Leander Perez - Political Kingmaker

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. 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 arged that the state should have accepted the Truman administration offer and that not doing so cost billions in lost revenues over ensuing decades.

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, the 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 McLemore'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.

In 1959, Perez supported William M. Rainach for governor in the Democratic primary and then switched his backing to James Houston "Jimmie" Davis in the party runoff, which Davis secured over New Orleans Mayor deLesseps Story Morrison, Sr., a long-time Perez target.

In the 1960 presidential election, Perez was the state finance chairman and a presidential elector for the Louisiana States' Rights Party. On the ticket with him was future Governor David C. Treen and the flamboyant anticommunist Kent Howard Courtney. Treen left the party, denounced its national organization as "anti-Semitic," and joined the Republican Party in 1962, when he first ran for Congress against Boggs, with Perez's support.

With more than two-thirds of the votes cast, Perez led the States Rights Party electors to victory in 1960 in Plaquemines Parish. The States Rights total in neighboring St. Bernard Parish, however, was barely above the national Democratic total in the parish. The John F. Kennedy/Lyndon B. Johnson ticket was hence reduced to one-fifth of the ballots in Plaquemines Parish, and Richard M. Nixon drew only 13.8% of the total there.

Three Louisiana State University scholars described the impressive third-party vote in Louisiana in 1960 as the outgrowth of "anticlericalism, which expresses itself whenever the hierarchy attempts to go against popular political tendencies. It has led to severe conflicts between clergy and laity over issues of desegregation. Perez has certainly capitalized on these sentiments, and his recent excommunication has not slowed his activities appreciably. The fact, however, that the church condemns segregation was undoubtedly a decisive factor in Kennedy's success in south Louisiana."

In the 1964 gubernatorial runoff election, Perez worked to nominate John J. McKeithen. In a newspaper advertisement underwritten in part by Perez, the McKeithen campaign criticized McKeithen's opponent, former New Orleans Mayor deLesseps Story Morrison, for having received the "Negro Bloc Vote" in the December 1963 primary election. After McKeithen defeated Morrison, he then toppled the Republican candidate, Charlton Lyons, of Shreveport.

In 1968, Perez was key organizer for the campaign to place George C. Wallace, former governor of Alabama on the Louisiana general election ballot for president. He submitted some 150,000 signatures, 50,000 of them from East Baton Rouge Parish, to the office of secretary of state Wade O. Martin, Jr.. A confident Perez declared, "The people of Louisiana have had an acute case of indigestion about what's going on in this country. You've heard it said Wallace is a thorn in the side of the major candidates (Richard Nixon and Hubert H. Humphrey). Well, he's a whole cactus."