Member, Franklin Parish Board of Elections
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'''John Henry Baker, III''' (October 20, 1934 – January 9, 2015), was a [[farmer]] and landowner from Franklin Parish in northeastern [[Louisiana]] who was active in the rebirth of the [[Republican Party]] in his state during the 1970s and 1980s. Baker was his party's nominee for the District 22 seat in the Louisiana State Senate in 1972 and for the since disbanded position of state elections commissioner in 1979. He was the first to propose the abolition of the commissioner's post (originally called the "custodian of voting machines") with the return of the duties to the Louisiana Secretary of State. Baker's proposal was adopted a quarter of a century later in 2004.
==State senate race==
In the winter of 1971-19721971–1972, Baker ran for the state Senate against the 31-year-old Democratic nominee, [[James H. "Jim" Brown]], a graduate of [[Tulane University]] Law School in [[New Orleans]] and the father of [[television]] journalist Campbell Brown. At the time Brown was a politically ambitious lawyer in Ferriday in Concordia Parish, located along the [[Mississippi River]] across from Natchez, Mississippi. Besides Franklin and Concordia, the district included Catahoula and Tensas parishes. The outgoing senator was Jess Carr "Sonny" Gilbert (1922-2014) of Sicily Island in Catahoula Parish. Gilbert ran successfully for the state House that year; after he left the legislature, he switched to Republican affiliation.
Brown was an easy winner in the [[general election]], 17,151 votes (64.1 percent) to Baker's 9,587 (35.9 percent). Baker had been the first Republican ever to contest the 32nd District seat. With the boundaries altered, the district for the first time elected a Republican state senator on November 17, 2007, when GOP businessman [[Neil Riser ]] of Columbia in Caldwell Parish, defeated the Democratic candidate, [[Bryant Hammett]], an engineer from Ferriday.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://voterportal.sos.la.gov/static/#/2007-11-17/resultsRace/Legislative|title=Election Returns|date=November 17, 2007|publisher=voterportal.sos.la.gov|accessdate=May 11, 2016}}</ref> The Senate seat was vacated by the term-limited Democrat [[Noble Ellington]] of Winnsboro, who instead returned to the Louisiana House for one more term after an absence of twelve years.
==Race for constitutional convention delegate==
In August 1972, five months after he lost the state Senate race, Baker ran unsuccessfully in the nonpartisan race for delegate to the state constitutional convention, which met in [[Baton Rouge]] in 1973. It adopted a new constitution, which voters approved in a [[special election]] held in the spring of 1974.
Baker filed for delegate in the state legislative district for Franklin and Tensas parishes. He was defeated by Democratic state Representative [[Lantz Womack (1914-1998) ]] of Winnsboro.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.house.louisiana.gov/H_PDFdocs/HouseMembership_History_CURRENT.pdf|title=Membership of the Louisiana House of Representatives, 1812-2020 |publisher=Louisiana House of Representatives|accessdate=March 22, 2019}}</ref> As a young man, Womack had played [[baseball]] for the former Winnsboro Red Sox at a time when many small towns had their own teams. Baker's father organized two Winnsboro teams, one for whites and the other for [[African-American]] players. Womack, a businessman and farmer, was first elected to the House seat from Franklin Parish in a [[special election]] in 1958, and he held the seat until 1976. In his last reelection on February 1, 1972, Womack polled 67 percent of the vote against the Republican nominee, Terry Clingan (1918–2007), the stepfather of state Republican pioneer [[Robert Max Ross]]. Clingan was a barber from Mangham in Richland Parish and later from Baskin, a village in Franklin Parish. Coincidentally, Womack was once a bookkeeper for the Bakers.
==Challenging Jerry Fowler==
In 1979, Baker announced that he would challenge the Democrat [[Jerry Fowler]], then a [[Natchitoches, Louisiana|Natchitoches]] businessman, in the race for elections commissioner. Fowler (1940-2009) was seeking to succeed his ailing father, [[Douglas Fowler]], the former Red River Parish clerk of court and one-time [[mayor]] of Coushatta. Fowler had been appointed to the post by [[Governor]] [[Earl Long|Earl Kemp Long]], after Long had quarreled with Secretary of State [[Wade O. Martin, Jr.]], by procuring legislative consent to remove the elections office from the domain of the secretary of state. Douglas Fowler was then elected to his first full term in 1960 and then reelected with minimal opposition in 1964, 1968, 1972, and 1976. (The primaries for the three latter elections were actually held late in 1967, 1971, and 1975.) To Louisiana voters, the name "Fowler" became synonymous with the management of elections – the two won a total of ten consecutive elections.
Baker ran for elections commissioner, basing his campaign on abolishing the "useless" office, which then had a salary of $37,400 per year, and returning its duties to the secretary of state, where they had been before Earl Long punished Martin, who had continued to be reelected secretary of state until his retirement in 1976.<ref>''[[Shreveport Journal]]'', October 11, 1969, p. 9D.</ref> Ironically, what Baker was proposing would have worked to the advantage of Baker's former rival, state Senator Jim Brown, who would be elected secretary of state in the same 1979 election. When Baker offered his proposal to abolish the very office for which he was seeking election, he began to make headway. He won a student mock poll at Louisiana State University at Alexandria and several other colleges as well as the endorsements of "good government" groups and most of the state's newspapers. ''The New Orleans Times-Picayune'' did not "endorse" Baker, however, but "recommended" his idea of abolishing the office.
Baker polled 175,017 votes in the nonpartisan blanket primary, just enough to enter the 1979 general election against Jerry Fowler, who had been a former professional [[football]] player and a former educator. Baker and Republican gubernatorial candidate [[David C. Treen]], then of Jefferson Parish, were the first Louisiana Republicans to win statewide general election slots since the implementation of the nonpartisan blanket primary law in 1975.<ref>''The [[Alexandria Town Talk]],'' November 10, 1979, p. 3D.</ref> (The law did not take effect for congressional elections until 1978, and it ended for those elections in 2008 but was reinstated in 2010.)
In the second round of balloting, Fowler polled 762,324 votes (62.8 percent) to Baker's 452,189 (37.2 percent). Baker won 68.1 percent in his own Franklin Parish, which Treen lost to the Democrat [[Louis Lambert]] of Ascension Parish. Baker won 55.8 percent and 51.2 percent in his neighboring Richland and Ouachita parishes, respectively. He polled 49.1 percent in Caddo Parish ([[Shreveport]]) and ran nearly as well in Calcasieu Parish ([[Lake Charles]]),<ref>''Baton Rouge State-Times'', December 22, 1979, p. 16C.</ref> where he had the support of former state Senator [[Robert G. Jones]], the stockbroker son of former Governor [[Sam Houston Jones]].
==References==
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[[Category:United States Air Force]]