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The Marksville mayor from 1958 to 1970, Laborde thereafter served five terms from 1972 to 1992 in the Louisiana House of Representatives.<ref name=listing>{{cite web|url=
http://house.louisiana.gov/H_PDFdocs/HouseMembership_History_CURRENT.pdf|title=Membership of the Louisiana House of Representatives, 1812-2020 (Avoyelles Parish|publisher=Louisiana House of Representatives|accessdate=November 3, 2019}}</ref><ref>The state legislative listing indicates that Laborde began his legislative service in 1968, but P. J. Laborde served from 1968 to 1972.</ref> He was a House [[Governor|gubernatorial]] floor leader, the Speaker Pro Tempore from 1982 to 1984,<ref name=listing/> and in his last full term the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.<ref name=nyt>{{cite newsweb|url= http://www.nytimes.com/1990/07/13/us/louisiana-governor-tells-of-quandary-over-bill-to-ban-abortion.html?pagewanted=a|publisher=''[[The New York Times]]''|author=Lisa Belkin|title=Louisiana Governor Tells of Quandary over Bill to Ban Abortion|date=July 13, 1990|accessdate=November 3, 2019}}</ref>
After his election without opposition to a sixth term in the 1991 nonpartisan blanket primary, Laborde resigned to become commissioner of administration in the fourth and final nonconsecutive term of his boyhood friend, [[Governor]] [[Edwin Edwards]].<ref>{{cite web|url= http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-11846336.html|title= Gov.-elect Edwards names Raymond Laborde Louisiana's Commissioner of Administration|accessdate=December 18, 2009; no longer on-line; website no longer operational.}}</ref>
==Personal life==
Laborde was born to Dr. Emeric M. LaBorde (1901–1969), a Marksville [[dentist]], and the former Minnie L. Neck (1899–1994). As students at Marksville High School, Laborde in 1943 defeated Edwin Edwards for senior class president.<ref name=adtt>{{cite web|url=http://www.thetowntalk.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070318/COMMUNITIES/703160358|author=Philip Timothy|title=Ex-governor Edwin Washington]] tops list of colorful parish politicians"|publisher=''The Alexandria Town Talk''|date=March 18, 2007|accessdate=December 19, 2009}}</ref> In his first year in the House as an Edwards floor leader in 1972, Laborde balked at Edwards' call for a $1 billion tax increase. "And, oh man, did I catch hell. When I got back home, Edwin had put the word out, and everyone was calling me. Let me tell you, it was mighty uncomfortable. I couldn't wait for him to call a special session, so I could get back there and get that tax passed," Laborde said in a 2007 interview with ''The Alexandria Daily Town Talk''.<ref name=adtt/>
He operated his Raymond's Department Store, which once had eight competitors downtown. The store, no longer in existence, was the oldest jobber of Dickies work wear in Louisiana and later specialized in school uniforms.<ref>{{cite web|url= http://maps.google.com/maps/place?hl=en&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=Raymond%27s+Department+Store+in+Marksville&fb=1&gl=us&hq=Raymond%27s+Department+Store&hnear=Marksville&cid=6247615245347302389|title=Raymond’s Department Store|publisher=maps.google.com|accessdate=November3, 2019}}</ref>
On April 7, 2011, seven weeks after undergoing a heart operation, Laborde appeared before the Louisiana House Appropriations Committee that he had chaired years earlier. He excoriated the plan of Republican then Governor [[Bobby Jindal]] to presumably sell off five state prisons to Jindal's significant contributors, the GEO Groupmand the Corrections Corporation of America<ref>OpenSecrets.org and FollowTheMoney.org.</ref> for about $30 million each, far less than their replacement costs.<ref name=advocate>{{cite newsweb|url = http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/Prison-plan-dominates-public-comment-session.html|author=Michelle Millhollan|title=Prison plan dominates public comment session|publisher=''The Baton Rouge Advocate''|date=April 8, 2011|accessdate= April 10, 2011; no longer on-line}}</ref>
==References==
