Kent Courtney - The Alexandria Years

The Alexandria Years

Sometimes prior to 1973, Courtney relocated to Alexandria to serve as an aide to Democrat-turned-Republican Mayor Charles Edward "Ed" Karst. Karst was originally from New Orleans, but records do not clearly reveal how the two became politically connected. Karst vacated the mayoral office in June 1973. As mayor, Karst was not particularly known for conservative policy issues.

Kent Courtney surfaced again in 1976, when, running as an Independent, he challenged the reelection of popular Eighth District Democratic U.S. Representative Gillis William Long, also of Alexandria. A third-party conservative, Dr. S. R. Abrahmson of Marksville, the seat of Avoyelles Parish, had also challenged Long four years earlier. In that 1972 election, Long had easily prevailed: 72,607 votes (68.6 percent); Abramson, 17,844 (16.8 percent); and Republican Roy C. Strickland, then of Gonzales in Ascension Parish, 15,517 (14.6 percent). Courtney polled only 6,526 votes, or 5.8 percent against Long, more than 11,000 votes fewer than Abramson had received in 1972. No Republican filed for the race in 1976; there is speculation that at least half of Courtney's vote came from regular Republicans who wanted an alternative to Long.

The Courtneys divorced, and Phoebe relocated to Littleton in Jefferson County, Colorado, where she continued to publish so-called "Tax Fax" pamphlets that the couple had begun years earlier.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation did not investigate the Courtneys, but Director J. Edgar Hoover referred to them in a reply to an inquiry as "known rabble rousers and hate mongers."