Ben Bagert

Bernard John "Ben" Bagert, Jr.
Ben Bagert
Louisiana State Representative from District 24, later District 98 (Orleans Parish)
In office 1970 – 1984
Preceded by	Thomas A. Early, Jr.
Succeeded by	Garey Forster
Louisiana State Senator from District 4 (Orleans Parish)
In office 1984 – 1992
Preceded by	Michael H. O'Keefe, Jr.
Succeeded by	Marc Morial
Born	January 1944(aged 64) New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
Political party	Democrat-turned-Republican
Occupation	Attorney

Bernard John "Ben" Bagert, Jr. (born January 10, 1944) is a prominent New Orleans attorney who was a Democratic member of both houses of the Louisiana State Legislature from 1970-1992. Bagert switched affiliation to the Republican Party and mounted a challenge in 1990 to entrenched Democratic U.S. Senator J. Bennett Johnston, Jr., of Shreveport, first elected in 1972. Two days before the jungle primary, Bagert withdrew from the race to help Johnston defeat a second Republican candidate opposed by the party's establishment, the controversial former Ku Klux Klansman David Duke. In 1991, Bagert did not seek reelection to the Louisiana State Senate but instead ran as the Republican choice for attorney general in an unsuccessful bid to succeed the retiring William J. "Billy" Guste, Jr., also of New Orleans.

Contents 1 Early years and education 2 Six legislative elections as a Democrat 3 The aborted campaign against Bennett Johnston 4 The Louisiana Code of Evidence 5 The campaign for attorney general, 1991 6 References

Early years and education

Bagert graduated from the Loyola University School of Law in New Orleans in 1968. He was a "Blue Key" National Honor Fraternity member and the president of the student body in law school. He was admitted to the practice of law before the Fifth and Eleventh Circuit Courts of Appeals. Bagert has written textbooks on Louisiana succession and family law. His law firm is located at 650 Poydras Street adjacent to the federal courthouse in New Orleans. He has practiced primarily in Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi. The firm handles administrative law, business law, construction law, medical malpractice, and personal injury cases.

Bagert's younger brother, Broderick A. Bagert, Sr., is a former member of the New Orleans City Council. For a time, the Bagerts were a political team who often sparred with popular New Orleans state Senator Ignatz "Nat" Kiefer (1939-1985). Brod Bagert (born 1947) left the practice of law and is a poet, lecturer, and author of children's books.

Six legislative elections as a Democrat

At twenty-six, Bagert won a special election in Orleans Parish for the Louisiana House of Representatives in District 24 (later District 98) created by the resignation of Democratic Representative Thomas A. Early, Jr. Bagert won full terms to the state House in 1972, 1975, and 1979. He was a member of the "Young Turks" reformers led by future Speaker E.L. "Bubba" Henry of Jonesboro in Jackson Parish and Robert G. "Bob" Jones of Lake Charles in Calcasieu Parish, the son of former Governor Sam Houston Jones. Bagert often questioned certain state expenditures. In the spring of 1972, for instance, he asked why the state continued to spend $214,488 per year to maintain the Louisiana Livestock Brand Commission, which he described as a useless entity whose members "ride around looking for stolen cows and checking brands on cows."^[1]

In 1983, he was elected to the first of two terms to the state Senate. In his last election victory in the 1987 jungle primary, Bagert, still a Democrat, defeated his Republican challenger, Harry T. Begg, III, by a huge margin: 23,953 (89 percent) to 3,043 (11 percent). All of Bagert's legislative elections in fact occurred on the Democratic ticket.

The aborted campaign against Bennett Johnston

Bagert was the official Republican Party choice to challenge Democratic Senator Johnston in the 1990 primary, but state Representative Duke of Jefferson Parish (1989-1992) ran as well and won the support of many blue collar white voters, particularly in rural areas and small towns who were not attracted to Bagert's more moderate, less controversial brand of conservatism. Virginia Republican leader and Iran-Contra figure Oliver L. North campaigned for Bagert, four years before North would make his own ill-fated Senate race against Senator Charles Robb, a son-in-law of Lyndon B. Johnson.

Bagert's list of contributors includes Governor David C. Treen, the state's first Republican congressman and governor since Reconstruction; Bryan Wagner, the first GOP member elected in modern times to the New Orleans City Council; John Hainkel, a Democrat and later Republican member of the state Senate from an Orleans-area district; party chairmen James H. Boyce (shortly before his death) of Baton Rouge, George Despot of Shreveport, Donald Bollinger of Lockport, and William "Billy" Nungesser of New Orleans; Louis Roussel, a businessman and financier who had bankrolled campaigns of earlier Democrats, including William J. "Bill" Dodd; future Congressman and U.S. Senator David Vitter of Metairie; the late "Cajun" humorist, chef, and former Democrat Justin Wilson; Dalton Woods, a Shreveport oilman and friend of President George Herbert Walker Bush; state Representative Clark Gaudin of Baton Rouge, New Orleans businessman James A. Noe, son of a former Democratic governor; future U.S. Senate candidate Suzanne Haik Terrell, another former member of the New Orleans City Council; former state Senator "Bob" Jones, the Lake Charles stockbroker; and even a Texas-Louisiana businessman, Albert Bel Fay, who had once been the Republican national committeeman from Texas.

No matter how hard Bagert campaigned, and no matter how popular Oliver North was with some Louisiana Republicans, nothing seemed to help Bagert's prospects, for he lagged in the public opinion polls throughout the race. In the week before the primary, U.S. Senator John C. Danforth of Missouri announced that he was "supporting" his Democratic colleague Johnston. He urged Bagert to leave the race so that Johnston could oppose Duke head-to-head. Soon, other Louisiana supporters also urged that Bagert pull out on the grounds that he had little chance of victory. A saddened Bagert withdrew two days before the balloting. He had already received an undisclosed number of absentee ballots. His name remained on the ballot, but any votes that he still received were not counted under Louisiana election law.

Johnston won reelection to his fourth and final term with 753,198 votes (54 percent) to Duke's 607,091 (43 percent). Another 3 percent was shared by two minor Democratic candidates. Therefore, many in the Republican establishment voted for Johnston even though they had recruited Bagert to try to unseat Johnston. It was not be the last time that state party leaders would also vote Democratic to block Duke. A year later, many Republicans supported discredited Governor Edwin Washington Edwards in order to thwart the gubernatorial candidacy of Duke.

The Louisiana Code of Evidence

After nearly two centuries of controversial efforts and aborted attempts to codify Louisiana's evidence law, an Evidence Code was finally enacted in 1988 and it took effect on January 1, 1989.¹

The evidentiary reform movement began in Britain in the early nineteenth century under the leadership of Jeremy Bentham. “Within a short time of the publication of Bentham's ‘Theory of Judicial Evidence’ in 1818, Louisiana's great Edward Livingston² (America's Bentham, as he was characterized by Wigmore) prepared and proposed to the Louisiana Legislature a Code of Evidence for this state, designed to govern proceedings in both civil and criminal cases. Had it been adopted, the development of evidence law in the United States might well have been very different. However . . . the Livingston Evidence Code was not adopted by the Louisiana Legislature, and more than a century and a half was to elapse before an evidence code for Louisiana would finally be adopted.²

By the middle of the twentieth century Louisiana evidence law had become notoriously murky and uncertain.

This confusion led to a second attempt at codification in 1956. After some ten years of effort the Louisiana Law Institute abandoned the project, in part because the contending forces simply could not agree . . . .

In 1979 the quest for an evidence code was renewed by Ben Bagert, a state legislator who was also a lawyer with an active litigation practice. By then, a Federal Evidence Code had been adopted and Bagert had experienced, first hand, how justice was better served when the court and the litigants had a rule book to guide them. Because Bagert believed that these benefits were achievable in state court proceedings, he persuaded the Legislature to direct that a code of evidence be drafted.³ Following this directive, the Louisiana Law Institute again accepted the challenge of compiling a code and a proposal was published and submitted to the legislature in 1986. But, as with the Livingston Code and the 1956 attempt by the Law Institute, the Proposed Code proved controversial. What the plaintiffs' bar liked, the defense bar disliked. What prosecutors abhorred, criminal defense lawyers applauded. The Proposed Code did not come out of committee in the 1986 legislature. In the 1987 session, another stalemate⁴ blocked the adoption of Bagert’s bill proposing an Evidence Code.

Observers of the legislature were predicting a similar fate for the Proposed Code in the 1988 legislative session. However, as lead author of the bill, Bagert had been conducting frequent meetings with the competing forces who had doomed the codes of prior years. On the night before his bill was to be considered by Senate Committee, Senator Bagert, sensing that a compromise was achievable, convened a meeting of opposing factions in the Senate basement. In attendance besides Senator Bagert were Kerry Triche, of the Louisiana Law Institute; Jack Martzell, of the Louisiana Trial Lawyers Association; John Mamoulides and Bernie Boudreaux, district attorneys representing the District Attorneys Association; and Robert Glass, Frank Desalvo, James E. Boren, and John Reed, eminent criminal defense lawyers. Just before midnight a compromise was achieved and additional amendments were drafted at this meeting for consideration by the committee when morning arrived.

On the ensuing day, legislative observers were stunned to see that the competing adversaries had agreed to the enactment of an evidence code as amended.

After the compromise, Senator Bagert’s bill was enacted by the legislature and signed into law by Governor Buddy Roemer.

1 Senate Bill 155 by Senator Ben Bagert became Act 515 of 1988. 2 Edward Livingston (May 26, 1764––May 23, 1836) was a prominent American jurist and statesman. He was an influential figure in the drafting of the Louisiana Civil Code of 1825, a civil code based largely on the Napoleonic Code. He represented both New York, and later Louisiana in Congress and he served as the U.S. Secretary of State from 1831 to 1833. 249 La. L. Rev. 689

3 La. H.R. Con. Res. 250, Reg. Sess. (1979) by Representative Ben Bagert 4 Senate Bill by Senator Bagert was rejected.

The campaign for attorney general, 1991

In 1991, Bagert ran for attorney general. He faced a formidable opponent in Richard Ieyoub, a lawyer from Lake Charles. Ieyoub won the race by more than a 2-1 margin: 1,147,592 (69 percent) to 517,660 (31 percent). Bagert even lost his home base, heavily Democratic Orleans Parish. The attorney general's race was the last campaign that Bagert waged. He has since concentrated on his successful law practice.

In 1996, Bagert was a Louisiana delegate to the Republican National Convention in San Diego, which nominated the unsuccessful Robert J. Dole and Jack French Kemp ticket.

Bagert's home in the Lakeview area of New Orleans was flooded in Hurricane Katrina. The damage occurred when the nearby 17th Street Canal broke during the storm.

Preceded by Thomas A. Early, Jr.	Louisiana State Representative from District 24 (later 98) (Orleans Parish Bernard John "Ben" Bagert, Jr. 1970–1984	Succeeded by Garey Forster
Preceded by Michael H. O'Keefe, Jr.	Louisiana State Senator from District 4 (Orleans Parish) Bernard John "Ben" Bagert, Jr. 1984–1992	Succeeded by Marc Morial

References

http://www.newsmeat.com/campaign_contributions_to_politicians/donor_list.php?candidate_id=S0LA00055&li=V

http://www.bagertlaw.com/

http://www.time.com/time/archive/printout/0,23657,971358,00.html

http://www.bestofneworleans.com/dispatch/2002-08-20/politics.html

http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=16530986

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/conventions/san.diego/facts/delegate.profile/LA.shtml

http://www.sos.louisiana.gov:8090/cgibin/?rqstyp=elcms2&rqsdta=111691

http://www.sos.louisiana.gov:8090/cgibin/?rqstyp=elcms2&rqsdta=100690

http://www.sos.louisiana.gov:8090/cgibin/?rqstyp=elcpr&rqsdta=10248736

http://www.djournal.com/pages/story.asp?ID=203947&pub=1&div=News

http://ssdi.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/ssdi.cgi?lastname=KIEFER&start=3041