Jerry Fowler

Jerry Fowler

(1) After a brief career as a professional football player for the Houston Oilers, Fowler rode to political success in Louisiana as his father's successor in the former elected office of state elections commissioner.

(2) Fowler benefited from a political dynasty launched by his father, Douglas Fowler, and his uncle, H. M. Fowler, from the small northwestern Louisiana community of Coushatta.

(3) While he was imprisoned for bribery and income tax evasion stemming from misconduct in connection with his job duties, Fowler's second wife, MariAnn, was kidnapped and went missing while she was en route to Beaumont, Texas, to visit her husband in prison. She was declared legally dead in 2005.

Jerry Marston Fowler (April 26, 1940 – January 26, 2009) was a Baton Rouge businessman who served as Louisiana's state Elections Commissioner from 1980 until his defeat in the 1999 jungle primary. He was part of the Fowler family Democratic political dynasty. Fowler vacated the position in 2000 and was thereafter indicted, convicted and imprisoned for bribery and income tax evasion in a scandal that grew out of acceptance of kickbacks on the purchase of voting machines. Fowler succeeded his ailing father, Wiley Douglas Fowler, Sr. (1906–1980), as Elections Commissioner. Collectively, the Fowlers, who hailed from Coushatta, the seat of rural Red River Parish, served forty-one years in the position, originally called the "Custodian of Voting Machines."