Elbert Lee Guillory (born June 24,1944)[1] 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.[2]
Guillory's Senate district was previously briefly represented by the DemocratDon Cravins,Jr. It encompasses most of St. Landry Parish and a northern part of adjacent Lafayette Parish.[3] Guillory defeated Patricia "Pat" Arceneaux Cravins (born 1947) of Arnaudville,the mother of Don Cravins,Jr.,in the special state Senate runoff election held on May 2,2009,7,906 votes (62.5 percent) to 4,746 (37.5 percent).[4]
Guillory previously served from 2006 to 2009 as state representative for District 40. In that position he had also succeeded the Democrat Don Cravins,Jr.,whose father,Don,Sr.,was also a former state senator and a mayor of Opelousas.[2][5]
Background
Guillory was reared in a divorced family in St. Landry Parish.
"My parents lived seven miles from each other on the same road. They were both always part of my life,but they could never live together. They were opposites."[6]
His Roman Catholic father,Ozema Ledee (28 February 1903 - 4 January 2005),[7] was an entrepreneur and an adventurer who flew his own plane,a rarity for a black man in the 1950s. He was also a bootlegger. Guillory's mother,Frances,was a strict Baptist who forbade alcohol and cursing in her home. She worked as a teacher and school principal.[6]
Born and raised in Opelousas,a small farming community in Louisiana,Elbert L. Guillory still resides there today. His law office sits on the same land where his ancestors once toiled as slaves. He has faced adversity from a young age,including his first arrest for reading books at a “Whites Only”library. Driven by these experiences,he joined the Navy to find a sense of freedom and equality. After serving in the Navy and graduating from Norfolk University,Guillory pursued a career in civil rights law at Rutgers Law School.[8]
Party affiliation
Up until 2007,Guillory had been a registered Republican[9] and served on the Louisiana Republican state central committee.[10] He became a Democrat in 2007 when he first ran for the state House in the heavily Democratic District 40.[10][11][12] During the 2013 regular session of the Louisiana Legislature,Guillory switched his party affiliation back to Republican.[13] Officially,Guillory's party-switch occurred on May 31,when he was presented with the Frederick Douglass Award from the @Large Society.
Before Guillory's switch,the last Republican of African-American ethnicity in the Louisiana Senate had served during the Reconstruction era.[14] In accepting the award,Guillory compared himself to 19th-century abolitionistFrederick Douglass,a Republican who had supported Abraham Lincoln.[15]
Guillory's conservative political philosophy was indicated in his pre-2007 membership in the Republican Party,according to the Daily Kos,[16] Guillory explained his 2013 party switch in a 4-minute 17-second video widely circulated in state and national media outlets,including the radio programs of Rush Limbaugh,Sean Hannity,and Moon Griffon as well as by Neil Cavuto on Fox News. The video was viewed on YouTube within the first three days by nearly 500,000. Filmed in the rear of the Senate chamber,the video calls the Democrats "the party of Jim Crow" and depicts "the party of freedom and progress" as the Republicans. Guillory called his switch "not only right for me,but for all of my brothers and sisters in the black community" as he left the Democrats for the Republicans.[17]
Soon after re-joining the Republican Party,Guillory founded the Free at Last PAC,a political action committee dedicated to electing black conservatives to office.
Louisiana Science Education Act
Guillory spoke in a hearing about the Louisiana Science Education Act,a law concerning religion and science in public schools. Guillory argued to keep the law on the books because of an experience he had with a witch doctor—who “wore no shoes,was semi-clothed,used a lot of bones that he threw around”.[18]
Within days of Guillory's change of parties, Jim Shannon of KLTV-TV speculated that Guillory would become a candidate for lieutenant governor in the 2015 state elections, when Jay Dardenne stepped down to run unsuccessfully against Democrat John Bel Edwards and fellow Republican U.S. SenatorDavid Vitter for the governorship vacated by the term-limitedBobby Jindal.[21] In the runoff on November 21, 2015, Edwards won the election over David Vitter with 56.1% of the vote, becoming the first Democratic governor elected in the Deep South since the end of Kathleen Blanco's term in 2008.[22]
Guillory ran last in the October 24 four-candidate primary, having finished with 85,460 votes (7.9 percent). Holden with 360,679 votes (33.3 percent) and Nungesser, who polled 324,654 (30 percent), meet in the November 21 runoff election. John Young ran a strong third with 313,183 votes (28.9 percent).[23] In the 2015 general election Nungesser prevailed, 628,864 votes (55.38 percent) to Holden's 506,578 (44.62 percent).[24] Edwards and Nungesser, of opposite parties, assumed office on January 11, 2016.
Elbert Guillory is the brother-in-law of the late Jane Nora "Genore" Guillory (1958–2000), who was brutally murdered in East Feliciana Parish. Senator Guillory and his daughter, Imani Malique Guillory, were interviewed in Investigation Discovery's 2013 Southern Fried Homicide documentary on the murder. Four of Genore's neighbors were convicted in her death.[27]
↑ For facts of the murder see Hustmyre, Chuck (2013-07-31). "The brutal murder of Genore Guillory". Crime library: Criminal minds & methods. Archived from the original on 2012-12-10. Retrieved 2013-07-31. Convicted in 2005 were Phillip Skipper, Johnny Hoyt, Lisa Skipper Hoyt, and John Baillio.
St. Landry Parish is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2020 Census, the population was 82,540. The parish seat is Opelousas. The parish was established in 1807.
Christopher Charles John is an American politician and lobbyist who from 1997 to 2005 served as a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives for Louisiana's 7th congressional district, since disbanded and merged into the 3rd district.
James Alison Hayes is an American politician and lawyer. He is a Republican from Louisiana.
Charles William Boustany Jr. is an American politician, physician, and former congressman from Lafayette, Louisiana, who served as the U.S. representative from Louisiana's 3rd congressional district from 2005 to 2017. He is a member of the Republican Party.
Melvin Lee "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. The parish includes the state capital of Baton Rouge and smaller suburban cities such as Baker, Central City, and Zachary.
The Republican Party of Louisiana(LAGOP) (French: Parti républicain de Louisiane, Spanish: Partido Republicano de Luisiana) is the affiliate of the Republican Party in the U.S. state of Louisiana. Its chair is Louis Gurvich, who was elected in 2018. It is currently the dominant party in the state, controlling all but one of Louisiana's six U.S. House seats, both U.S. Senate seats, all statewide executive offices, and both houses of the state legislature.
Donald R. Cravins Jr., is an American attorney and politician serving as the under secretary of commerce for minority business development. He previously served as a member of the Louisiana State Legislature from 2004 to 2009. From April 2021 to August 2022, he was the executive vice president and COO of the National Urban League.
The 2004 United States Senate election in Louisiana was held on November 2, 2004. Incumbent Democratic Senator John Breaux decided to retire after three terms in office. Republican Representative David Vitter won the open seat with 51% of the primary vote and avoided a runoff, which would be scheduled on December 4, becoming the first Louisiana Republican elected to the U.S. Senate since 1876, and the first ever to be popularly elected. This election was the first time ever that a Republican won a full term to this Senate seat in Louisiana.
The 2002 United States Senate election in Louisiana was held on November 5, 2002. Incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu won re-election to a second term, although she did not earn 50% of the vote in the first round and was therefore forced into a runoff election with Republican Suzanne Haik Terrell, the Louisiana Elections Commissioner.
Willie Landry Mount is an American politician from Louisiana who served as a Democratic member of the Louisiana State Senate from 2000 to 2012. She represented District 27, which includes parts of her native Lake Charles and the surrounding cities of Sulphur and Westlake. From 1993 to 1999, Mount was the first woman to serve as the mayor of Lake Charles.
William Harold Nungesser is an American politician serving as the 54th lieutenant governor of Louisiana since 2016. A member of the Republican Party, Nungesser is also the former president of the Plaquemines Parish Commission, having been re-elected to a second four-year term in the 2010 general election in which he topped two opponents with more than 71 percent of the vote. His second term as parish president began on January 1, 2011, and ended four years later.
Scott Anthony Angelle is an American politician who is the former director of the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement in Washington, D.C. From 2013 to 2017, he was the District 2 member of the Louisiana Public Service Commission, an elected five-person utility regulatory body.
Fred Henry Mills, Jr., is an American pharmacist, banker, and politician from Parks, Louisiana who served as a Republican member of the Louisiana State Senate, having won a special election on January 22, 2011. Mills had previously represented District 46 in the Louisiana House of Representatives.
The 2014 United States Senate election in Louisiana was held on November 4, 2014, to elect a member of the United States Senate to represent the State of Louisiana.
The 2015 Louisiana gubernatorial election was held on November 21, 2015, to elect the governor of Louisiana. Incumbent Republican Governor Bobby Jindal was not eligible to run for re-election to a third term because of term limits established by the Louisiana Constitution.
The 2014 United States House of Representatives elections in Louisiana were held on Tuesday, November 4, 2014 to elect the six U.S. representatives from the state of Louisiana, one from each of the state's six congressional districts. The elections coincided with those of other federal and state offices, including the United States Senate.
The 2016 United States Senate election in Louisiana took place on November 8, 2016, to elect a member of the United States Senate to represent the State of Louisiana, concurrently with the 2016 U.S. presidential election, as well as other elections to the United States Senate in other states and elections to the United States House of Representatives and various state and local elections.
The 2015 Louisiana lieutenant gubernatorial election took place on October 24, 2015, to elect the Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana, with a runoff election held on November 21, 2015. Incumbent Republican Lieutenant Governor Jay Dardenne did not run for re-election to a second full term in office. He instead ran for governor. Billy Nungesser won the election defeating Kip Holden, despite a Democratic victory in the gubernatorial election, in which John Bel Edwards defeated David Vitter by a similar margin.
The 2016 United States House of Representatives elections in Louisiana were held on November 8, 2016, to elect the six U.S. representatives from the state of Louisiana, one from each of the state's six congressional districts. The elections coincided with the 2016 U.S. presidential election, as well as other elections to the House of Representatives, elections to the United States Senate and various state and local elections.
Louisiana's 24th State Senate district is one of 39 districts in the Louisiana State Senate. It has been represented by Democrat Gerald Boudreaux since 2016, succeeding Democrat-turned-Republican Elbert Guillory.
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.
