Election As Mayor, 1970
Allen served eight years as the elected public utilities commissioner under the former Shreveport commission form of government. He would tout those eight years of municipal experience when he launched his first mayoral campaign in 1970. Incumbent Democrat Clyde Edward Fant, Sr., was stepping down after five nonconsecutive terms as Shreveport mayor in part because of health considerations.
After a lopsided win in the Democratic primary, Allen defeated Edward L. "Ed" McGuire (1914–1983), a native of New England and the first Shreveport Republican since Reconstruction to contest the mayoralty position. McGuire, along with Billy James Guin, Sr. (born 1927), and the late Joel B. Brown, had been the first Republicans in modern times to have been elected to the Caddo Parish School Board, having served from 1964 until 1970. Allen's margin over McGuire was by landslide proportions, 63-37 percent. He forged a winning coalition of blacks, blue-collar whites, and local businessmen that would dominate Shreveport politically for most of the remaining years of the 20th century.
Not until 1990 did a Republican, Hazel Beard, win the mayor's race. When she stepped down after a single term in 1994, another Republican, Robert Warren "Bo" Williams succeeded her. Williams was then unseated by the Democrat Keith Paul Hightower in 1998.
At least one prominent area Republican, Tom Colten (1922–2004), the mayor of Minden in Webster Parish, welcomed Calhoun Allen's victory and cited the candidate's impressive background and experience. Colten was winning a second term as a "nonpartisan" Republican at the same time that Allen was first elected mayor as a Democrat.
Allen led his city during a time of transition and racial moderation. The city population grew, particularly the mostly white outlying residential areas. And new industry came to Shreveport, but critics said it was never sufficient to provide jobs for all who sought work. In time, blacks became the majority of Shreveport's population and a political force of immense proportions within the municipality. Caddo Parish, as a whole, however, remained majority white.
In 1971, a Republican, George A. Burton, Jr., won a special election in Shreveport for the vacant position of finance commissioner. A Certified Public Accountant, Burton proved competent in the position and ran again in the regular 1974 elections. That year, he had the tacit support of "independent" Mayor Allen, who swept to an easy reelection. Burton polled 17,488 votes (68.8 percent), while the Democrat (later Republican) David R. Carroll (1926–2011), a Mississippi native and a Caddo Parish police juror, received 7,938 ballots (31.2 percent). Burton's running mate, Billy Guin, polled 43.7 percent in his second contest—the first was in 1970—against incumbent Democratic Public Utilities Commissioner William "Bill" Collins, who had succeeded Allen in the position. Guin, the former school board member, a civil engineer and a businessman, also entered a special election for utilities commissioner in 1977, when Collins resigned the post. Guin won with 51 percent of the vote and served the remaining year and a half of Collins' second term. He implemented many reforms in the department and then ran unsuccessfully in 1978 as a Republican candidate for mayor under the new form of city government.
Allen did not seek a third term in 1978, although he was eligible to have done so. Several factors are believed to have contributed to his decision to step down: (1) troubles in public utilities department, which Guin had largely rectified, (2) an ill-fated plan to purchase new city water meters, and (3) his tenure as a full-time city official had already reached 16 years.
In 1978, Shreveport changed from the commission system to the mayor-council single-member district format with term limits. The newly-elected mayor, Democrat William Thomas "Bill" Hanna, a former automobile dealer, hence exerted executive powers to a "legislative" council of seven members, where a divided 4-3 vote could often prove decisive. Hanna was elected as the "reform" candidate.
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Famous quotes containing the word election:
“He hung out of the window a long while looking up and down the street. The world’s second metropolis. In the brick houses and the dingy lamplight and the voices of a group of boys kidding and quarreling on the steps of a house opposite, in the regular firm tread of a policeman, he felt a marching like soldiers, like a sidewheeler going up the Hudson under the Palisades, like an election parade, through long streets towards something tall white full of colonnades and stately. Metropolis.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)