| Billy Henry "Bill" Robertson | |
|---|---|
| Robertson campaign sign, 2010 | |
| Mayor of Minden, Louisiana, USA | |
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office 1990 |
|
| Preceded by | Paul Aaron Brown |
| Webster Parish Police Juror | |
| In office 1980 – 1988 |
|
| Minden Sanitation Commissioner | |
| In office 1974 – 1978 |
|
| Preceded by | Lonnie L. "Red" Cupples |
| Succeeded by | Position abolished by new city charter |
| Personal details | |
| Born | May 5, 1938 Batesville Independence County, Arkansas, USA |
| Nationality | American |
| Political party | Democratic Party |
| Spouse(s) | Barbara Kimmer Robertson |
| Children | Beverly, Brenda, and Kyle |
| Occupation | Businessman |
| Religion | Baptist |
Billy Henry Robertson, known as Bill Robertson (born May 5, 1938), is the Democratic mayor of the small city of Minden, the seat of Webster Parish in northwestern Louisiana, United States, having served since his initial election on November 6, 1990. On August 9, 2008, Robertson was elected president of the Louisiana Municipal Association at the group's annual convention in Lafayette. He succeeded outgoing LMA President Clarence R. Fields, the mayor of Pineville.[1]
Robertson won his sixth consecutive four-year term on October 2, 2010. He polled 1,885 votes (53 percent) against the Republican candidate, Alton Monroe "Al" Hortman, who also ran in 2006, and two "No Party" candidates, Deric Tate and Larry Botzong. Hortman fnished with 737 votes; Tate, 749 (both 21 percent), and Botzong, 170 (5 percent).[2]
In the 2006 general election, Robertson polled 2,054 votes (56 percent) and carried nine of the city's fifteen precincts. Hortman then trailed with 1,596 ballots (44 percent) and led in the six other precincts. Hortman hence received less than half the support in 2010 as he had in 2006.
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Robertson was born to Mr. and Mrs. Homer Floyd Robertson in Batesville, the seat of Independence County, in northern Arkansas.[3] Homer Robertson was born in 1910 and died in Minden in 1981. After a divorce, Homer Robertson married Jean Kimmer Stanfield (1925–2008), who was formerly married to Robert Stanfield, Sr. The couple had a son, Eddie Robertson (born 1962) of Minden, the half-brother of Bill Robertson and his brother, Bobby Gerald Robertson (born ca. 1944), subsequently of Branson, Missouri.[4] After their parents' divorce, Bill and Bobby Robertson were reared primarily by their late mother, a clerk in a shoe store.
Robertson and his wife, the former Barbara Kimmer, have three children. Robertson was an employee of Talbot's Shoe Store in Magnolia, Arkansas. He was sent to Minden to operate a Talbot's outlet and thereafter purchased the store from Ben Talbot and his father, D.O. Talbot, having renamed it "Robertson's Shoes".[5]
For a time, Bill and Barbara Robertson had two stores in Minden, one in Homer, the seat of Claiborne Parish, and a fourth in Shreveport, the seat of Caddo Parish in the northwestern corner of the state. Robertson put forth a budget for each store based on the past year's sales with growth projected in the totals.
In the meantime, Robertson also became involved in local politics: he was elected to the Minden City Council in September 1974, having defeated fellow Democrat Patrick Cary Nation (1918–2005), a retired educator, coach, and principal, for the specific position of sanitation commissioner. Nation's father, Abraham Brisco Nation, Sr. (1886-1933), had served as a city councilman from 1932 until he was shot to death on Armistice Day, 1933, during a heated political argument, by John L. Fort (1906-1992), a son of then Mayor Connell Fort, with whom the senior Nation had quarreled.[6]
Robertson took office in January 1975 and served until the abolition of the city commission government in 1978, when it was replaced by the current single-member-district mayor-council format. Thereafter, Robertson served from 1980-1988 in the District 6 seat on the Webster Parish Police Jury, the governing body of the parish, usually called the county commission in other states. In 1981, he survived a recall petition filed against him and several other jurors.[7]
Robertson ran unsuccessfully for mayor in the 1989 special election held to fill the remaining months of the term of another fellow Democrat, Noel Eugene "Gene" Byars (born 1939). Byars was recalled from the position in a "Yes" or "No" vote after a citizens' audit revealed that he had charged personal expenses to his municipal credit card. Robertson and two preceding Democratic mayors, J.E. "Pat" Patterson (1974–1978) and Jack Batton (1978–1982), contributed money to the recall against Byars. Byars hence left Minden and took a job in educational administration in Beaumont, the seat of Orange County, Texas.
African American City Councilman Robert T. Tobin filled in temporarily after Byars vacated the mayoral office and became Minden's first black mayor since Reconstruction. Tobin was unseated, however, in the November 7, 1989 special election by the GOP newcomer Paul Aaron Brown (1932–1996) for the year remaining in Byars' term. Brown had been the chamber-of-commerce executive director in Minden after coming to the city as a counselor to alcoholics. Robertson hence ran unsuccessfully against both Brown and Tobin that year.
In the 2000 census, Minden was declared 52.1 percent African-American in population. Blacks constituted the majority in three of the five city council districts.[8]
Robertson entered the race for a full term as mayor in 1990. He and Minden businessman Billy Sherman Cost (born 1948) challenged Brown, who was seeking his first full term in the position. Cost and Thomas L. Hathorn (born 1951), another Minden businessman, had led the citiznes' panel advocating the recall of Byars. Brown nearly won in the first round: 2,630 ballots (48 percent) to Robertson's 1,729 (32 percent), and Cost's 1,064 votes (20 percent). Robertson and Brown therefore advanced to the general election.[9]
Before the primary, Brown was seriously injured on September 28, 1990, in an accident on the Minden High School football field—he was moving the yardage chains. He remained hospitalized throughout the campaign. Minden physician John Hill declared Brown's condition as "conscious and hopeful . . . an answer to prayer".[10] As fears persisted that the still disabled Brown could not discharge his duties in a full term, voters handily elected Robertson, 2,529 votes (59 percent) to 1,758 (41 percent).[11] Brown hence polled 872 fewer votes in the second round of balloting than he had in the first. The 1990 general election launched Robertson into a long career as his city's chief municipal official.
In 1994, Robertson won a second term over his fellow Democrat Douglas "Doug" Frye and the Independent Lydianne Vulliamy Scallorn Hammons (born 1936), the wife of Minden businessman Orville Hammons (1915-2011).[12] Robertson received 2,019 (55 percent) to Frye's 1,285 ballots (35 percent), and 369 votes (10 percent) for Mrs. Hammons,[13] a former city clerk who had certified the recall petition signatures against former Mayor Byars.
In 1998, Robertson overwhelmed the Minden businessman, Benjamin Franklin Wright, Jr. (born 1959), a Claiborne Parish native who ran for mayor as an Independent. Robertson polled 2,697 votes (89 percent) to 331 votes (11 percent) in a low-turnout election.[14]
In 2005, Wright was convicted and sentenced to ten years imprisonment for video voyeurism. He was found to have filmed female customers using the dressing room in his clothing store in Minden. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Shreveport upheld the conviction in June 2006 but vacated the sentence because of error. Wright was also arrested on March 18, 2004, on an allegation of having threatened to murder a child protection agent in connection with a child custody dispute. City police stopped Wright to arrest him for public intimidation. They found videotapes inside his vehicle and later child pornography on Wright's computer disks. He was found guilty on November 14, 2006, of twenty-three of twenty-four counts of possessing child pornography.
As a result of his strong showing in the election of 1998, no opponent filed against Robertson in 2002.
Robertson faced three challengers in his 2006 reelection bid. Photographer John Edward Quade, a 1966 graduate of Minden High School (born 1947) and a Democrat, was eliminated in the primary. Republican Al Hortman ran sufficiently strong to force Robertson into a general election. Hortman (born 1941) graduated in 1959 from Minden High School. He resided over the years in Dallas, St. Louis, and Atlanta but returned to Minden to care for his ailing mother, Katherine F. Hortman (1909–2003), a former Webster Parish educator. Hortman served in the U.S. Air Force as an intelligence operative. As part of his training, he attended Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, where he completed an intensive eight-month course in the Chinese language. He thereafter earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics, with a minor in Chinese, from Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, the seat of Lincoln Parish. He also received a master's degree from Tech in education as well during the time of the mayoral campaign.[15]
Hortman was the president of a concerned group of citizens who drafted the Minden 2020 Visionaries Master Plan, a 20-year proposal for long-range community progress. The plan was developed over a two-year period prior to 2000. Although some 150 Minden citizens worked on the project, it was Hortman who spearheaded the effort.[15]
A former peace officer and a Methodist pastor, Hortman said that he could work with all aspects of the Minden community. Hortman formerly taught math and coached soccer at Huntington High School in Shreveport.[15]
During Robertson’s tenure, some 85 percent of the city streets have been overlaid, and major upgrades have been completed on the electrical, wastewater and water systems. Many of the projects were funded through state and federal grants. Robertson has pledged to keep electrical rates—the city operates its own power plant—among the lowest in Louisiana.
The city partnered with the Minden/South Webster Chamber of Commerce to establish an office to conduct economic development services. A new director has been hired to work on the expansion of local businesses and to attract new employers. Robertson said that the city will seek to attract new industry and entice such new businesses as a movie theatre, skating rink, bowling alley, and new restaurants. At one time, Minden had two sit-down theaters and a drive-in theater. The last theater closed in the 1970s. Studies show that communities which cannot sustain a theater have difficulty with growth and development.
Robertson was elected by his fellow mayors as first vice-president at the 2007 LMA convention in Monroe. A year later, he was elected president of the association. He is a former second vice-president and a district vice-president of the LMA. As mayor, Robertson is also an ex officio board member of the Louisiana Energy and Power Authority. LEPA was established by the Louisiana legislature in 1979 as an action agency for the eighteen Louisiana cities and towns which maintain their own independent municipal power system. He is a member of the Chamber of Commerce and a former member of the Jaycees.[5]
http://www.press-herald.com/ (Minden Press-Herald, November 7–8, 2006)
http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2006611080325
http://www.sos.louisiana.gov:8090/cgibin/?rqstyp=elcpr&rqsdta=10039860
http://www.sos.louisiana.gov:8090/cgibin/?rqstyp=elcpr&rqsdta=10069060
http://www.sos.louisiana.gov:8090/cgibin/?rqstyp=elcpr&rqsdta=11069060
http://www.sos.louisiana.gov:8090/cgibin/?rqstyp=elcpr&rqsdta=10078960
http://ssdi.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/ssdi.cgi
http://www.zionhill.com/linkframe/zhpinevl.htm
http://www.lepa.com/board.html
Minden mayor asks FBI to investigate death at jail
| Preceded by Paul A. Brown |
Mayor of Minden, Louisiana 1990–present |
Incumbent |