Bill Robertson (Louisiana Politician) - Early Political Activities

Early Political Activities

In 1967, he filed to run for one of four positions in the former Ward 4 on the Webster Parish Police Jury, the parish governing body usually known as the county commission in other states. In this race, the incumbent John T. David, a former Minden mayor, was defeated for reelection but veteran jurors Leland G. Mims and W. Nick Love retained their seats. The newcomer elected to the jury to succeed David was not Robertson, who ran last among six candidates, but James Tenney "Jim" Branch, Jr., who subsequently lost a bid for mayor in 1982 to Noel Byars.

In September 1974, Robertson was elected to the Minden City Council. He defeated fellow Democrat Patrick Cary Nation (1918–2005), a retired educator, coach, and principal, for the specific position of sanitation commissioner. Robertson was the last person to serve in this position. Nation's father, Abraham Brisco Nation, Sr. (1886–1933), had served as a city councilman from 1932 until he was shot to death on Armistice Day 1933, during a heated political argument, by John L. Fort (1906–1992), a son of then Mayor Connell Fort, with whom the senior Nation had quarreled.

Robertson took office in January 1975 and served until the abolition of the city commission government in 1978, when it was replaced by the current single-member-district mayor-council format.

Thereafter, Robertson was elected to the police jury in 1979 from the District 6 seat, a position that he held until 1990, when he resigned with a year remaining in his third term in order to become mayor of Minden.

In 1981, nearly a thousand constituents attempted to recall Robertson and some of his colleagues from the police jury in a dispute regarding the temporary removal of litter bins throughout Webster Parish because of the lack of recurring funds to sustains such services. When the petition was submitted, Robertson appealed to enough voters to remove their names to avoid a recall election. "I think people are basically fair. If police jurors could sit across the table and explain on a person-to-person basis ... people could see a portion of the problem."