Dave Treen - Treen in Retirement

Treen in Retirement

Treen declared that he would run for governor again in the 2003 election, at the age of 75, but the party leadership coalesced behind Bobby Jindal. Treen withdrew from the pre-primary race and worked for Jindal's election. Jindal lost the general election to Democratic Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Lafayette (who actually lost Lafayette Parish in the election). A year later, Jindal filled the House seat that Vitter vacated to become senator, the same seat that Treen had lost in his last campaign for elective office. Treen even discussed running for governor again in 2007 but never filed candidacy papers. In 2007, Jindal won the governor's election outright in the primary. Treen's old rival and reluctant ally, Edwin Edwards, meanwhile, went to prison for racketeering connected with his fourth gubernatorial term, the one that Treen had reluctantly blessed in preference to his greater nemesis, David Duke. Treen had urged then President George W. Bush to pardon Edwards or to commute his sentence to the time already served.

There was also speculation that Edwards actually voted for Treen in the 1979 election because he preferred to face Treen again in 1983, rather than the other Democratic possibilities who were running for governor against Treen. Earl Long similarly often quietly voted for the "anti-Long" gubernatorial candidate himself to set up a potential new governor for failure. Long would then run for governor again four years later against the "failed" (in Long's eyes) governor's stand-in. That was before Louisiana governors could succeed themselves in office. In 1997, Treen became the first Republican inducted into the Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame in Winnfield.