Boustany stepped down from the U.S. House in January 2017; he was a candidate for the United States Senate in 2016 in a bid to succeed the retiring Republican David Vitter.

He was succeeded in the House of Representatives by Clay Higgins, a Republican who is a Lafayette law enforcement officer residing outside the district in St. Landry Parish.

[7] Boustany attended the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, at which he was a member of Kappa Alpha Order fraternity.

He is a retired cardiovascular surgeon who completed his residency in Rochester, New York before returning to Louisiana to take a job at Charity Hospital, New Orleans.

Congressman Chris John of Louisiana's 7th congressional district decided to retire in order to run for the U.S. Senate.

[citation needed] Boustany won re-election to a second term with 71 percent of the vote, defeating Democrat Mike Stagg.

[11] Boustany won re-election to a third term defeating Democrat Don Cravins, Jr. and Constitution Party candidate Peter Vidrine.

[14] In addition to Boustany and Landry, a third Republican, state Representative Chris Leopold of Plaquemines Parish, announced via Facebook his candidacy for the seat,[15] but he never filed the paperwork.

The Boustany-Landry race attracted most of the political attention in Louisiana in 2012, as it was seen as pitting an establishment Republican against a candidate identifying with the Tea Party.

[17] In the November 6 election, technically a nonpartisan blanket primary for Congress, Boustany led Landry by 45,596 votes.

[19] Boustany presented the Republican response to President Barack H. Obama's joint address to Congress on Wednesday September 9, 2009.

[21] Boustany ran for the open U.S. Senate seat held by retiring Republican David Vitter, and on election day he received 15.4 percent of the vote at third place, not enough to advance to the run-off.

His cousin, Jerry Ramsey, and her husband Bo were among those wounded in the 2015 Lafayette shooting, in which two people were killed and nine others injured.

[29][30] Murder in the Bayou was released while Boustany was running for U.S. Senate, and the story attracted widespread attention and drew comment from other candidates in the race.

His wife claimed that the allegations were designed to damage his senate run, while Boustany himself criticized frontrunner John N. Kennedy for "fanning" the story.