John Sidney Garrett - The Defeat of Speaker Garrett

The Defeat of Speaker Garrett

In the 1971 closed primary (the last for legislative races in state history), Garrett was surprisingly defeated in his bid for a seventh term by a largely unknown insurance agent named Louise Brazzel Johnson (1924–2002) of Bernice in Union Parish. Garrett, placed in new District 11 (Union and Claiborne parishes) was the most high-profile of numerous legislative veterans defeated in an anti-incumbent year. Previously, it had been thought an impossible task for an inexperienced candidate to oust a senior lawmaker, particularly one who wore the title of "Speaker."

Mrs. Johnson was best known for her opposition to the proposed Equal Rights Amendment. She did not consolidate a hold on the Claiborne-Union district because she ran unsuccessfully for the state Senate in 1975, having lost to the more liberal Democrat, former Senator Charles C. Barham of Ruston. Johnson was then defeated for a second House term in the 1979 nonpartisan blanket primary by fellow Democrat Loy F. Weaver, a banker and former agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration from Homer, the man who had succeeded her in 1976.