Robert Townley "Bob" Mann, Jr. | |
|---|---|
| Born | September 2, 1958 |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | University of Louisiana at Monroe California State University, Dominguez Hills |
| Occupation | Louisiana State University professor Journalist, Political historian |
| Years active | 1980- |
| Political party | Democrat |
| Spouse(s) | Cynthia Ann "Cindy" Horaist Mann |
| Children | Robert T. Mann, III Avery Frances Mann |
| Website | https://becomingronaldreagan.com/ |
Robert Townley Mann, Jr., also known as Bob Mann (born September 2, 1958), is a professor and holds the Manship Chair in Journalism at the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He served as communications director to Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco. He was a political columnist for The New Orleans Times-Picayune .
He joined the Louisiana Governor’s staff in 2004 after serving 17 years as state director and press secretary to U.S. Senator John Breaux of Louisiana. [1]
Before his service on Breaux’s staff, he was press secretary to U.S. Senator Russell Long of Louisiana. He was also press secretary for the 1990 re-election campaign of U.S. Senator J. Bennett Johnston of Louisiana, and communications director for the 2003 Blanco campaign. In 2015, he was inducted into the Louisiana Political Hall of Fame.
Mann is the son of Robert Mann, Sr. (1924-2008), a native of Beaumont, Texas, and the former Charlene Elizabeth Wellhausen (born c. 1934). The senior Mann died in Fredericksburg, Virginia, the place of residence of their son, Paul Edward Mann. Bob Mann, who was also born in Beaumont, has a sister, Sarah Elizabeth Luker of Seabrook, near Houston, Texas. The senior Mann was a veteran of the United States Coast Guard during World War II and was employed by Sun Oil Company and was for more than two decades a Church of Christ minister in Texas, Louisiana, and New Mexico. [2]
Mann is married to the former Cynthia Ann "Cindy" Horaist (born June 1961), the executive director of the Louisiana Prison Chapel Foundation, which in 2013 sponsored the drama, The Life of Jesus Christ, performed by inmates at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola. [3] The couple has two children.
Mann attended the University of Louisiana at Monroe, where Dave Norris was his economics professor; since 1978, Norris has been the mayor of West Monroe. Mann worked for the Monroe News-Star , [4] where he was assigned to cover the West Monroe City Hall. He left in 1983 to work as political writer for the since-defunct Shreveport Journal in Shreveport, Louisiana. [5] Mann received his graduate degree from California State University, Dominguez Hills.
An active Democrat, [6] Mann joined the staff of U.S. Senator Russell B. Long of Louisiana late in Long's lengthy tenure in office. He continued as press secretary (and later as state director) under Long's successor, John Breaux, another Democrat. In 1990, he was press secretary for the final reelection of U.S. Senator J. Bennett Johnston, Jr., who defeated the former Ku Klux Klansman David Duke, then a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives. In 2003, Mann was communications director for Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, the Lafayette Democrat and lieutenant governor who defeated Republican Bobby Jindal for governor of Louisiana but bowed out after one term, only to be succeeded in 2008 by Jindal. [4]
Mann continued to work in the Blanco administration until 2006, when he joined LSU, from which forum he writes and speaks extensively on political topics. In addition to the Manship Chair, he was from 2011 to 2013 the director of the LSU Reilly Center for Media and Public Affairs. [7] At the centennial observance of the LSU School of Journalism, Mann reflected on the heritage of his institution: "We've gone from being a journalism school, to being a multi-dimensional mass communication school, to being all that, plus finding a way to teach practical politics to our students. I believe we are unique in that regard, and it really gives us a leg up in recruiting." [8]
Mann's often-cited blog is called "Something Like the Truth: Robert Mann on Politics, Louisiana, and Life". [4] He is highly critical of the Jindal administration, having in 2013 criticized the governor's position on health care and education. He also scolds Louisiana's Republican U.S. Senator David Vitter. [9]
One of Mann's recent books, Daisy Petals and Mushroom Clouds: LBJ, Barry Goldwater and the Ad that Changed American Politics, according to The Washington Post , is one of the best political books of 2011. His other books include:
In February 2014, Mann, along with several other political figures, including John S. Hunt, II, a cousin of Senator Russell Long, and Senator Long's mother, Rose McConnell Long, were inducted into the Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame in Winnfield. [7]
Russell Billiu Long was an American Democratic politician and United States Senator from Louisiana from 1948 until 1987, and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee for fifteen years from 1966 to 1981. The son of Louisiana governor and U.S. senator Huey Long, Russell Long served during the administrations of eight U.S. presidents from Truman to Reagan. According to biographer Bob Mann, "Russell became a leading voice for the plight of the elderly, the disabled, the working poor and the middle class." Long quietly wielded enormous power in the Senate and in 1980 was voted the most effective chairman and most effective debater by his colleagues in a US News and World Report survey. The Wall Street Journal once called him "the fourth branch of government."
John Berlinger Breaux is an American attorney and retired politician who was a member of the United States Senate from Louisiana from 1987 until 2005. He was also a member of the US House of Representatives from 1972 to 1987. He was considered one of the more conservative national legislators from the Democratic Party. Breaux was a member of the New Democrat Coalition. After his congressional tenure, he became a lobbyist, co-founding the Breaux-Lott Leadership Group. The firm was later acquired by law and lobbying firm Patton Boggs, now Squire Patton Boggs.
Piyush "Bobby" Jindal is an American politician who served as the 55th Governor of Louisiana from 2008 to 2016. Jindal previously served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and Chairman of the Republican Governors Association.
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.
William Henson Moore III is a retired American attorney and businessman who is a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives, having represented Louisiana's 6th congressional district, based about Baton Rouge, from 1975 to 1987. He was only the second Republican to have represented Louisiana in the House since Reconstruction, the first having been David C. Treen, then of Jefferson Parish.
The 2003 Louisiana gubernatorial election was held on November 15, 2003 to elect the Governor of Louisiana. Incumbent Republican Governor Mike Foster was not eligible to run for re-election to a third term because of term limits established by the Louisiana Constitution.
The 2007 Louisiana gubernatorial election was held on October 20. The filing deadline for candidates was September 6. On the day of the election, all 12 candidates competed in an open jungle primary. With all precincts reporting, Bobby Jindal won the election with 54%.
Major General Huntington Blair Downer, Jr., known as Hunt Downer, is a Republican politician in the U.S. state of Louisiana who is the former assistant adjutant general of the state National Guard and the first ever director of the Louisiana Veterans Affairs Department.
John Georges born October 16, 1960 is an American businessman from New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who formerly served on the Louisiana Board of Regents, the body which supervises higher education in his native state.
The News-Star is the principal newspaper of Monroe and northeastern Louisiana. Its circulation area ranges over some dozen parishes from Ruston, the seat of Lincoln Parish, on the west, to Tallulah in Madison Parish on the east, to the Arkansas state line on the north, and to Ferriday in Concordia Parish on the south. The newspaper is a Gannett publication.
Samuel Bernard Nunez Jr.,, was a Louisiana politician and businessman from Chalmette, the seat of St. Bernard Parish in the New Orleans suburbs.
John James Maginnis was a writer of columns and commentaries on current political events in his native Louisiana. Maginnis' column, always the most current analysis of a political event in Louisiana, appeared in newspapers and other sources statewide. His website is read by political analysts nationwide as a barometer of governmental trends and events in Louisiana.
Sean Eugene Reilly is the chief executive officer of Lamar Advertising Company in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and a former member of the Louisiana House of Representatives.
Scott Anthony Angelle is an American politician who is the current 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.
The Forum on Media Diversity was founded by the Manship School of Mass Communication and the Reilly Center for Media & Public Affairs at Louisiana State University in 2001 to provide information about diversity in the academic and professional realms of mass media, journalism and mass communication. It is a forum offering a research database that includes bibliographic information on more than 3,000 academic and professional journal articles, books and conference papers on diversity issues, focusing on media, journalism and mass communication in both national and international contexts. Its purpose is to help researchers to locate contemporary research and sources on media diversity. It is headed by Ralph Izard, Interim Dean of Manship School of Mass Communication, and Adrienne Moore, director of the Reilly Center for Media & Public Affairs.
The Shreveport Journal was an American newspaper originally published by H. P. Benton in Shreveport and Bossier City in northwestern Louisiana. In operation from at least 1897, it ceased publication in 1991.
Russell Barrow Peacock is the current Republican state senator for District 37 in northwestern Louisiana. He began his second term on January 11, 2016.
Raymond D. Strother is a nationally known Democratic political consultant, originally from Port Arthur, Texas.
Dave Noel Norris, Sr., is the former Democratic mayor of his native West Monroe, Louisiana, a position which he held from 1978 to 2018 with minimal opposition. Norris was unopposed for a tenth and final term as mayor in the election held on April 5, 2014.
Jesse Dale Thorn, usually known as Dale Thorn or as J. Dale Thorn, was a journalist and professor at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who was the first press secretary during the 1970s to then Governor Edwin Edwards, a Democrat.
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