Dave Treen
David Conner Treen Sr. was an American politician and attorney from Louisiana. A member of the Republican Party, Treen served as U.S. Representative for Louisiana's 3rd congressional district from 1973 to 1980 and the 51st governor of Louisiana from 1980 to 1984. Treen was the first Republican elected to either office since Reconstruction.
Born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on July 16, 1928, Treen grew up in New Orleans and later settled in Metairie. After three unsuccessful runs for Congress in the 1960s, Treen won his first election in 1972 to represent a U.S. House district that covered parts of Greater New Orleans and Acadiana. In Congress, Treen had a reliably conservative voting record, and he subsequently won reelection three times by increasing margins. Treen was among the inaugural members of the House Select Committee on Intelligence when it was created in 1975.
In 1979, Treen won election as governor of Louisiana, and he resigned from the House in 1980 to take office as governor. During his single term as governor, Treen cut the state income tax and created a professional development program for teachers. Treen also signed legislation creating the Louisiana School for Math, Science and the Arts and Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. However, as the Treen administration took place during the early 1980s recession, Louisiana faced increasing unemployment and bond debt. Treen lost his reelection bid in 1983 to Edwin Edwards, who had served as governor before Treen.
After leaving the governor's office, Treen continued to be politically involved in Louisiana, running for Congress and endorsing gubernatorial candidates as recently as 2008 before his death in 2009.
Early life and legal career
Treen was born in the state capital of Baton Rouge, Louisiana to Joseph Paul and Elizabeth Treen. He attended public schools in the parishes of East Baton Rouge, Jefferson, and Orleans.In 1945, Treen graduated from the former Alcee Fortier High School in New Orleans, where his classmates included the subsequent political consultant and journalist Victor Gold. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1948 in history and political science from Tulane University in New Orleans. While at Tulane, he was a brother of Kappa Sigma fraternity. In 1950, he graduated from Tulane Law School and was admitted to the bar.
Treen served in the U.S. Air Force from 1951 to 1952. After his discharge, Treen joined the law firm of Deutsch, Kerrigan & Stiles. From 1952 to 1957, Treen was legal counsel and vice president of the Simplex Manufacturing Corporation in New Orleans. In 1957, Treen became an associate at the Beard, Blue & Schmitt law firm before eventually being promoted to partner in what became Beard, Blue, Schmitt & Treen.
Early political career
States' Rights party chair and presidential elector candidate in 1960
In the 1960 U.S. presidential election, Treen ran as an elector for the States' Rights Party, which supported Virginia U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr., a segregationist Democrat, over the two mainstream candidates, Democrat John F. Kennedy and Republican Richard Nixon. He also served as the chairman of the party's state central committee. Along with Treen, States' Rights electors from Louisiana included hard-line segregationists Leander Perez and Willie Rainach. Treen warned at a rally that "Reconstruction of the South is far from being over" and that "the Democratic and Republican parties would reduce the laboring man to mere tools in a socialistic state."Ultimately, Kennedy won the election in Louisiana; the States' Rights ticket received 21 percent of the popular vote in the state. But after the result was in, Treen called for the Louisiana Legislature to refuse to accept Kennedy's electors and instead send those of the States' Rights Party, unpledged, to the Electoral College, saying there was no requirement that the legislature respect the popular vote. The legislature did not go along with Treen's idea.
Treen emphasized in 1961 that his states' rights group was not affiliated with the National States' Rights Party, a group that he said was "a disgrace to the term 'states rights.'" However, Treen would later leave the Louisiana States' Rights Party because he perceived the party to be anti-Semitic.
1962, 1964, and 1968 U.S. House elections
In 1962 Treen joined the central committee of the Louisiana Republican Party. Encouraged by friends, Treen launched a campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives to serve Louisiana's 2nd congressional district, based in New Orleans, against incumbent Democrat Hale Boggs. Treen raised $11,000 for his 1962 campaign and lost the election, receiving only about a third of total votes.In 1964, Treen again challenged Boggs. In a year when Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater won the majority of statewide votes in Louisiana, Treen received 62,881 votes to Boggs' 77,009.
Treen ran again in 1968 in his third and final campaign against Boggs, who was then the House majority whip; Boggs won with 81,537 votes to Treen's 77,633. Following the 1970 United States census, Louisiana's 2nd congressional district was reapportioned to exclude parts of Jefferson Parish with strong Republican support, including Treen's residence.
1971–72 gubernatorial election
Treen was challenged in 1971 in the only Republican gubernatorial closed primary ever held in Louisiana by Robert Max Ross. In a campaign tour in Minden, Treen said that Louisiana needed "true competition" in state government, or "a system in which two political parties operate on a continuing and permanent basis to examine and criticize each other's policies and programs." If elected, Treen said that he would be "as independent as possible" in the governorship. Treen won the Republican primary with 92 percent of the vote.Treen polled 480,424 ballots to Edwards's 641,146 Treen carried twenty-seven parishes, mostly in the northern part of the state, with margins exceeding 60 percent in ten of those parishes. Weak support among black voters was reported as one factor in Treen's loss.
U.S. House of Representatives (1973–1980)
Elections
1972
After a decade of service on the Republican State Central Committee, Treen was named as the Louisiana Republican national committeeman for a two-year stint that began in 1972. He succeeded his former ticket mate, Tom Stagg, who later was appointed as a U.S. District judge in Shreveport.Later in 1972, Treen ran for the open seat in Louisiana's 3rd congressional district vacated by conservative Democrat Patrick T. Caffery of New Iberia. At the time, the district included the Acadiana and Greater New Orleans parishes of Iberia, Lafourche, St. Charles, St. Mary, and Terrebonne, as well as parts of Jefferson and St. Martin parishes. Treen defeated Democrat J. Louis Watkins Jr. with 71,090 to 60,521 votes on November 7, 1972. On the same day, incumbent President Richard Nixon, a Republican, carried Louisiana in winning reelection. Republicans also had a net gain of 12 seats in the U.S. House.
1974
In the 1974 midterm elections that happened nearly three months after the resignation of President Richard Nixon, Democrats added 49 seats to their House majority. However, in contrast to national trends, Treen won reelection against Democratic challenger State Representative Charles Grisbaum Jr. Treen carried 58.5 percent of the vote with 55,574 votes, while Grisbaum had 39,412 votes. Also in that election cycle, Henson Moore won the 6th district race and became just the second Republican elected to Louisiana's congressional delegation in the 20th century.1976
Although Democrat Jimmy Carter won the 1976 presidential election both nationally and in Louisiana, Treen won reelection in 1976 by an even larger margin than 1974, with nearly 73 percent of the vote against Democratic candidate David Scheuermann.1978
Already using them in gubernatorial elections, Louisiana began using open primaries for congressional elections in 1978; Treen ran unopposed in the 1978 District 3 open primary. Because he faced no opposition in the primary, scheduled for September 16, no votes were tabulated for his district in the general election on November 7, and Treen won reelection by default. Nationally, Republicans gained 15 seats in the U.S. House.Congressional tenure
Sworn in to office on January 3, 1973, Treen became the first Republican from Louisiana to serve in Congress in the 20th century.In its 100-point scale ranking members of Congress for their votes on key conservative issues, the American Conservative Union rated Treen a perfect 100 in 1973. By 1979, Treen had a lifetime ACU rating of 91. In contrast, Americans for Democratic Action rated Treen 5 out of 100 in 1979 on votes for liberal policies.
While in Congress, Treen was part of a special committee that successfully amended the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act of 1953 to allow states greater review of offshore drilling on the Gulf Coast. Treen also introduced an amendment to the Small Business Act that was enacted as section 5 of the Small Business Amendments of 1974. The amendment added the following text to the Small Business Act: "If loan applications are being refused or loans denied by such other department or agency responsible for such work or activity due to administrative withholding from obligation or withholding from apportionment, or due to administratively declared moratorium, then, for purposes of this section, no duplication shall be deemed to have occurred." According to The Times-Picayune, the Treen amendment granted access to Small Business Administration loans to those in the fishing industry.
Following the 1974 resignation of President Richard Nixon that followed Watergate, Treen voted against the confirmation of former New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller to serve as vice president under Gerald Ford; the confirmation passed both houses of Congress.
In 1975, Treen was among three conservative appointees of House Minority Leader John J. Rhodes to the newly created House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that was established to investigate activities of the United States Intelligence Community.
While in Congress, Treen co-sponsored 26 bills that became law. Among those bills was a 1973 bill allowing Louisiana State University access to federal lands in Caddo Parish for pecan research. Treen also was among 59 co-sponsors of a bill introduced in 1979 to "facilitate increased enforcement by the Coast Guard of laws relating to the importation of controlled substances, and for other purposes"; the bill was signed by President Carter on September 15, 1980, months after Treen left Congress to serve as Governor of Louisiana.