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. He said her remarks were “remarkably divisive,” which isn’t an untrue thing to say.

“She appears to be living in a different century,” he said in a statement. “Implied in her comments is the clear suggestion that President Obama and his policies are unpopular in Louisiana because of his ethnicity. That is a major insult by Senator Landrieu to the people of Louisiana and I flatly reject it.”

Landrieu faces competition from two Republican candidates, including Rob Maness, who believes the incumbent should apologize for her remarks.

“Quite frankly, Sen. Landrieu owes the people of Louisiana an apology for relegating them to nothing but racists and sexists,” Maness said in a statement Thursday evening.