Jim Donelon - Election To Legislature, 1982

Election To Legislature, 1982

In a special election in 1982, Donelon won the seat vacated by the resignation of Representative Charles Grisbaum, Jr., a Republican. Grisbaum, who became a judge on the new Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal in Gretna, the seat of Jefferson Parish, had also run for Congress as a Democrat in 1974 against Republican Representative Treen. Grisbaum became a friend of Treen's during that campaign, and, in 1977, he switched parties while continuing his legislative service from Jefferson Parish. Grisbaum by 1980 had become one of Treen's point men in the legislature.

Donelon, who followed in Grisbaum's path, also has ties to Treen. It was then newly-inaugurated Governor Treen in 1980, who proposed that Republicans unite behind Donelon for the special election to choose Treen's congressional successor. In 1996–1997, the Christian Coalition gave him an overall 80 percent rating for that legislative session.

After he won repeated legislative reelection in Jefferson Parish, Donelon became his party's "sacrificial lamb" in 1998 against popular Democratic Senator John Breaux of Crowley in Acadia Parish, who was seeking his third and, as it turned out, final term in the U.S. Senate. Donelon stepped up to run when other candidates deferred to the inevitability of Breaux's reelection. The race was not close. Breaux won the nonpartisan blanket primary, often called the jungle primary, outright with 620,504 votes (64 percent). Donelon trailed with 306,616 (32 percent). The remaining 4 percent was shared by a half-dozen minor candidates, including L.D. Knox of Winnsboro, who legally changed his name to "None of the Above" Knox to stress the need for greater candidate choice to reject all declared candidates.

Donelon held the legislative seat, District 98, for nineteen years until his resignation on June 30, 2001. As he took the position in the Department of Insurance, Donelon was succeeded by a fellow Republican, Thomas John "Tom" Capella. Before he left the legislature, Donelon ran in a special judicial election on March 27, 1999. He was defeated by Republican Ronald Bodenheimer, who polled 8,981 votes (55 percent) to Donelon's 7,300 (45 percent). In that race Donelon had unsuccessfully used the slogan "Who Better to Interpret the Laws Than the Person Who Wrote Them". Bodenheimer, a former prosecutor, went to prison on conviction of having conspired to plant the prescription painkiller OxyContin in the automobile of an FBI informant who frequently complained about drug trafficking and zoning violations at the judge's marina.

In 1993, Donelon, along with fellow lawmakers Kernan "Skip" Hand, Ken Hollis, and Steve Theriot, all of the New Orleans suburbs, admitted to having given Tulane University scholarships to their children. Legislators are allowed under an 1884 law to designate one Tulane scholarship recipient per year, but the practice of giving such awards, totaling $17,000 in 1993 dollars, to family members had been previously unknown.