Lenar Whitney

Lenar Marie Ledet Whitney (born 1959) is a businesswoman from her native Houma, Louisiana, who is a Republican member of the Louisiana House of Representatives from District 53 in Terrebonne Parish.

In 2011, Whitney won the right to succeed the term-limited Democrat Damon Baldone. She defeated fellow Republican Billy Hebert, a member of the Terrebonne Parish Council, 3,709 (59 percent) top 2,552 (41 percent). District 53 encompasses the Oakshire, Broadmoor, Park Avenue, Bayou Blue, Cocodrie, Montegut, Bourg, and Pointe-aux-Chenes sections of Houma, the parish seat of Terrebonne Parish.^[1] Whitney is the first woman to represent Terrebonne in the legislature and the first Republican to hold the District 53 seat.

Whitney graduated from Vanderbilt High School in Houma and obtained an associate's degree in business from Nicholls State University in Thibodaux. Since she was sixteen, she has operated a small business. She has sales experience in oil field fabrication, repair and maintenance, and the media and telecommunications. Her husband, Lee Whitney, operates Whitney Signs Company in Houma. He was reared in Houma and Upper Caillou and established a lifelong friendship with the politically-connected Chabert family. Whitney traces her family tree on the Ledet and Boquet side directly to the Bourg/Montegut’s families. Whitney has two children; both are graduates of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.^[2]

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