John S. Hunt, III - The Election of 1966

The Election of 1966

In August 1966, Hunt won a full six-year term on the regulatory body by defeating in a heated party runoff his fellow Democrat, then State Representative John Sidney Garrett of Haynesville in northern Claiborne Parish just south of the Arkansas state line. While McKeithen endorsed Hunt for a PSC term of his own, he also had a good relationship with Garrett, whom he later tapped to be Speaker of the Louisiana House from 1968-1972.

In the 1966 campaign, Hunt stressed that he had worked closely with the Louisiana Department of Commerce and Industry to create "thousands of new jobs" within Louisiana. After an inconclusive first primary in which four candidates, including State Representative Parey Branton of Shongaloo and former lawmaker Wellborn Jack of Shreveport, were eliminated, Hunt and Garrett met in the September 24 runoff election. Hunt had enjoyed a considerable plurality in the primary.

Garrett claimed after the primary that Hunt had received 93.1 percent of the votes of African Americans in nine selected precincts throughout the district, which then embraced a third of the state., but the runoff results were much closer. Hunt and Garrett each carried fourteen parishes ; there were then twenty-eight parishes in the district. Hunt prevailed by 9,896 votes: 91,971 (52.5 percent) to 83,075 (47.5 percent). Hunt led in the more populous parishes of Rapides, Natchitoches, and three others where he had resided at one time or the other: Caddo, Lincoln, and Ouachita. Garrett won the entire northern tier of parishes which borders Arkansas except for Caddo on the west and East Carroll on the far northeast. He also won several parishes in north central and northeastern Louisiana: Grant, La Salle, Catahoula, Franklin, Richland, and Winn, the ancestral home of the Longs, who had traditionally remained loyal Democrats.

In the campaign, Hunt defended his two-year record on the PSC, which regulates all interstate transportation and utility services within the state except those owned by a municipality. He said that utility companies should make a "fair profit but no more." He listed his goals in a full term as providing parishwide toll-free telephone service and to reduce intrastate tolls on calls.".

A self-described "conservative Democrat", Hunt had endorsed Republican presidential nominee U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona in 1964. Hunt's cousin, U.S. Senator Russell B. Long, however, had worked unsuccessfully to carry Louisiana for U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson. Garrett, a member of the state House since 1948, was the chairman of the former Joint Legislative Committee on Segregation, a panel once chaired by legendary State Senator William M. Rainach, also of Claiborne Parish. This particular runoff election was the first significant test in Louisiana politics between party factions since President Johnson had signed the Voting Rights Act into law the preceding year. The new law, which enforced the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution led to the registration of large numbers of African-American voters throughout the Deep South. Many of these newer voters provided crucial support to Hunt, who was seen as more moderate on the racial issue than the segregationist Garrett. In fact, Garrett, who won the backing of three of the eliminated primary candidates, had claimed that Hunt was dependent on the "black bloc vote". Some even accused Hunt of having catered to "black power" elements.

In his victory statement, Hunt said that he had "overcome a slanderous campaign, and by winning I have tremendously enhanced the image of this state. . . . I was known by my opponent and his associates to be a conservative, but in spite of this, they attacked my character and made charges that I was a liberal, despite my public record to the contrary."