Royal Alexander

Richard Royal Alexander​ (Louisiana attorney and political activist)
Born	February 18, 1966​ Shreveport, Louisiana, USA​
Political Party	Republican candidate for Louisiana attorney general in 2007​ Alma mater: Louisiana State University in Shreveport ​ Oklahoma City University School of Law​

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Richard Royal Alexander, known as Royal Alexander (born February 18, 1966), is an attorney and politician in his native Shreveport, Louisiana, who in 2007 was the Republican-endorsed candidate for Louisiana state attorney general.​

Education and career

The fifth of twelve children born to a prominent Shreveport businessman, Alexander was educated in private elementary and secondary schools. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Louisiana State University in Shreveport. He obtained his law degree from Oklahoma City University School of Law, at which he served on the Law Review and Moot Court. He was a law clerk to U.S. District Judge Rebecca F. Doherty of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana. An appointee of former U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush, Doherty is based in Lafayette and Opelousas, Louisiana. Himself a former administrative law judge, Alexander has also been in private practice, handling both criminal and civil cases.​

Alexander was chief of staff to former U.S. Representative Rodney Alexander of Louisiana's 5th congressional district The two are unrelated. In 2006, the Democrats in Washington, D.C., accused Royal Alexander and several others, including members of Congress, of having acted too slowly regarding the disclosure of the name of the congressional page who was sent inappropriate email messages by then U.S. Representative Mark Foley of Florida. (The page lived in Rodney Alexander's House district.) Evidence showed that Royal Alexander reported the inappropriate email messages to the staff of House leadership upon his learning of the information. The matter quickly died after the 2006 congressional election, in which Democrats gained control of both houses of Congress.​

Race for attorney general

A first-time candidate for public office in 2007, Alexander finished second to James D. "Buddy" Caldwell, then a Democrat, in the nonpartisan blanket primary for state attorney general. Alexander outpolled incumbent Democrat Charles Carmen Foti, Jr., of New Orleans for the right to enter the general election against Caldwell, a five-term district attorney from Tallulah in northeast Louisiana.​

Caldwell received 477,574 votes; Alexander 395,645 votes. Foti (previously the long-time sheriff of Orleans Parish) finished with 389,658. With only four weeks between the primary and the general election, the traditional Democratic political machine of sheriffs and district attorneys flocked to fellow Democrat Caldwell. Alexander was defeated in the second round of balloting when Foti's base switched to Caldwell. In 2011, Caldwell switched his affiliation to the Republican Party and won a second term but was defeated in 2015 by Republican Jeff Landry.​

Alexander's principal strength in his losing campaign was in Shreveport, Alexandria, and Monroe.​

Caddo Parish assessor candidacy

Alexander was the unsuccessful Republican candidate in the October 22, 2011, primary for Caddo Parish tax assessor. He polled 16,255 votes (34.9 percent), while the incumbent Democrat, Charles Russell Henington, Jr. (born September 1957), received 30,310 votes (65.1 percent). Henington last faced opposition in 1999, when he won the assessor's position by defeating an earlier Republican candidate, John W. Wessler, by a five-to-one margin. Henington's father, Charles Henington, Sr. (1936-1986), and his step-grandfather, Albert Galloway Hammett, Sr. (1881–1974), previously served as the Caddo Parish assessor, having kept that office within the reach of his family for seventy-eight years. A. G. Hammett was the assessor from 1933 to 1964.​

According to KTBS-TV, ABC in Shreveport, an independent survey of property tax rates around the state by the demographer Elliott Stonecipher concludes that Shreveport and Caddo Parish residents pay the highest such taxes of any metropolitan area in Louisiana. Alexander said that the assessments are inflated and had pledged had he been elected to reduce them. Alexander also accused Henington of not informing senior citizens that they retain the option of freezing their property taxes once they reach the age of sixty-five.​

9/11 recollection

Alexander is a frequent lecturer to various civic and educational organizations regarding the United States Constitution. He also serves as an occasional media guest giving analysis on current political and social issues as they relate to the United States Constitution. ​He pens occasional opinion columns for The Shreveport Times.

Alexander was in Washington, D.C., in a hotel in Crystal City, Virginia, the night before September 11, 2001. He was raising funds for a comeback congressional bid waged in 2002 by former conservative U.S. Representative Clyde Cecil Holloway (1943-2016), who was subsequently eliminated from the runoff contest by the young Republican Lee Fletcher, who was then narrowly defeated by Rodney Alexander, then a Democrat, but a Republican after the summer of 2004. At the time of the attack on the Pentagon, Alexander said that he:

heard a roar. The sound startled me. I walked out to the parking lot of the hotel and looked across the way and saw black smoke billowing from a corner of the Pentagon. Shortly thereafter, there was an exodus of terrified-looking people from the Pentagon into Crystal City. After this panic, D.C. was locked down. (D.C. was so eerily still, so dead, that I have imagined we would have to go back to our nation’s founders and their horse-drawn carriages to find a time the city was so silent and unmoving). …

9/11 is indelibly imprinted in my memory both because of the evil that is reflected in such an act and the more than 3,000 American lives tragically lost and because of the powerful sense of patriotism and unity that can exist in our great country when we stand together.

On this day, and on Veterans Day and Memorial Day, I say a simple prayer in gratitude for those who have suffered and died on our behalf – and remind myself to strive to be worthy of their sacrifice. I include in my prayer the hope that we may find a way — without a tragedy — to be as united as we were then.

In search of the silent majority

In June 2020, Alexander, a supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump, evoked the idea of the "silent majority" in politics:

While this is a difficult and chaotic time in our nation’s history, we should not lose hope because a storm is coming, and it will be brought about by millions of humble, faithful Americans....
We are shouted down as racist simply by pointing out that the appropriate, legal manner by which to make lasting social change ... is by voting, organizing, marching, striking, and boycotting, and not by a brick through the car window or a torch through the front door of a small business. ...

There is a storm coming, but it’s not the one the often-dishonest national media and radical Left envision. It’s the silent majority of millions of Americans who quietly but proudly hold on to their love of country, constitutional freedoms, and faith in God — for which we are mocked when we kneel in prayer — while kneeling during the national anthem is celebrated. As Americans, the large majority of us are kind, generous, and peace-loving. However, we are not going to be silenced; neither are our values and freedoms going to be sacrificed on the altar of political correctness. Through the strength of our prayers and our vote we will be heard from soon.

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