Reggie loved old-style politics
Sun, 11/24/2013 - 12:02am
Jim Bradshaw
Judge Edmund Reggie, who died Nov. 19 at the age of 87, was one of the last of the old-style Louisiana politicians who worked for causes and candidates, but who also just loved to play the game.Politics, and particularly political campaigns, were a high form of recreation and entertainment for them, and he was a master of the art.
In Louisiana, he made his name in the late 1950s when he campaigned for Earl Long in races that involved such other memorable politicians as Bill Dodd, Dudley LeBlanc, Hale Boggs, deLesseps Morrison, Willie Rainach, Jimmie Davis, and lovable losers such as Allen "Black Cat" LaComb.
He later worked in gubernatorial campaigns for John McKeithen and Edwin Edwards, which by then, thanks largely to television, had lost some of the character -- OK, chicanery -- of the old campaigns that had been built around stump speeches from the steps of a courthouse.
Reggie fell out with Uncle Earl when the judge and his political cohort, Alexandria attorney Camille Gravelle, held a secret delegate meeting during the 1956 Democratic National Convention in Chicago while Long was off playing the horses, and helped swing the Louisiana delegation to John F. Kennedy, who was a candidate for the party's vice presidential nomination.
Long's favorite, Estes Kefauver, won the nomination as Adlai Stevenson's running mate, and the relationship between Long and Reggie stayed cool thereafter. However that loss was more than made up for with a warming relationship with JFK and the Kennedy family.
Reggie was a leader in Kennedy's presidential campaign in Louisiana, starting with an invitation sent to JFK and Jackie to be honored guests at the 1959 International Rice Festival in Crowley.
More than 130,000 people showed up to hear Kennedy speak (and were particularly charmed when Jackie spoke to them in French).
In 1961, President Kennedy sent Reggie on a State Department cultural exchange mission to the Middle East, during which Reggie was given a hero's welcome in his parents' hometown of Ihden, Lebanon.
In 1968, Judge Reggie led Bobby Kennedy's presidential primary campaign in Louisiana and invited him to speak at the 1968 Rice Festival, as JFK had done nine years earlier. Bobby planned to attend, but was murdered four months before the festival.
Reggie's ties to the family moved from political to personal when his daughter Victoria married Ted Kennedy in 1992.
For practically all his political life, the judge preferred to work behind the scenes. He ran for (and won) only one elective office, City Judge of Crowley. Reggie served on the Crowley bench for 25 years. He was appointed to the judgeship at age 24 following the death of the sitting judge, Denis T. Canan, who also was his law partner. He was then the youngest judge in the United States. He retired from the bench in 1976.
He did hold a variety of appointed positions in state government, including Louisiana Commissioner of Public Welfare, chairman of the Louisiana Mineral Board, and executive counsel to Gov. Edwards.
More importantly, he was a power in the state Democratic Party in the days when Democratic nominees were almost automatically elected. Candidacy for high office in Louisiana required his blessing.
It is more than coincidence that three of the last five U.S. Congressmen from southwest Louisiana -- Edwin Edwards (1965-1972), John Breaux (1972-1987), and Chris John (1997-2005) -- have been from Crowley, and that the current representative is kin to Reggie. (Lafayette's Jimmy Hayes broke into the dominance from 1987-1997.)
Breaux, who began political life as an aide to Congressman Edwards and went on to become a respected U.S. Senator, said Reggie's quiet counsel, congeniality, and charm built friendships that "allowed him to have a very positive effect on the country's entire political landscape for decades.
"Many people say he was just a city judge," Breaux said, "but his influence greatly exceeded that position. He had contacts all over the world."
There was a bit of trouble along the way. Reggie ran into tax problems in 1992 and was convicted of misapplying funds of a Crowley savings and loan he'd help found.
Nonetheless, Reggie was inducted into the Louisiana Political Hall of Fame in 2004. He said that was "a real honor ... I'd just like people to look at my career and say 'He tried to help us all do a little better.'"
"Judge lived a life filled with great passion for his faith, family and politics," said U.S. Rep. Charles Boustany, a nephew and a Republican. "His stories about legends became legends themselves for his telling of them. I will miss the hearty and sometimes heated debates I had with him regarding political policy and positions and am the better man for having had the opportunity to have them. Now Edmund is among those legends he so often regaled us with and we are left to be the tellers of his story."
Judge Reggie is survived by his wife of 62 years, nee Doris Boustany, six children, 11 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jhbradshaw@bellsouth.net or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.
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