First 20th century Republican mayor of Lafayette, Louisiana
William Dudley Lastrapes, Jr., known as Dud Lastrapes (born November 30, 1929), is a Lafayettebusinessman who from 1980 to 1992 was the first Republican since Reconstruction to serve as mayor of his city, the fourth largest in Louisiana.
Lafayette is a city in and the parish seat of Lafayette Parish, Louisiana, located along the Vermilion River in the southwestern part of the state. The city of Lafayette is the fourth-largest in the state, with a population of 127,657 according to 2015 U.S. Census estimates. It is the principal city of the Lafayette, Louisiana Metropolitan Statistical Area, with a 2015 estimated population of 490,488. The larger trade area or Combined Statistical Area of Lafayette-Opelousas-Morgan City CSA was 627,146 in 2015. Its nickname is The Hub City.
The Republican Party, also referred to as the GOP, is one of the two major political parties in the United States; the other is its historic rival, the Democratic Party.
In many countries, a mayor is the highest-ranking official in a municipal government such as that of a city or a town.
Prior to his three-term mayoralty tenure, Lastrapes (pronounced LA STRAPS) was a member of the Lafayette Parish School Board from 1972 to 1980. After his mayoral service, Lastrapes served a term as chairman of the Louisiana Republican Party from 1992 to 1994. In 1997, Lastrapes was appointed to the Louisiana Gaming Control Board by then Republican GovernorMurphy J. "Mike" Foster, Jr. He served until 2008 and was ineligible to have been reappointed.
Lastrapes was originally a Democrat, but he switched his registration to Republican in 1959, when he was not quite thirty years of age. At the time, the state Republican Party had fewer than nine thousand registered members. Hence very few living Louisiana Republicans have been members of the party longer than Lastrapes.
The Democratic Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with its rival, the Republican Party. Tracing its heritage back to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison's Democratic-Republican Party, the modern-day Democratic Party was founded around 1828 by supporters of Andrew Jackson, making it the world's oldest active political party.
Early years, education, military
Lastrapes was born in New Orleans to William Dudley Lastrapes, Sr. (1897–1973), and the former Gertrude Schminke (1895–1985),[1] but he was reared in Opelousas, the seat of St. Landry Parish in south Louisiana. The senior Lastrapes owned the Opelousas Credit Bureau and published the local Legal Times. Lastrapes graduated from Opelousas High School in 1946. He then attended the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (previously known as Southwestern Louisiana Institute). In 1950, he obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and communications.
New Orleans is a consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of Louisiana. With an estimated population of 391,006 in 2018, it is the most populous city in Louisiana. A major port, New Orleans is considered an economic and commercial hub for the broader Gulf Coast region of the United States.
Opelousas is a small city in and the parish seat of St. Landry Parish, Louisiana, United States. Interstate 49 and U.S. Route 190 were constructed with a junction here. The population was 22,860 at the 2000 census. In 2004 the city annexed territory and population expected to give it more than 25,000 people in total. In the 2010 census, the population was 16,634. Opelousas is the principal city for the Opelousas-Eunice Micropolitan Statistical Area, which had an estimated population of 92,178 in 2008. Opelousas is also the third-largest city in the Lafayette-Acadiana Combined Statistical Area, which has a population of 537,947.
The University of Louisiana at Lafayette is a public research university in Lafayette, Louisiana. It has the largest enrollment within the nine-campus University of Louisiana System and has the second largest enrollment in Louisiana. As a nod to the Acadian French heritage of many of its students, the school sometimes uses the alternate name l'Université des Acadiens.
Thereafter, in January 1951, Lastrapes entered the U.S. Air Force for a full four-year stint. He was stationed in South Korea throughout 1953. He left the military with the rank of staff sergeant. He has been active in the Lafayette American Legion.
South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korean Peninsula and sharing a land border with North Korea. The name Korea is derived from Goguryeo which was one of the great powers in East Asia during its time, ruling most of the Korean Peninsula, Manchuria, parts of the Russian Far East and Inner Mongolia under Gwanggaeto the Great. Its capital, Seoul, is a major global city and half of South Korea's over 51 million people live in the Seoul Capital Area, the fourth largest metropolitan economy in the world.
The American Legion is a U.S. war veterans' organization headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. It is made up of state, U.S. territory, and overseas departments, and these are in turn made up of local posts. The legislative body of The American Legion is a national convention, held annually. The organization was founded on March 15, 1919, at the American Club near Place de la Concorde in Paris, France, by members of the American Expeditionary Forces, and it was chartered on September 16, 1919, by the U.S. Congress.
Occupation and family
In 1955, Lastrapes went to work as a reporter and newscaster for the newly opened Lafayette television station KLFY-TV, Channel 10 (CBS). He left the station to go into radio but soon returned to KLFY as news director, a position that he maintained until 1970.
KLFY-TV, virtual and VHF digital channel 10, is a CBS-affiliated television station licensed to Lafayette, Louisiana, United States. The station is owned by the Nexstar Media Group. KLFY-TV's studios are located on Eraste Landry Road in Lafayette, and its transmitter is located north of Rayne, Louisiana. The station is notable as the oldest television station in the Lafayette area.
CBS is an American English language commercial broadcast television and radio network that is a flagship property of CBS Corporation. The company is headquartered at the CBS Building in New York City with major production facilities and operations in New York City and Los Angeles.
Radio is the technology of signaling or communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmitter connected to an antenna which radiates the waves, and received by a radio receiver connected to another antenna. Radio is very widely used in modern technology, in radio communication, radar, radio navigation, remote control, remote sensing and other applications. In radio communication, used in radio and television broadcasting, cell phones, two-way radios, wireless networking and satellite communication among numerous other uses, radio waves are used to carry information across space from a transmitter to a receiver, by modulating the radio signal in the transmitter. In radar, used to locate and track objects like aircraft, ships, spacecraft and missiles, a beam of radio waves emitted by a radar transmitter reflects off the target object, and the reflected waves reveal the object's location. In radio navigation systems such as GPS and VOR, a mobile receiver receives radio signals from navigational radio beacons whose position is known, and by precisely measuring the arrival time of the radio waves the receiver can calculate its position on Earth. In wireless remote control devices like drones, garage door openers, and keyless entry systems, radio signals transmitted from a controller device control the actions of a remote device.
In 1957, Lastrapes married the former Rhonda Rougelot (born 1936); she was also born in New Orleans but reared in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and thereafter Lafayette, where she finished high school. The Lastrapeses, who divorced in 1989, have two sons. William Dean Lastrapes (born 1958) is the head of the Department of Economics at the University of Georgia at Athens, where he lives with his wife and two children. Bryan James Lastrapes (born 1959)[1] is senior vice president at QRI; he lives with his wife, twin daughters, and son in Houston, Texas.
In 1970, Lastrapes became a public relations officer of the former Guaranty Bank and Trust Company in Lafayette, later Chase Bank. In 1973, he went into the health and life insurance business. He worked in that capacity until he became mayor. He returned to his insurance business in 1992, after his mayoral service ended.
Lastrapes and Bowen
Lastrapes was reelected to a second six-year term on the school board in 1978, but he left after two years to become mayor. In 1979, he ran for a state Senate seat in the nonpartisan blanket primary. Though he polled more than 10,000 votes, he finished third, and the seat was won in the general election by the pro-life Allen R. Bares (pronounced BAH REZ), who defeated fellow Democrat Pat Juneau, 54-46 percent.[2]
Lastrapes then filed, "while the iron was hot," to run for mayor. He defeated the incumbentKenneth F. "Kenny" Bowen (1926–2002) in the jungle primary held in April 1980. Lastrapes polled 10,609 votes (50.3 percent) to take the mayoralty outright without the need for a general election under the unique Louisiana primary system that began operating in 1975. Bowen trailed with 5,649 votes (26.8 percent), while another Democrat, George Landry, finished with 4,839 votes (22.9 percent).
Ironically, Bowen had been the unsuccessful Republican mayoral nominee in 1968. Bowen was defeated that year by 1,322 votes by the popular Democratic Mayor J. Rayburn Bertrand. Bowen was then elected in 1972, with 62 percent of the vote over three opponents in the then still closed Democratic primary. He was reelected in 1976. He won a third term in 1992 and succeeded Lastrapes, who did not seek reelection.
Mr. Republican Mayor
Under the Lastrapes administration, Lafayette annexed some thirteen square miles of area. The city grew rapidly from 1980–1984, and then there was a slowdown in the important oil industry. Lafayette rebounded in the late 1980s and attracted some new industries and expansion of existing ones.
On March 18, 1983, Lastrapes recommended to the Lafayette City Council the construction of a four-lane river crossing at the Camellia Boulevard on the city's south side. After years of studies, protests, and delays, construction was completed in 2003.
Lastrapes was reelected in 1984, when he defeated a city councilman. And he was reelected on March 8, 1988, when he narrowly derailed a strong comeback attempt by Bowen. Lastrapes polled 13,424 votes (52 percent) to Bowen's 12,512 (48 percent). The mayoral election corresponded with the presidential primaries in Louisiana.
In 1985, Lastrapes recommended a 2 percent sales tax increase; voters approved it, along with a bond referendum that included the Camellia bridge. There has not been a municipal sales tax hike since that time in Lafayette. The sales tax revenue was used to hire city employees and to start capital improvement projects at a time when few others in Lafayette were building or hiring, said Dee Stanley, chief administrative officer of the Lafayette Consolidated Government. (Lafayette, like Baton Rouge, now has a combined city-parish government.) "Mayor Lastrapes understood the necessity of hiring good, qualified people to work in government," Stanley said.
Lastrapes was also mayor when the $64 million Cajundome opened in 1985.
Lastrapes is also known as the mayor who hired many women in city government. Lewana Shearer, the head of Lafayette's city-parish risk management and insurance division, was hired in the Bowen municipal administration in 1979. She started as a claims investigator and worked her way through the ranks to risk manager. She considers the Lastrapes administration to have been "the best years of my career because he gave women the opportunity to shine."
Lastrapes was not, however, the first Republican mayor in Louisiana. Smaller towns like Zachary in East Baton Rouge Parish (Jack Breaux 1926-1980), Minden in Webster Parish (Tom Colten 1922-2004), and Haughton in Bossier Parish (Elizabeth O. Sherwin, born 1918) elected Republican mayors earlier. Alexandria had a Republican mayor by defection from 1972–1973, when Charles Edward "Ed" Karst switched parties in the last years of his single term. Karst did not remain Republican, however, as he later returned to the Democrats to seek a judicial position in Rapides Parish in 1978.
A Republican, Lester Joseph "Joey" Durel, Jr., reclaimed for his party the combined mayor/presidency of the City of Lafayette and Lafayette Parish in the 2003 jungle primary.
Lastrapes as party chairman
Lastrapes was the second Lafayette Republican to serve as state party chairman in twenty years. Charles deGravelles had held the post from 1968–1972, during a difficult period for the Louisiana GOP.
As chairman, Lastrapes was also at the helm when Louisiana Republicans were in a downcast mood after the return of Governor Edwin Washington Edwards to a fourth and final term as well as the first election of Bill Clinton as president. The Louisiana party held a convention in New Orleans in 1993, which was keynoted by former New York Congressman and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack French Kemp. (The 1988 national convention had also met in New Orleans.) Lastrapes had supported Kemp for the 1988 nomination. Kemp's failure to become a serious contender was perhaps Lastrapes' greatest personal political disappointment.
Thereafter, Lastrapes worked to elect Vice PresidentGeorge Herbert Walker Bush as president, and he became a personal friend of the president. Bush carried Louisiana in the 1988 race, but not in 1992. In 1994, the GOP won control of both houses of Congress, and the mechanism was set in place to win the 1995 gubernatorial race to succeed Edwards. Then came a bitter GOP disappointment in the U.S. Senate race in 1996. The Lafayette Parish GOP rebounded to win the mayor-presidency race in 2003.
Lastrapes attended three Republican national conventions as a delegate pledged to Reagan: 1976 in Kansas City, 1980 in Detroit, and 1984 in Dallas. He also attended the 1992 conclave in Houston briefly as an observer.
One of Lastrapes' cousins through their common grandfather, Dr. William Robertson Lastrapes, Sr. (1869-1951),[1] was Edward Taylor Lewis "Ned" Borie, Sr. (1927-2013), a chemical engineer in Baton Rouge.[3] Borie was involved in grass roots Republican activities in East Baton Rouge Parish and was a delegate to the 1964 Republican National Convention[4] in San Francisco, which nominated the Goldwater-Miller ticket. He died of head injuries sustained in a fall while on a family vacation in Italy.[3]
Years after leaving the mayor's position, Lastrapes was asked to give his take on why Republicanism took root in Acadiana. Here is his verbatim reply:
"Well, the oil industry brought in a lot of people. You know, this was not as homogenized, if you can say it that way, a group of people, or citizens, where it once was maybe 90 percent Cajun, 90 percent Catholic. A lot of that changed when the oil industry developed so strongly beginning in the fifties and people from Texas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, California, whatever, came into the state, many of them still here, and they became a pretty nice blend of oil industry and local Cajuns. And many married locally and so on. So you've had that blend over the years, and I think some influence came into play too, not that we don't have some conservative Cajuns; we do, a fair number, but the influence of a lot of the oil people coming from these states. It was mostly a conservative influence that had a little play on the flavor of politics locally, and still does to this day. I would say most, somebody would maybe challenge me, but I would say most of the people in the oil industry tend to be on the conservative side of politics and today mostly on the Republican side of politics."
Richard Hugh Baker is an American politician and lobbyist. He served as a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1987 to 2008, representing the 6th District of Louisiana as a Republican.
Louis Elwood Jenkins, Jr., known as Woody Jenkins, is a newspaper editor in Baton Rouge and Central City, Louisiana, who served as a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives from 1972 to 2000 and waged three unsuccessful races for the United States Senate in 1978, 1980, and 1996.
Melvin Lee Holden, known as Kip Holden, is an American politician who served from 2005 to 2016 as the Democratic Mayor-President of Baton Rouge and East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, USA. The parish includes the state capital of Baton Rouge and smaller suburban cities such as Baker, Central City, and Zachary.
Paul Jude Hardy is an American attorney from Baton Rouge, in the U.S. state of Louisiana, who was the first Republican to have been elected lieutenant governor of the U.S. state of Louisiana since Reconstruction. He served in the second-ranking post under Governor Buddy Roemer from 1988 to 1992.
Louisiana's 3rd congressional district is a congressional district in the U.S. state of Louisiana. The district covers the southwestern and south central portion of the state, ranging from the Texas border to the Atchafalaya River.
Kenneth Francis "Kenny" Bowen, Sr., was a three-term Democratic mayor of Lafayette, Louisiana, the fourth largest city in the state, according to the 2000 census. His tenure, which some assessed as distinguished and others as a failure, extended from 1972–1980 and again from 1992-1996.
Louis Joseph Lambert Jr., is a Louisiana attorney, businessman, and politician. He served as a former member and chairman of the Louisiana Public Service Commission, and was elected to the Louisiana State Senate, serving one term 1972-1974, and again from 1994 to 2004.
Edgar Gonzague "Sonny" Mouton Jr. was an attorney from Lafayette, Louisiana, who was a Democratic member of the Louisiana House of Representatives from 1964 to 1966 and the Louisiana State Senate from 1966 to 1980. He ran unsuccessfully for governor in the 1979 nonpartisan blanket primary.
James R. Domengeaux, known as Jimmy Domengeaux, was a lawyer from Lafayette, Louisiana, who served in the United States House of Representatives for Louisiana's 3rd congressional district from 1941 to 1949. He was a Cajun cultural activist who is best remembered for his efforts to preserve the French language in his native state.
J. Lomax Jordan, Jr., known as Max Jordan, is an attorney from Lafayette, Louisiana, who served as a Republican in the Louisiana State Senate from 1992 to 2000. He was unseated for the District 23 position, which encompassed portions of Lafayette and Acadia parishes, in the 1999 nonpartisan blanket primary by then State Representative Michael J. Michot, also a Republican.
Samuel Bernard Nunez Jr.,, was a Louisiana politician and businessman from Chalmette, the seat of St. Bernard Parish in the New Orleans suburbs.
Charles Camille deGravelles Jr., known as Charlie deGravelles, was a Lafayette oil and gas landman who was a pioneer in the development of the Republican Party in the formerly historically Democratic state of Louisiana. Known as the "Mr. Republican of Acadiana", deGravelles and his wife, the former Mary Virginia Wheadon, held leadership positions in the GOP from 1968 to 1972 and from 1964 to 1968, respectively. DeGravelles was the party chairman, and Mrs. deGravelles was national committeewoman. When deGravelles assumed the chairmanship, the Louisiana GOP had only 28,427 registered members, barely 2 percent of the state's voters. For a brief time in 1968, both deGravelleses were members of the Republican National Committee, a husband-wife combination that has not since repeated itself.
Robert John Angers, Jr., was an American journalist, businessman, and conservative politician. A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography describes Angers as "a tireless and unselfish promoter of good government, the Acadiana region, and free enterprise."
William Harold Nungesser, is an American politician serving since January 11, 2016, as the 54th Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana.
Roger Francis Villere, Jr. is an American businessman from Metairie in Jefferson Parish in suburban New Orleans, who was the former chairman of the Louisiana Republican Party, a post he filled from March 2004 to February 2018 at the behest of the GOP State Central Committee. He was succeeded by New Orleans businessman Louis Gurvich in February 2018, when Villere did not seek reelection as the party chairman. At the time of his retirement, he was the longest serving state Republican Party chairman in the United States. He succeeded Pat Brister of St. Tammany Parish, the first woman to have been the state GOP chairman, who served from 2000 to 2004.
Michael Aduron "Mike" Cross was an American businessman and lobbyist who served from 1981 to 1996 as a Democratic member of the Louisiana State Senate from District 13 in Greater Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Prior to his legislative service, Cross was from 1976 to 1981 the mayor of Baker in suburban East Baton Rouge Parish. After his senatorial service ended, Cross was a lobbyist for CLECO Electric and the Louisiana Municipal Association.
Daniel Guin Kyle, known as Dan Kyle, is a businessman from Baton Rouge Louisiana, who served as his state's legislative auditor from 1989–2003, when he stepped down to run unsuccessfully for insurance commissioner. An active Republican, Kyle uncovered many instances of misappropriations in state and local governments during his fifteen years as auditor. He planned to run for governor in 2003, but he switched to the insurance commissioner race, when another Republican candidate for that office, Tony Perkins, a state representative from East Baton Rouge Parish, abandoned the campaign to become president of the Family Research Council.
Michael Paul Huval, known as Mike "Pete" Huval, is an insurance agent from Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, who is a Republican member of the Louisiana House of Representatives for District 47 in St. Martin Parish.
Elbert Lee Guillory is a former member of the Louisiana State Senate. An American Republican, he represented District 24, including his native Opelousas, and several rural precincts, from May 2, 2009, when he won a special election, until January 11, 2016, when his full term to which he was elected in 2011 ended.
Joseph J. Bouie Jr. is a Democratic member of the Louisiana House of Representatives for District 97 in Orleans Parish, Louisiana. He was unopposed in a special election to the seat in 2014 to replace fellow Democrat Jared Brossett, who was elected on February 1, 2014, to the District D position on the New Orleans City Council.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
