Taylor Townsend (Louisiana politician)

Thomas Taylor Townsend, known as Taylor Townsend (born 1963), is an attorney from Natchitoches, Louisiana, who served as a Democrat in the Louisiana House of Representatives from 2000-2008.^[1] Townsend is a nephew and law partner of former Louisiana State Senator Donald G. Kelly, in the firm Kelly, Townsend & Thomas.^[2] Townsend’s mother, Dorothy Kelly Townsend, is a sister of Don Kelly.

In the 1999 nonpartisan blanket primary, also known as the jungle primary, Townsend narrowly upset veteran Democratic state Representative Jimmy D. Long, a Natchitoches businessman and member of the Long political dynasty who had served consecutively since 1968. Townsend prevailed, 7,643 votes (51 percent) to Long’s 7,447 votes (49 percent).^[3] The defeat was stunning in that Long had been unopposed in 1995. Long was apparently the last member of his political family to have held public office in Louisiana until 2008, when Long's younger brother, Gerald Long^[4] of Natchitoches, won a state senate seat by defeating Taylor Townsend.^[5] Considered an authority on secondary and higher education planning and funding, Jimmy Long had been named one of the 100 most significant persons in the 20th century history of North Louisiana by the Shreveport Times newspaper.

In the 2007 primary, Townsend did not seek a third term but instead ran for the open state Senate seat formerly held by his uncle from 1976-1996. The Democratic incumbent, Kenneth Michael "Mike" Smith of Winnfield, the seat of Winn Parish, who was ineligible to seek a fourth term. In a surprising turn of events, Townsend was defeated by Gerald Long, the first Long family member elected to office in Louisiana as a Republican. Long procured 20,609 votes (54 percent) to Townsend's 17,699 (46 percent) and won five of the six parishes in the district, having lost only in Natchitoches, the home of both candidates. He even won in Red River Parish, one of only two North Louisiana parishes that did not support Republican Governor Bobby Jindal in the October 20 primary.^[5]

Besides Townsend's defeat for the state Senate, Natchitoches Republicans elected Rick Nowlin to the House seat that Townsend vacated. The Long-Nowlin victories marked the first time since Reconstruction that Natchitoches Parish had been represented by Republicans in either house of the state legislature.^[1]

Townsend received a Bachelor of Science degree from Northwestern State University in Natchitoches and a Juris Doctor from Southern University Law School in Baton Rouge. Admitted to the bar in 1990, Townsend specializes in consumer class actions, criminal defense, civil suits, and personal injury cases.^[2]

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