Morley A. Hudson - First Republicans in Legislature (1964-1968)

First Republicans in Legislature (1964-1968)

He and Taylor W. O'Hearn (1907–1997) were the first two Republicans to have been elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives since Reconstruction. Hudson and O'Hearn were joined in the Caddo Parish delegation by Democrats Algie D. Brown, Frank Fulco, and newcomer J. Bennett Johnston, Jr., later a member of both the Louisiana State Senate and the United States Senate. Three Caddo Republican legislative candidates who lost in 1964 were Billy J. Guin, later a Shreveport city commissioner; Edd Fielder Calhoun (1931–2012), an insurance agent and civic figure originally from Oklahoma City, and Art Sour, who made his livelihood in the oil business. Sour lost again in 1968 but rebounded in 1972 to win a seat in the state House, which he subsequently held for twenty years.

Hudson was a Louisiana delegate to the Republican national conventions held in San Francisco in 1964 and in Miami Beach in 1968 and 1972.

Hudson was the self-proclaimed Louisiana House "minority leader" between 1964 and 1968 because he had outpolled O'Hearn in the balloting. In 1966, he obtained passage of a bill to grant in-state college students the same right to vote absentee as permitted to out-of-state students. His record was primarily focused on fiscal and management reform of state government.

Two other Republicans joined Hudson and O'Hearn later in their term: Roderick L. "Rod" Miller of Lafayette in 1966 and Edward Clark Gaudin of Baton Rouge in 1967. Miller was defeated in a bid for the Louisiana State Senate on February 6, 1968. Gaudin was defeated for reelection to the House in 1968 but returned to the legislature in 1972 and like Art Sour served for another twenty years.