Taddy Aycock - Election As Lieutenant Governor, 1960 & 1964

Election As Lieutenant Governor, 1960 & 1964

Aycock first won the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor in 1959 – 1960. At that time, under the Louisiana Constitution of 1921, the lieutenant governor presided over the state Senate. In the 1974 Constitution, senators chose a "Senate President" to preside over the body, with a ceremonial President Pro Tem in the second position. These Senate presidents also have the recommendation of the governor.

Aycock and then Mayor W. George Bowdon, Jr., of Alexandria led the primary field in December 1959 and went into a January 1960 runoff. Losing candidates included sitting Governor Earl Long, who was actually waging his third campaign (the last two unsuccessful) for lieutenant governor, and Mayor William J. "Bill" White (December 25, 1910 – December 12, 1990) of Gretna in Jefferson Parish, a ticket-mate of State Auditor William J. "Bill" Dodd, then of Baton Rouge. Aycock was Jimmie Davis' choice for lieutenant governor; his intraparty rival, George Bowdon, was endorsed by the losing runoff candidate, New Orleans Mayor deLesseps Story Morrison, Sr.

In the general election held on April 19, 1960, Aycock defeated Republican Clark C. Boardman (October 14, 1887 - July 1965), a retired engineer from Monroe in Ouachita Parish. A native of Wisconsin, Boardman received his Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering in 1909 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Boardman and his wife, the former Ethel V. Martin (1889–1989), had one son, Grant Clinton Boardman (1925–2010), a Louisiana State University graduate and an engineer with Sid W. Richardson Carbon and Gas in Fort Worth, Texas, for much of his career.

Aycock polled 392,421 votes (83.2 percent) to Boardman's 68,186 (14.4 percent). (Vaughn L. Phelps (born 1920), also of Monroe, the nominee of the Louisiana States' Rights Party, received 11,299 votes, the remaining 2.4 percent.) Boardman, at seventy-two, did not wage an active campaign. He was the first Republican in modern times even to seek the lieutenant governor's position. Not until 1987, eleven months after Aycock's death, did a Republican, Paul Hardy of St. Martinville in St. Martin Parish, win the position, which has been otherwise reserved for Louisiana Democrats. In December 1963 – January 1964, Aycock ran as an "independent" Democrat, meaning that he did not align himself to any gubernatorial candidate. He might have favored Robert Kennon, who was seeking a comeback as governor and who had made him Speaker, but he preferred to make his race alone. He was thrust into a runoff with Chep Morrison's next choice for the position, attorney Claude Berwick Duval of Houma in Terrebonne Parish. Omitted in the primary was McKeithen's ticket-mate, former Mayor Ashton J. Mouton of Lafayette. Duval, a distinguished "old-school" orator, was as conservative as Aycock, but he, like his gubernatorial ticket mate Morrison, fared poorly in central and northern Louisiana. In 1968, Duval entered the state Senate for the first of three terms with his former rival, Lieutenant Governor Aycock, as the presiding officer. Duval and Aycock also had something else in common: they came from adjoining south Louisiana parishes, and both were in the anti-Long tradition of Louisiana politics.