Suggested way to run multiple sql statements in python?

I would create a stored procedure:

DROP PROCEDURE IF EXISTS CopyTable;
DELIMITER $$
CREATE PROCEDURE CopyTable(IN _mytable VARCHAR(64), _table_name VARCHAR(64))
BEGIN
    SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=0;
    SET @stmt = CONCAT('DROP TABLE IF EXISTS ',_table_name);
    PREPARE stmt1 FROM @stmt;
    EXECUTE stmt1;
    SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=1;
    SET @stmt = CONCAT('CREATE TABLE ',_table_name,' as select * from ', _mytable);
    PREPARE stmt1 FROM @stmt;
    EXECUTE stmt1;
    DEALLOCATE PREPARE stmt1;
END$$
DELIMITER ;

and then just run:

args = ['mytable', 'table_name']
cursor.callproc('CopyTable', args)

keeping it simple and modular. Of course you should do some kind of error checking and you could even have the stored procedure return a code to indicate success or failure.

In the documentation of MySQLCursor.execute(), they suggest to use the multi=True parameter:

operation = 'SELECT 1; INSERT INTO t1 VALUES (); SELECT 2'
for result in cursor.execute(operation, multi=True):
    ...

You can find another example in the module's source code.