Robert Max Ross
| Robert Max Ross | |
|---|---|
| Born | August 5, 1933 Baskin, Franklin Parish, Louisiana |
| Died | September 15, 2009 Baton Rouge, Louisiana |
| Political Party | Republican; ran for governor of Louisiana in 1971 and 1983 and United States Senate in 1984 and 1986 |
| Spouse | Barbara Faye Paul "Bobbie" Ross (married c. 1958-2009, his death) Children: |
| Religion | Southern Baptist |
Robert Max Ross (August 5, 1933 – September 15, 2009) was a small businessman from Mangham in Richland Parish in northeast Louisiana who ran unsuccessfully as a Republican candidate for governor, U.S. senator, state senator, and mayor during a time when two-party competition was rare in his state.
Background
Ross was born in Baskin, a village in Franklin Parish, to Robert States Ross and the former Ruby Seymour (1911-2002), but he resided in Mangham most of his life. In 1951, he graduated from Mangham High School. In 1956, he obtained a Bachelor of Science degree, with a major in agriculture, from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. He was commissioned through Reserve Officers Training Corps as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force, served in the Vietnam War, and was a major in the Air Force Reserves. After his military service, he returned to Mangham, where he engaged in a number of businesses, including the ownership of a mobile home park.
Ross's stepfather was Terry Clingan (March 24, 1918 – December 3, 2007), the Mangham town barber. After the death of Clingan's first wife, the former Vera Wallace, he married again in 1949 — to Ross' mother. The marriage lasted fifty-three years until her death. Clingan served in World War II, was a master Mason and a deacon of the First Baptist Church of Mangham.[1] Robert States Ross was killed in an accident in a shipyard in Galveston, Texas, when Ross was a boy.
Political races
Ross first ran for office in December 1971 in the only Republican gubernatorial closed primary ever held in the history of Louisiana. He was soundly defeated for the GOP nomination by the Metairie attorney David C. Treen, who had run unsuccessfully for the United States House of Representatives from suburban New Orleans in 1962, 1964, and 1968. Treen had the support of the party leadership, including chairman Charles C. de Gravelles, Sr., of Lafayette. Ross was the "outsider"; party leaders and voters preferred the "insider" Treen.
Ross also filed as a candidate for the Louisiana State Senate in the general election held in Madison Parish in northeastern Louisiana. While Ross opposed Charles M. Brown, his stepfather, Terry Clingan, waged an unsuccessful Republican campaign against Democratic State Representative Lantz Womack of Winnsboro in Ross's native Franklin Parish.
After the 1971-1972 campaigns, little was heard of Ross again for a decade. In 1983, he filed for the nonpartisan blanket primary, also called the jungle primary, for governor and polled a minuscule 7,625 ballots. The other Republican candidate that year was David Treen, by then the embattled incumbent governor, who failed in his bid for a second term. Treen received 588,508 ballots, but the easy winner was the Democratic choice, former Governor Edwin Edwards, with 1,006,561 votes.
In 1984, Ross challenged the two-term incumbent U.S. Senator J. Bennett Johnston, Jr., of Shreveport. Several minor candidates filed against Johnston in the primary but none made a showing. Some Republicans had encouraged Treen to make the race, but he demurred after his lopsided loss the previous year for governor. Ross therefore ran as the best-known of the Republican candidates against Johnston. The tally was 838,181 votes (85.7 percent) for Johnston and 86,546 votes (8.9 percent) for Ross.
When U.S. Senator Russell B. Long retired, Ross entered the primary in September 1986 to choose a successor. He finished far to the rear, as two members of the United States House of Representatives, Republican W. Henson Moore, III, of Baton Rouge and Democrat John Breaux of Crowley in Acadia Parish, secured general election berths. Breaux went on to defeat Moore by 77,000 votes and held the seat for eighteen years until he retired in January 2005.
In October 2002, Ross ran for mayor of Mangham, but he polled only ten votes, or 7 percent of the total against the incumbent Democrat, Robert Neal Harwell, who received 141 votes (93 percent). Ross had quarreled with Harwell and the village council over water-related issues when he made his mayoral bid. In 1990, a Republican, Royce Vernon Lowery (born September 1927), was elected to the Mangham village council, while the Republican Mayor Frellsen Reese was retiring after a decade in the position. In addition to Lowery, the council then had two Democratic members and two no-party aldermen.
In 2007, Ross resurfaced with an advertisement in the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate which urged that a candidate, presumably a Republican, step forward to challenge the reelection of Democratic Attorney General Charles C. Foti, Jr., in the October 20, 2007, jungle primary. Ross listed a mailing address in the ad, but no telephone number or email address. Shortly after Ross' ad appeared, District Attorney James D. "Buddy" Caldwell, Jr., of Tallulah, a Democrat, announced that he would challenge Foti because of Foti's arrest of a doctor and two nurses in connection with deaths in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Foti was narrowly eliminated in the 2007 primary. Caldwell handily defeated Republican Royal Alexander of Shreveport in the November 17, 2007, general election but was himself unseated in 2015 by Republican Jeff Landry even after Caldwell had switched parties.
Death and legacy
Ross died from a lengthy illness at the home of his daughter, Cathy Ross Mitchell, and her husband, Patrick Mitchell, in Baton Rouge. In addition, he was survived by his wife of fifty-one years, the former Barbara Faye "Bobbie" Paul (born February 1940), originally from Simmesport in Pointe Coupee Parish; a son, Kenneth Ross and wife, Lottie Fields Ross, of Covington in St. Tammany Parish, and two other daughters, Tricia Ross Guidry and husband, Ricky Guidry, of Lake Charles, Louisiana, and Christy Ross Maier of Montgomery, Alabama; nine grandchildren, two sisters, Maxine Smart of Vidalia in Concordia Parish, and Terry Jean Agnew and husband, Raymond Agnew, of Monroe. Ross's late brother, Jimmy Dale Ross, was a Republican leader in Jonesville in Catahoula Parish. He also had a third sister, the late June Ross Rowland of Alto, Louisiana.
Ross's graveside services were held on September 18, 2009, at Gwin Cemetery in Mangham under the direction of Mulhearn Funeral Home in Rayville. The Clingans are also interred there.
Bennie McLain Hixon (1923-2014) of Monroe, Louisiana, an educator and a former principal at Mangham High School,[2] said that Ross may have been the first Republican in Mangham or at at least the first well-known member of his party there. "He helped break ground for the growth of the Republican Party in Richland Parish," said Hixon, a Democrat and the author of The History of Mangham and the Big Creek-Boeuf River to 1940.
References
- ↑ Terry Clingan. Findagrave.com. Retrieved on September 22, 2017.
- ↑ Bennie McLain Hixon. Monroe News Star. Retrieved on October 27, 2014.
Billy Hathorn, "The Republican Party in Louisiana, 1920-1980" (M.A. thesis, Northwestern State University at Natchitoches, 1980)
