Jerry Luke LeBlanc

Jerald Luke LeBlanc, known as Jerry Luke LeBlanc (born August 29, 1956),^[1] is a vice president of his alma mater, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, who was from 1989 to 2004 a Democratic member of the Louisiana House of Representatives from District 45 in Lafayette Parish, Louisiana.^[2]

Career

LeBlanc won a special election in February 1989 for the state House seat vacated by Kathleen Blanco, the future governor of Louisiana who had been elected in November 1988 to the Louisiana Public Service Commission. LeBlanc received 5,705 votes (71.9 percent) to 2,232 (28.1 percent) for the Republican candidate, Leslie Schilling. In that same special election, David Duke had narrowly defeated fellow Republican John S. Treen to fill another legislative vacancy.^[3]LeBlanc never again faced an opponent in either party for his District 45 House seat.

LeBlanc is the only person in Lafayette Parish to have been elected to five consecutive terms as state representative though he served just a few days of his fifth term.^[4] His father, Democrat J. Luke LeBlanc, was elected to four nonconsecutive House terms from 1964 to 1972 and 1976 to 1984. In the two later terms, Jerry Luke LeBlanc was a legislative assistant to his father.^[1][2] LeBlanc is the first House member in state history to have chaired the Louisiana Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget. As chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations, LeBlanc sponsored legislation in 1996 that established performance-based budgeting, a method designed to gauge the value produced by public services and programs.^[4]

In 1996 and 1996, Representative LeBlanc was rated 70 percent by the Christian Coalition. In 1998, he was ranked 44 percent by the AFL-CIO. In 2001, he was scored 25 percent by Planned Parenthood and 33 percent by the American Civil Liberties Union. In 2003, he was rated 83 percent by the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, compared to 93 percent in 2001.^[5]

LeBlanc resigned from the state House in January 2004, when Governor Blanco appointed him as commissioner of administration. With the close of the Blanco administration in 2008, LeBlanc was named the interim vice president for administration and finance at ULL, formerly the University of Southwestern Louisiana, at a starting salary of $212,000, high by Louisiana standards.^[4][6] He continued as the permanent vice president for administration and finance. LeBlanc received a bachelor's degree in business from ULL and formerly worked in Lafayette as a real estate appraiser while he was a legislator. In 2005, as the commissioner of administration, LeBlanc was named "Public Official of the Year" by the magazine Governing: The States and the Localities.^[7]

In 2011, LeBlanc, who had switched his party label to Independent, considered running for the Louisiana State Senate for the seat vacated by the term-limited Republican Michael J. Michot of Lafayette. He ultimately decided that his work at ULL would not permit time away for Senate business, and he did not contest the position, which was won by the Republican State Representative Page Cortez.^[8]

References