Opposing Henson Moore
DeBlieux was unseated in the 1975 elections, the first held in Louisiana under the jungle primary format, by fellow Democrat Thomas H. Hudson (born 1946) of Baton Rouge, who held the seat for one term. Ironically, he lost the black vote to Hudson because DeBlieux refused to give black ministers funds for their pledged support. "You should be raising money for me and giving me money to help in my election. I shouldn't be giving you money," DeBlieux told the clergymen. He added that he never gave the ministers any funds.
In 1976, shortly after he had left the state Senate, DeBlieux waged a challenge to freshman Republican U.S. Representative W. Henson Moore, III, of Baton Rouge in the Louisiana 6th Congressional District. Moore, who had succeeded Rarick in 1975, was an easy winner even though DeBlieux's candidate for U.S. President, former Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia, won Louisiana's then ten electoral votes. Moore received 99,780 votes (65.2 percent) to DeBlieux's 53,212 (34.8 percent) and won majorities in all precincts in the district except for two boxes in West Feliciana Parish. Moore was the first Louisiana Republican congressional candidate in modern history to run ahead of the presidential electors in the state. Even in areas where the Carter-Mondale ticket won handily, DeBlieux still trailed.
The Sixth District did not return to its Democratic moorings until May 3, 2008, when State Representative Don Cazayoux of New Roads in Pointe Coupee Parish defeated Republican former State Representative Woody Jenkins in a special election created by the resignation of Republican Richard Hugh Baker. Cazayoux was then defeated for a full two-year term in the November 4 general election by Republican State Senator Bill Cassidy of Baton Rouge.
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“The principle of majority rule is the mildest form in which the force of numbers can be exercised. It is a pacific substitute for civil war in which the opposing armies are counted and the victory is awarded to the larger before any blood is shed. Except in the sacred tests of democracy and in the incantations of the orators, we hardly take the trouble to pretend that the rule of the majority is not at bottom a rule of force.”
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