David C. Treen
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David Conner Treen, Sr., was the first Republican governor of the U.S. state of Louisiana since Reconstruction. A narrow victor in the general election held in the fall of 1979, Treen served as governor from 1980 to 1984. He lost his bid for reelection in 1983 to his long-time rival, Democrat Edwin Washington Edwards.
Treen was born in Baton Rouge on July 16, 1928. He graduated from Fortier High School in New Orleans in 1945. He earned a bachelor's degree in history and political science from Tulane University in New Orleans in 1948. In 1950, he graduated from Tulane Law School. In 1951, he wed the former Dolores Brisbi, a graduate of Newcomb College in New Orleans. He served in the U.S. Air Force from 1951-1952.
States' Rights Party elector candidate, 1960
In 1960, Treen opposed the election of both Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy as president and ran as an elector for the Louisiana States' Rights Party, which supported Virginia Democratic Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr. In addition to Treen, the States' Rights electors included former State Senator William M. Rainach of Summerfield (a defeated 1959 gubernatorial candidate) and Plaquemines Parish Judge Leander H. Perez, who was excommunicated from the Catholic Church because of his outspoken opposition to racial integration. Treen the next year attacked the National States' Rights Party, a group considered neo-Nazi, and said that the Louisiana group was in no way connected to the national organization, which was "a disgrace to the term 'states rights.'" Treen's elector slate polled 169,572 ballots (21 percent) statewide. Jefferson Parish, Treen's residence, which would later support him in most of his campaigns, rejected the States' Righters and instead supported Kennedy with 51.8 percent. Nixon and Lodge electors received 230,980 (28.6 percent) in Louisiana, and Kennedy and Johnson won the state's ten electoral votes with 407,339 (50.4 percent). One of the Kennedy electors was popular State Attorney General Jack P.F. Gremillion, who would fall to personal scandal a dozen years later. Another was Edmund Reggie of Crowley, a confidant to future Governor Edwin Edwards and later a father-in-law of Democratic Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts.
Republican for Congress, 1962, 1964, and 1968
Treen joined the fledgling Republican Party in 1962 to run for Congress against the entrenched Second District Democrat Hale Boggs, Sr., of New Orleans though Treen's father, Paul Treen, had urged him instead to challenge Boggs for renomination in the Democratic primary. Treen launched an $11,000 low-budget campaign against Boggs. He polled 27,791 votes (32.8 percent) to Boggs' 57,395 (67.2 percent). Two years later, Treen again challenged Boggs and improved considerably on his earlier showing, helped by the popularity in Louisiana of the presidential candidacy of Senator Barry M. Goldwater. In that campaign, Treen polled 62,881 (45 percent) to Boggs' 77,009 (55 percent).
In 1966, Treen did not run for Congress; the GOP fielded the attorney Leonard L. Limes of New Orleans, who was badly defeated by Boggs. So, Treen tried again in 1968 -- his third and final campaign against Boggs, then the House majority whip. Boggs became majority leader in 1971 and was in line for Speaker. California Governor Ronald W. Reagan came into the district to campaign for Treen. Once again, though Treen improved on his showing, he was still short of victory. Treen received 77,633 votes (48.8 percent) to Boggs' 81,537 ballots (51.2 percent). Treen attributed Boggs' victory to the supporters of former Alabama Governor George C. Wallace, who ran for president on the American Independent Party ticket.
Treen said that Wallace supporters "became very cool to my candidacy. We couldn't really believe they would support Boggs, but several Democratic organizations did come out for Wallace and Boggs, and he received just enough Wallace votes to give him the election." Republican officials seemed convinced that fraudulent votes in some Orleans Parish precincts benefited Boggs and that Treen may have actually won the election. There were rumors of election officials who cast votes for people who did not show up at the polls and signed for them in the precinct registers. Treen did not contest the election because he believed that a challenge before the majority-Democratic House would be futile.
First gubernatorial campaign, 1971-1972
Treen first ran for governor in the 1971 Republican primary. He defeated a minor opponent, Robert M. Ross, a businessman from tiny Mangham in Richland Parish in north Louisiana. For the general election against Edwin Edwards, Treen campaigned vigorously with billboards which said, "Make a Real Change," and television spots too, but he still lost. He polled 480,424 ballots (42.8 percent) to Edwards's 641,146 (57.2 percent) Treen carried 27 parishes, mostly in the north, with margins exceeding 60 percent in ten of those parishes. His tally was some 5 percentage points higher than Charlton Lyons had scored in 1964 against John McKeithen. The confident and charismatic Edwards proclaimed that his administration would be an "Era of Excellence."
The Shreveport Times and the defunct Monroe Morning World analyzed the gubernatorial returns and concluded that Edwards received 202,055 black votes to only 10,709 for Treen. In that Edwards' statewide margin was 160,000, the survey concluded that blacks made the difference. The newspapers said that Treen received some 30,000 more votes from whites than did Edwards.
Election to Congress, November 1972
Based on momentum from his gubernatorial race, Treen ran in 1972 for the open Third District House seat vacated by conservative Democrat Patrick T. Caffery of Lafayette. He was a surprise winner, helped in part by the popularity of the Nixon-Agnew ticket, which carried 63 of the 64 parishes (exception: West Feliciana Parish) in traditionally Democratic Louisiana. Treen defeated Democrat J. Louis Watkins, Jr., of Houma, 71,090 (54 percent) to 60,521 (46 percent). His home parish of Jefferson helped to push Treen over the top with a 73 percent share of the vote.
Treen served in the congressional seat from 1973 until 1980, when he resigned to become governor. As a congressman, he voted right-of-center and usually in accord with his party. He was considered a team player among House Republicans. In 1974, Treen won a comfortable reelection in a nationally Democratic year. He defeated State Representative Charles Grisbaum, who became a close friend. Grisbaum later switched parties, and when Treen became governor in 1980, Grisbaum served as one of Treen's floor leaders in the Louisiana House. In 1976, Treen polled 73.3 percent in a race against a weak Democratic opponent even though Jimmy Carter easily carried Louisiana over Gerald R. Ford.
Election as governor, 1979
In 1979, Treen filed for the jungle primary for governor. He finished with 297,469 votes (34.6) percent, almost the exact numbers posted by Charlton Lyons in 1964. The second spot was hotly contested between Public Service Commissoner Louis Lambert of Baton Rouge (282,708, or 32.8 percent) and outgoing Lieutenant Governor James E. "Jimmy" Fitzmorris, Jr., of New Orleans (280,412, or 32.67 percent. In the Treen-Lambert general election, the defeated Democratic candidates, including the disappointed Fitzmorris, House Speaker E.L. "Bubba" Henry of Jonesboro, and State Senators Paul J. Hardy of St. Martinville and Edgar (Sonny) Mouton of Lafayette, all endorsed Treen. Their support helped him to defeat Lambert but only by 9,557 votes. Treen received 690,691 (50.3 percent) to Lambert's 681,134 (49.7 percent). He won only 22 parishes in victory, compared to 27 parishes in defeat in 1972. Only ten parishes that had voted for Treen in 1972 stuck with him in 1979. His strongest parishes in victory were all in south Louisiana, Plaquemines, Lafayette, St. Tammany, and Iberia. In the losing 1972 campaign, all of Treen's strong parishes were in north Louisiana. The election of 1979 seemed to indicate that Lafayette would in time replace Shreveport as the new growth center of the Louisiana GOP. Treen's victory came from Republican inroads made in the Edwards stronghold of Acadiana, particularly Lafayette, Iberia, Terrebonne, Acadia, and St. Martin parishes, where the GOP nominee overcame large deficits from 1972 to win in 1979. Treen received only 3.1 percent of the black vote in victory, nearly identical to his black support in 1972 in defeat.
Accomplishments as governor
A few hallmarks of the Treen administration were the creation of the Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts, a statewide high school in Natchitoches for the gifted, the establishment of the Department of Environmental Quality, and the appointment of more minorities to state positions.
Treen obtained legislative passage of his "Professional Improvement Program" (or PIPs) for public school teachers, but the program was dropped in the next Edwards administration. PIPs allowed instructors to obtain small pay increases for taking college-level courses and/or attending intensive workshops to improve teaching performance. Problems developed when numerous teachers signed up only for classes with few academic requirements and shunned the more rigorous courses. Such action thereby negated the purpose of Treen's reform. Treen faced a heavily Democratic legislature, which many felt was taking orders from Edwards, sitting on the sidelines and waiting to run again in 1983.
Facing Edwin Edwards again, 1983
Treen and Edwards were known as fierce rivals. During the 1983 election, Edwards remarked that Treen is so slow that "it takes him an hour and a half to watch 60 Minutes." Similarly, when asked for a scenario in which he could lose to Treen, Edwards replied nonchalantly, "If I'm caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy."
Treen ran for reelection in 1983 but lost to Edwin Edwards, who secured the third of his four terms as governor. In that 1983 race, Treen won only a handful of parishes, including rural La Salle Parish in north Louisiana, which supported him in all three of his gubernatorial bids. Treen received 586,643 (36.3 percent) to Edwards' 1,008,282 (62.4 percent). Another 1.3 percent was cast for minor candidates. He polled some 104,000 fewer votes in losing in 1983 than he had in winning in 1979. Edwards polled more than 400,000 votes beyond what Louis Lambert received four years earlier.
Court appointment that never materialized
After his defeat for governor, President Reagan nominated Treen for a seat on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, but the appointment was blocked by Democratic senators. Earlier, Treen had been proposed as a judicial nominee to President Nixon, but Nixon never sent up his nomination to the Senate. Many had long believed that Treen's temperament and talents were more suited to that of a judgeship than as an administrator or a legislator.
Treen endorses Edwards, 1991
In 1991, despite their differences, Treen endorsed Edwards' bid for a fourth term because the Republican choice in the state's jungle primary fell on former Ku Klux Klansman and State Representative David Duke, a perennial candidate who was troublesome to the GOP and the business community. Though Duke claimed to have ended his ties to the KKK, there was lingering suspicion that he was still in contact with neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic, and other radical elements.
Comeback attempt fails by 1,812 votes
In 1999, Treen attempted a political comeback, running for the U.S. House seat being vacated by Rep. Bob Livingston, who left Congress in a sex scandal amid the House vote on the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. This was the eighth election that Treen's name appeared on a Louisiana ballot for Congress. In the special election with David Duke, also trying to score a comeback, and Republican State Representative David Vitter, Treen finished first with 36,719 votes (25 percent) to Vitter's 31,741 (22 percent) and Duke's 28,055 (19 percent). (Six other candidates shared the remaining 33 percent of the votes cast.) In the low-turnout special election runoff, Vitter defeated Treen, 61,661 ballots (51 percent) to 59,849 (49 percent), a margin of 1,812 votes.
Duke ironically endorsed Treen over Vitter, perhaps to get back at Treen, hoping to defeat him, because Treen had supported Edwards against Duke in 1991. Vitter ultimately won the seat. In 2005, Vitter left the House to become the first Republican to be elected to the U.S. Senate from Louisiana since Reconstruction. It was as if David Treen had passed the GOP baton to the new generation guided by Vitter, who had not yet been born when Treen first appeared on a Louisiana ballot as a States' Rights Party presidential elector, much as Charlton Lyons had passed the baton to Treen in 1972.
Treen in retirement
At 75, Treen declared that he would run for governor again in the 2003 election, but the party leadership coalesced behind young Bobby Jindal, who was born the year that Treen announced his first candidacy for governor. Treen withdrew from the pre-primary race and worked for Jindal's election. His last campaign consisted of his driving to candidate forums to present his views on state issues.
Ultimately, Jindal lost the general election to Democratic Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Lafayette. A year later, Jindal filled the House seat that Vitter vacated to become senator, the same seat that Treen had lost in his last campaign for elective office. Reports continue to surface that Jindal may run for governor again in 2007.
Treen's old rival and reluctant ally, Edwin Edwards, meanwhile, went to prison for racketeering connected with his fourth gubernatorial term, the one that Treen had reluctantly blessed in preference to his greater nemesis, David Duke.
Treen lives in Mandeville, in St. Tammany Parish with his wife "Dodie," whom Treen met while he was attending Tulane. The couple has three grown children, including Dr. David C. Treen, Jr., a 1984 graduate of the Tulane Medical School who practices in Jefferson Parish.
In 1997, Treen was inducted into the Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame in Winnfield.
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http://www.jfk-online.com/jpsgwnol.html
Grover Rees III, Dave Treen of Louisiana, (Baton Rouge: Moran Publishing, 1979).
Billy Hathorn, "The Republican Party in Louisiana, 1920-1980," Northwestern State University at Natchitoches, thesis (1980)
http://www.cityofwinnfield.com/museum.html http://www.mcl.tulane.edu/news/Tulane_Medicine/Spring99/philanthropy.html