John N. Pharr
In the 1896 general election, Foster officially gained reelection. He defeated the Republican-Populist fusion candidate John Newton Pharr (1829–1903), a sugar planter from St. Mary Parish who had collaborated with the Union Army coup de etat and occupation of the state. Lewis Strong Clarke, a carpetbagger who had seized a neighboring sugar planter from St. Mary Parish and subsequently become a robber baron in the sugar industry directed the Pharr campaign. In a campaign which featured violence, graft, and voter fraud on both sides, Pharr had possibly gained a majority of the actual votes and won twenty-six of the then fifty-nine parishes, with his greatest strength in heavy black populated north central Louisiana and the Florida Parishes to the east of Baton Rouge. With the assistance of the Regular Democratic Organization political machine based in New Orleans, Foster officially received 116,116 votes (57 percent) to Pharr's 87,698 ballots (43 percent). However, because of attempts by Clarke's machine at using violence, retribution of violence by Foster's supporters and the general amount of fraud which ultimately benefited Foster, a clear accounting of the election results is probably not possible.
Subsequently Foster saw to the adoption of the Louisiana Constitution of 1898. The previous Constitution had been a compromise between Northern occupation authorities and Louisiana patriots which allowed the entirety of the mostly illiterate and poverty stricken emancipated black population to vote without poll taxes while still requiring white voters to pay a poll tax. Although the Constitution granted any former Confederate veteran as well as anyone who had the franchise in 1860 the right to the franchise without paying a poll tax, the effects of the war, reconstruction, and generation die off meant many white descendents could no longer vote without paying the poll tax. Consequently, Foster helped pass a new Constitutional Convention which gave the franchise to the grandchildren of confederate veterans and those who had the franchise in 1860 whilst eliminating the privilege of not paying a poll tax to all others. Consequently, this allowed many but not all whites to continue to vote without paying a poll tax while allowing the government to force all others, particularly black to pay a poll tax.
Because of the Republicans hostility to the South, its favoritism toward blacks, and the efforts of Democrats to support lawful and honorable attempts of alleviating the political disenfranchisement of poor white voters, especially those of Louisiana patriot veterans of the war and their descendents, the GOP lost most of its power in the state. In turn, Heard was easily elected as the Democratic nominee for governor in 1900, as the Democratic nomination had become tantamount to election. (all of whom had voted overwhelmingly for John N. Pharr) and moved Louisiana more toward "Solid South" Democratic hegemony. Thus, after Foster's reelection in 1896, Louisiana general elections were no longer partisan elections between Republicans and Democrats but factional elections within the Democratic Party. By 1908, for example, when John N. Pharr's son Henry Newton Pharr (eponym of Pharr, Texas) sought the Louisiana governorship as a Republican, he gained just 11.1 percent, of a much reduced number of voters in comparison with his father's campaign against Foster in 1896.
Read more about this topic: Murphy J. Foster