Douglas Fowler - Jerry Fowler Succeeds His Father

Jerry Fowler Succeeds His Father

Under the Louisiana Constitution of 1974, the office of "custodian of voting machines" was renamed "elections commissioner." Fowler won a final term in the 1975 jungle primary, and then, in 1980, shortly after his death, the office reverted to his son. Jerry Fowler won the 1979 general election over the Republican John Henry Baker of Franklin Parish, whose unusual campaign called for the abolition of the election commissioner's position and the return of the duties to the secretary of state. Baker's proposal, defeated at the polls, was finally adopted a quarter of a century later in 2004. Baker drew the support of former state Representative and state Senator Robert G. "Bob" Jones of Lake Charles, whose father Long and Fowler had worked to defeat in 1948.

Fowler and his friend, former state Senator B.B. "Sixty" Rayburn, Sr., of Bogalusa in Washington Parish, were two Earl Long "cronies" who survived in office far beyond the Long gubernatorial terms, which finally closed in 1960. Rayburn recalled that he and Fowler "toured the state together with Earl in 1956. He was a very close, dear friend of mine. . . . He was just a fine a man as I have ever known." Earl Long's nephew, then U.S. Senator Russell B. Long, said that "few people can claim to have served their state harder, more faithfully, and for a longer period than Doug Fowler. As commissioner of elections, he was an exemplary state official who won reelection time after time."

Jerry Fowler, meanwhile, later ran afoul of the law, was defeated for a sixth term in the 1999 primary, and served time in a federal prison in Texas for bribery and income tax evasion. Jerry Fowler's wife, Mari Ann, disappeared one Christmas weekend when she went to visit her husband in prison, was never located, and has been declared legally dead.