1986 U.S. Senate Campaign
Moore gave up his House seat to enter the race to succeed Senator Long. In the jungle primary, Moore led Seventh District Democratic Congressman John Breaux, with 529,433 votes (44.2 percent) to 447,328 (37.3 percent). State Senator Samuel B. Nunez polled another 73,504 votes (6.7 percent). Also on the ballot was the Republican Robert Max Ross (1933–2009), a small businessman from tiny Mangham in Richland Parish in northeast Louisiana, who had earlier opposed David Treen for governor in 1971 and 1983 and J. Bennett Johnston, Jr., for the U.S. Senate in 1984. During the 1986 campaign, Democrats accused the Louisiana GOP of attempting to establish schemes to depress black turnout in the general election. The Republicans replied that they were merely trying to remove names from the rolls of those who had not voted in four years, a procedure required by Louisiana law.
In the general election, Breaux turned the tables on Moore: 723,586 (52.8 percent) to 646,311 (47.2 percent), a margin of 77,275 ballots. Nationally, the Democrats regained control of the Senate for the two remaining years of the Reagan administration. Breaux held the Senate seat for eighteen years. Moore's House seat was won in 1986 by a fellow Republican, state Representative Richard H. Baker of Baker, a town north of Baton Rouge in East Baton Rouge Parish. Baker held the seat until 2008, when he resigned to become a lobbyist.
Read more about this topic: Henson Moore
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