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/* Race for lieutenant governor */
Other candidates on the Morrison slate were state Representative Jack M. Dyer of Baton Rouge for insurance commissioner, and [[Raymond Laborde]], the mayor of Marksville in Avoyelles Parish for custodian of voting machines, a position later renamed elections commissioner. In 1968, when Duval entered the state Senate, Lieutenant Governor Aycock, presiding officer of the Senate, began his third term in the second-highest state office.
==Opposition to Martin Luther King holiday==
Duval was state senator-elect at the time of the King assassination in [[Memphis]],[[Tennessee]], on April 4, 1968. He issued a statement critical of the direction of the civil rights movement:
I know I speak against the tide of overwhelming emotion ... but let the voice of truth be heard in the land. If it is possible, let the voice of reason be heard. Then may the Negro and the white communities join together in a truthful and realistic effort to build a better society.'''</blockquote>
==Duval as As state senatorSenator==
Once in the state Senate, Duval spoke eloquently and for long periods on nearly any topic brought before the body. Some called him the "Cicero of the Louisiana Senate." He was also helpful to colleagues in obtaining office space and other personal favors. In 2006, the state Senate posthumously honored him with the dedication of the Senate building known as "Duval Hall."
[[Robert G. Jones]], a [[Lake Charles]] stockbroker and the son of former Governor [[Sam Houston Jones]], served in the Senate with Duval from 1972 to 1976. According to Jones, Duval was "a very bright guy ... one of the most respected of all the senators." Jones said that he believed Morrison had tapped Duval as a running mate because of Duval's towering character and reputation, not because of political philosophical considerations.
In 1976, Duval was the co-chair of the [[Gerald Ford]]-[[Bob Dole]] campaign in Louisiana, which was defeated by the Democrat [[Jimmy Carter]] and [[Walter Mondale]] forces.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0036/pdd760925.pdf|title=Louisiana, September 25, 1976|publisher=fordlibrarymuseum.gov|accessdate=May 31, 2014}}</ref>
Duval served three terms in retired from the Senate before he retired in March 1980. In 1983, President [[Ronald W. Reagan]] signed legislation legislatih n to designate the third Monday of January as the federal holiday in honor of Dr. King. The law took effect in January 1986, two months before King critic Claude Duval died.
Duval's social conservatism also included opposition to the proposed [[Equal Rights Amendment]]. When the measure failed to gain ratification after an extended deadline in 1982, Duval recalled that "in the Sixties everybody was obsessed with their [sic] rights. Everybody worried about their [sic] rights. Rather than rights, people should talk more about their responsibility to their country."
After he left the state Senate, Duval's political contributions went mostly to [[Republican Party|Republicans]]. There is no indication, however, that he himself switched parties. Among recipients of his donations were the Ronald W. Reagan presidential campaign, the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, [[Republican Party|GOP]] Congressman William Henson Moore, III, of Baton Rouge, who ran for the [[U.S. Senate]] in 1986, and Democratic and later Republican Congressman Wilbert Joseph "Billy" Tauzin, Jr., of Lafourche Parish]]. Duval's contribution to Moore came in the spring of 1985.
Duval survived his wife, the former Betty Bowman (1914–1985), by five months. He was survived by a daughter, Dorothy Duval Nelson,, whose husband, Charles Waldemar Nelson (both born 1947), is the former president of the World Trade Center in New Orleans; two grandchildren; his brother, Stanwood Duval (1913–2001); a sister, Catherine Duval Dean (1916–1997) of [[Albuquerque]], [[New Mexico]]; a maternal aunt, Alice Richardson Butler (1910–1995), and a maternal uncle who was his junior in age, Frank D. Richardson (1916–1993), both of St. Joseph in Tensas Parish.
Duval also had two [[nephew]]s, his namesake Claude Berwick Duval, II (born 1955), a prominent Houma attorney, and U.S. District Judge Stanwood Richardson Duval, Jr. (born 1942), an appointee of President [[Bill Clinton]], based in New Orleans. Judge Stanwood Duval, a Democrat, blocked the implementation of the "Choose Life" license plates approved by the state legislature on grounds that the optional plates were in violation of the First Amendment]] to the [[United States Constitution]]. Judge Duval's argument was unanimously reversed in 2005 by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, also in New Orleans. A perfectly divided en banc court denied a petition for rehearing by a vote of eight-to-eight. Judge Duval is clearly to the political left of his late uncle. However, Claude Duval was a strong advocate of the First Amendment but also supported [[abortion]].
