64 Facts About Dave Treen

Dave Treen was the first Republican elected to either office since Reconstruction.

In Congress, Dave Treen had a reliably conservative voting record, and he subsequently won reelection three times by increasing margins.

Dave Treen was among the inaugural members of the House Select Committee on Intelligence when it was created in 1975.

In 1979, Dave Treen won election as governor of Louisiana, and he resigned from the House in 1980 to take office as governor.

Dave Treen signed legislation creating the Louisiana School for Math, Science and the Arts and Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality.

However, as the Dave Treen administration took place during the early 1980s recession, Louisiana faced increasing unemployment and bond debt.

Dave Treen lost his reelection bid in 1983 to Edwin Edwards, who had served as governor before Dave Treen.

Dave Treen was born in the state capital of Baton Rouge, Louisiana to Joseph Paul and Elizabeth Dave Treen.

Dave Treen attended public schools in the parishes of East Baton Rouge, Jefferson, and Orleans.

In 1945, Dave Treen graduated from the former Alcee Fortier High School in New Orleans, where his classmates included the subsequent political consultant and journalist Victor Gold.

Dave Treen earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1948 in history and political science from Tulane University in New Orleans.

Dave Treen served in the US Air Force from 1951 to 1952.

From 1952 to 1957, Dave Treen was legal counsel and vice president of the Simplex Manufacturing Corporation in New Orleans.

Dave Treen served as the chairman of the party's state central committee.

In 1962 Dave Treen joined the central committee of the Louisiana Republican Party.

Dave Treen raised $11,000 for his 1962 campaign and lost the election, receiving only about a third of total votes.

Dave Treen ran again in 1968 in his third and final campaign against Boggs, who was then the House majority whip; Boggs won with 81,537 votes to Dave Treen's 77,633.

Dave Treen was challenged in 1971 in the only Republican gubernatorial closed primary ever held in Louisiana by Robert Max Ross.

Dave Treen won the Republican primary with 92 percent of the vote.

Dave Treen polled 480,424 ballots to Edwards's 641,146 Dave Treen carried twenty-seven parishes, mostly in the northern part of the state, with margins exceeding 60 percent in ten of those parishes.

Dave Treen succeeded his former ticket mate, Tom Stagg, who later was appointed as a US District judge in Shreveport.

Later in 1972, Treen ran for the open Louisiana's 3rd congressional district seat vacated by conservative Democrat Patrick T Caffery of New Iberia.

However, in contrast to national trends, Dave Treen won reelection against Democratic challenger State Representative Charles Grisbaum Jr.

Dave Treen carried 58.5 percent of the vote with 55,574 votes, while Grisbaum had 39,412 votes.

Already using them in gubernatorial elections, Louisiana began using open primaries for congressional elections in 1978; Dave Treen ran unopposed in the 1978 District 3 open primary.

Dave Treen introduced an amendment to the Small Business Act that was enacted as section 5 of the Small Business Amendments of 1974.

In 1975, Treen was among three conservative appointees of House Minority Leader John J Rhodes to the newly created House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that was established to investigate activities of the United States Intelligence Community.

Dave Treen was among 59 co-sponsors of a bill introduced in 1979 to "facilitate increased enforcement by the Coast Guard of laws relating to the importation of controlled substances, and for other purposes"; the bill was signed by President Carter on September 15,1980, months after Dave Treen left Congress to serve as Governor of Louisiana.

Dave Treen was the only Republican candidate among six major candidates.

On October 27,1979, in one of the closest elections in Louisiana history, Dave Treen won first place with nearly 22 percent of the vote in the jungle primary for governor, the second such election held in Louisiana following Edwards's reform of Louisiana elections.

Dave Treen won 22 parishes in victory, compared to 27 parishes in defeat in 1972.

Dave Treen paid off the four Democratic candidates' campaign debts in exchange for their support.

On March 10,1980, the 51-year-old Dave Treen became the 51st governor of Louisiana.

In 1981, Dave Treen signed into law the Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science in Public School Instruction Act, commonly called the Creationism Act.

Three years after Treen left office, the United States Supreme Court ruled against that law in the 1987 case Edwards v Aguillard, as creation science is not science but religious teaching.

Dave Treen established in 1981 the Litter Control and Recycling Commission, as a measure to improve quality of life in cities and other areas.

In December 1983, nearly two months after losing his re-election bid, Treen ordered the execution by electric chair of convicted murderer Robert Wayne Williams, the tenth American and first in Louisiana to face execution since the US Supreme Court in 1976 upheld capital punishment in a series of cases including Roberts v Louisiana.

In 1983, Dave Treen signed legislation that established the Department of Environmental Quality, which opened on February 1,1984.

Dave Treen accused "political special interests" loyal to Edwin Edwards with undermining his effort.

Dave Treen entered office in March 1980 with Louisiana's unemployment rate at 6.4 percent.

In 1982, Dave Treen proposed a $450 million tax on petroleum and natural gas, to support preservation of coastal wetlands, as more was being understood about their critical role in protecting the coast.

Dave Treen defended CWEL on the premise that it would place no undue burden on any individual or group and would increase the state coffers at a much higher yield than would a boost in the state income tax.

In 1986, out of office, Dave Treen noted that state finances had declined by $450 million, an amount which he had projected CWEL would have brought into the state treasury.

In December 1982, Dave Treen abandoned his call for new taxes and attempted to cut $150 million from the state budget to provide seniority raises for state employees.

Dave Treen worked to reform the state worker's compensation program, long known for its high insurance rates on business.

Dave Treen recommended $411,907, an amount considerably lower than Freeman had requested; the latter said he would have to lay off six of his fifteen employees.

Dave Treen picked up the support of former US Representative James Domengeaux, a Democrat from Lafayette and director of the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana.

On July 20,1984, Treen filed to be a candidate for that year's US Senate election to challenge incumbent Democratic US Senator J Bennett Johnston, only to withdraw four days later.

On June 30,1994, Dave Treen announced a comeback candidacy for governor of Louisiana.

On July 25,1995, The Times-Picayune published a front-page story revealing that Dave Treen's son received tuition waivers at the Tulane University School of Medicine in the early 1980s when Dave Treen was governor.

Dave Treen declared on March 11,2003 that he would run for that year's gubernatorial election.

Dave Treen eventually backed Republican candidate Bobby Jindal, who took first place in the open primary but lost the runoff to Democratic candidate Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Blanco.

On October 23,2007, Dave Treen announced that he would be a candidate in the March 8,2008, special election to succeed Bobby Jindal, who was elected governor.

Dave Treen cited his experience and political ties in Washington, DC as reasons for his candidacy.

Once among four Republican candidates, Dave Treen withdrew from consideration on January 28,2008.

Later in the year for the 2008 US Senate election, Dave Treen endorsed the reelection of Democratic US Senator Mary Landrieu against Republican state Treasurer John Neely Kennedy.

From 1951 until her death in 2005, Dave Treen was married to Dolores "Dodie" Brisbi, a graduate of Newcomb College in New Orleans.

Dave Treen's eldest grandson, Jason Neville, was a chair of the Louisiana Green Party.

Dave Treen died from complications from a respiratory illness at East Jefferson General Hospital in Metairie.

Condolences and kinds words poured in from around the state, typified by Southeastern Louisiana University president John L Crain's tribute that Treen "was a true Louisiana icon, a Republican governor in Louisiana before it was cool".

Dave Treen's body lay in state at the Louisiana State Capitol following a memorial service on November 2,2009.

Dave Treen played a huge role in breaking the Democratic Party's monopoly on the South.

Dave Treen played an important role in organizing US House Republicans toward a conservative, reformist model in the late 1970s to help lay the groundwork for the Reagan presidency.

Dave Treen planted the seeds of reform in Louisiana government.