Phil Short

Philip Granville Short, known as Phil Short (born January 31, 1947), is a retired military officer formerly of Covington, Louisiana, USA, who served in the Louisiana State Senate from District 12 (St. Helena, St. Tammany, Tangipahoa, and Washington parishes) from 1996 to 1999. Short won the seat in the general election held on November 18, 1995, by unseating the long-term incumbent B.B. "Sixty" Rayburn of Bogalusa. Short polled 21,222 votes (51 percent) to Rayburn's 20,676 (49 percent)^[1]

Short graduated in 1965 from C.E. Byrd High School in Shreveport. In 1969, he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in political science^[2] from Louisiana Tech University in Ruston. Subsequently, he procured an M.A. degree from the private Webster University in Webster Groves near St. Louis, Missouri. While living in Covington, Short was a real estate agent and a member of the trade association, the National Association of Realtors. A Baptist, Short is married to the former Suzanne Richards (born ca. 1954).^[3]

From 1970 to 1994, Short was a lieutenant colonel and a naval aviator in the United States Marine Corps. He is a member of the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars. He served on the military service academy recruitment team for former U.S. Representative Bob Livingston, a Republican from the New Orleans suburbs.^[3] He resigned prior to the expiration of his Senate term to accept a position as director of the Personal and Family Readiness Division of the Marine Corps in Washington, D.C..^[4] In the new position, he was called upon to testify before the United States House Committee on Armed Services.^[4]

Ironically, both state senators who preceded and succeeded Rayburn served only three years of their terms, resigned, and necessitated special elections.^[5] Rayburn's district appeared to have turned solidly Republican in the special election of February 6, 1999, when the sole Democratic candidate, Stanley Middleton, polled only 9 percent of the vote. Short was succeeded by Democrat-turned-Republican Jerry Aroe Thomas, a state representative, a physician, and former coroner from Franklinton, who won the position outright in the first round of balloting with 51 percent of the vote.^[6]

In the balloting for a full term on October 23, 1999, Thomas defeated Stanley Middleton, his only opponent, 76-24 percent.^[7] In 2003, Thomas did not seek a second full term as a result of a 2002 incident in which he was accused of engaging in lewd conduct at an adult bookstore in New Orleans.^[8] A Democrat, Ben W. Nevers of Bogalusa, won Thomas’ former seat with 43 percent of the primary ballots, because the second-place candidate, Republican Richard E. Tanner (born 1942) of Covington, who trailed with 21 percent, withdrew from the general election because more than 70 percent of the primary ballots were cast for Democratic candidates.^[9] Nevers was unopposed in 2007; so the Rayburn seat returned to its traditional Democratic moorings.

In 1997, Short introduced Senate Bill 37 to remove sexual orientation from the state's hate crimes law. His amendment was defeated in April and again in May, the second time without a vote being taken. Several of Short's fellow Republican senators, including Ken Hollis of Metairie in Jefferson Parish, Lynn Dean of St. Bernard Parish, and Ron Bean of Shreveport, joined Democrats in speaking against the bill. Hollis said that he was "absolutely convinced that those people who lead the alternate lifestyle do so because of genetics. . . . I don't condone their way of life, but I'm not gonna sit up here and condemn it and to vote for a constitutional amendment to bring it to a vote to divide our people..."^[10] Bean echoed Hollis: "I see no reason to dig this up and grind it around in public again. . . . The session before last we had a hate crimes bill and one of the things we put in it was 'sexual orientation' and that stirred up a lot of controversy out in the community. And this'll do the same thing in the long run."^[10]

Short and his wife currently reside in Spotsylvania Courthouse, Virginia.^[11]

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