Leander Perez

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Leander Perez : biography

July 16, 1891 – March 19, 1969

His legislative ally, E. W. Gravolet of Pointe à la Hache, tried without success to pass grants-in-aid bills to provide state assistance to private schools sprung into existence by desegregation.

Perez enters Plaquemines Parish politics

In 1916, Perez was defeated as a candidate for state representative. In 1919, he was appointed judge of the 29th Judicial District to fill an unexpired term. In 1920, he won a full term as judge by defeating a local machine run by his intraparty rival John Dymond. He was elected district attorney in 1924 and became involved in a dispute over trapping lands which ended in a shootout known as the "Trappers’ War."

In 1928, Perez allied with Huey Pierce Long, Jr., who was elected governor. In 1929, he successfully defended Long in the latter’s impeachment trial before the Louisiana state Senate.

Perez became wealthy by subleasing state mineral lands. In 1940, the state Crime Commission investigated Perez at the request of then Governor Sam Houston Jones. In 1943, Jones sent state troopers to Plaquemines Parish to enforce his appointment of an anti-Perez sheriff. Perez and Jones both came out of the conservative wing of the Democratic Party, but whereas Perez had been a Huey Long backer, Jones was staunchly anti-Long.

Political kingmaker

In 1948, Perez headed the Thurmond presidential campaign in Louisiana; and after the failure of the Dixiecrat movement, he unsuccessfully tried to keep the party alive, even as Thurmond returned temporarily to the Democratic Party.Jeansonne, Glen. Leander Perez: Boss of the Delta Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 1977; pp. 185–189. Earl Long, however, supported Truman, not Thurmond, but Long deferred to Perez regarding the Louisiana tidelands issue. Perez urged Long to reject the Truman administration’s proposal which would have greatly enhanced state revenues and to instead seek an even better arrangement before the United States Supreme Court, an argument that proved illusory. The Louisiana Attorney General, Bolivar Edwards Kemp, Jr., and the lieutenant governor, Bill Dodd, had argued that the state should have accepted the Truman administration offer and that not doing so cost billions in lost revenues over ensuing decades.William J. "Bill" Dodd, Peapatch Politics: The Earl Long Era in Louisiana Politics, Baton Rouge: Claitors Publishing, 1991

In 1952, Perez convinced Lucille May Grace, the register of state lands, to question the patriotism of Congressman Thomas Hale Boggs. Grace and Boggs were among ten Democratic gubernatorial candidates that year. She claimed that Boggs had past affiliation with communist-front organizations. The allegations, never proved, worked to sink both of their candidacies. Ultimately, Perez withdrew his backing for "Miss Grace" and threw his primary support to James M. McLemore, an Alexandria auction-barn owner who ran for governor on a strictly segregationist platform.

Over the course of the next two decades, Perez and Boggs would battle again. In 1961, Perez launched an ill-fated campaign to have Boggs recalled as a congressman for his support of a motion to expand the House Judiciary Committee to include new liberal members. There is no provision in the United States Constitution for recall of national lawmakers. The committee enlargement had the support of the new President, John F. Kennedy, and was seen as enhancing the likelihood that civil rights bills could then clear that committee.

In 1965, Boggs, from the floor of the House, announced his support of the Voting Rights Act. Boggs spoke of an "area of Louisiana" where "out of 3,000 Negroes, less than 100 are registered to vote as American citizens." When asked the next day by a reporter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune if he was referring to Plaquemines Parish, the "stronghold of Leander Perez," Boggs replied: "Yes."

In 1956, Perez did not again support James McLemore in the latter’s second campaign for governor but instead endorsed Fred Preaus of Farmerville in north Louisiana, the choice of outgoing Governor Robert F. Kennon. Preaus lost his native Union Parish and won only in Perez’s Plaquemines Parish in a primary in which Earl Long procured an outright majority in his final comeback bid for governor.