Claude B. Duval - Duval in The State Senate

Duval in The State Senate

Once in the state Senate, Duval spoke eloquently and for long periods on nearly any topic brought before the body. Some called him the "Cicero of the Louisiana Senate." He was also helpful to colleagues in obtaining office space and other personal favors. In 2006, the state Senate posthumously honored him with the dedication of the Senate building known as "Duval Hall."

Robert G. "Bob" Jones, a Lake Charles stockbroker and the son of former Governor Sam Houston Jones, served in the Senate with Duval from 1972 to 1976. According to Jones, Duval was "a very bright guy ... one of the most respected of all the senators." Jones said that he believed Morrison had tapped Duval as a running mate because of Duval's towering character and reputation, not because of political philosophical considerations.

Duval served three terms in the Senate before he retired in 1980. In 1983, President Ronald W. Reagan signed legislation to designate the third Monday of January as the federal holiday in honor of Dr. King. The law took effect in January 1986, two months before King critic Claude Duval died.

Duval's social conservatism also included opposition to the proposed Equal Rights Amendment. When the measure failed to gain ratification after an extended deadline in 1982, Duval recalled that "in the Sixties everybody was obsessed with their rights. Everybody worried about their rights. Rather than rights, people should talk more about their responsibility to their country," Duval said.

In 1970, Duval told the Central Louisiana Press Club in Alexandria that he was considering entering the gubernatorial field because he said the state "needs a new look established on old values." Ultimately, he did not file in a race won by Edwin Edwards.

After he left the state Senate, Duval's political contributions went mostly to Republicans. There is no indication, however, that he himself switched parties. Among recipients of his donations were the Ronald W. Reagan presidential campaign, the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, GOP Congressman William Henson Moore, III, of Baton Rouge, who ran for the U.S. Senate in 1986, and Democratic and later Republican Congressman Wilbert Joseph "Billy" Tauzin, Jr., of Lafourche Parish. Duval's contribution to Moore came in the spring of 1985.

Duval survived his wife, the former Betty Bowman (1914–1985), by only five months. He was survived by a daughter, Dorothy Duval Nelson (born 1947), whose husband, Charles Waldemar Nelson (also born 1947), is the former president of the World Trade Center in New Orleans; two grandchildren; his brother, Stanwood Duval (1913–2001); a sister, Catherine Duval Dean (1916–1997) of Albuquerque, New Mexico; a maternal aunt, Alice Richardson Butler (1910–1995), and a maternal uncle who was his junior in age, Frank D. Richardson (1916–1993), both of St. Joseph, the seat of Tensas Parish.

Duval also had two nephews, his namesake Claude Berwick Duval, II (born 1955), a prominent Houma attorney, and U.S. District Judge Stanwood Richardson Duval, Jr. (born 1942), an appointee of President William Jefferson Blythe "Bill" Clinton, based in New Orleans. Stanwood Duval, a Democrat, blocked the implementation of the "Choose Life" license plates approved by the state legislature on grounds that the optional plates were in violation of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Judge Duval's argument was unanimously reversed in 2005 by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. A perfectly divided en banc court denied a petition for rehearing by a vote of eight-to-eight. Judge Duval is clearly to the political left of his late uncle. However, Claude Duval was a strong advocate of the First Amendment and supported abortion.

Claude and Betty Duval are interred in the Magnolia Cemetery in Houma. Duval was Episcopalian. In addition, to the Senate office facility, Duval is honored through the "Senator Claude B. Duval Scholarship" given at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux.