Sam A. LeBlanc III

Samuel Albert LeBlanc, III (born November 12, 1938), is a lawyer from St. Francisville in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, who is a Democratic former member of the Louisiana House of Representatives for District 86 in Jefferson and Orleans parishes. His legislative tenure from 1972 to 1980 corresponded with the first two terms of Governor Edwin Edwards.^[1]

Family background

LeBlanc is descended from a political family whose roots reach back into the 19th century. His grandfather, Samuel A. LeBlanc I, a graduate of Tulane University Law School in New Orleans and a native of Paincourtville in Assumption Parish, was also a member of the Louisiana House - for a term extending from 1912 to 1916. From 1920 to 1930, the senior LeBlanc was district judge of the Louisiana 23rd Judicial District, which then included Ascension, St. James and Assumption parishes. In 1929, LeBlanc was appointed to fill the unexpired term of Justice Paul Leche of the Louisiana First Circuit Court of Appeal, a post to which he was later elected and served until 1949, when he won election to the Louisiana Supreme Court to finish the unexpired term of a retiring chief justice. LeBlanc remained on the court until December 1954, not long before his death.^[2]

LeBlanc's father, Samuel LeBlanc, II, was one of five children of Judge LeBlanc and the former Elmire Lafaye (1889–1972). Samuel LeBlanc, II, serving as a lieutenant in the United States Navy Reserve, was a casualty of World War II. Samuel's widowed wife, the former Marcelle "Nootsie" Reese (1916–1985), was living at the time in Donaldsonville in Ascension Parish with her two children, Sam, III, and Marcelle, later Marcelle L. Hickey (born August 1940) of New Orleans.^[3] Marcelle LeBlanc was a sister of George W. Reese Jr., a New Orleans lawyer and a former Louisiana Republican National Committeeman who carried his party's banner in 1960 against U.S. Senator Allen J. Ellender. She subsequently married Robert Emmet Couhig Sr. (1916–2014), a native of Massachusetts, who was in the pest control business in New Orleans and later Baton Rouge. From Marcelle's second marriage were born three more sons and another daughter, the half-siblings of Sam LeBlanc, III. Robert and Marcelle Couhig, with their Asphodel Plantation, were pioneers in the tourism industry of East and West Feliciana parishes.^[4]

On December 28, 1961, LeBlanc married the former Noelle Engler (born May 1942) at St. Patrick's Catholic Churcn in Corpus Christi, Texas.^[5] She is a former ballet dancer and a one-time secretary of the Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation & Tourism.^[6]

Legal and political career

LeBlanc studied at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and graduated in 1963 with a Juris Doctor from Tulane Law School.^[7] Years later in 1991, he received a Master of Law degree from Tulane in energy and environmental law. In 2013, on the fiftieth anniversary of his graduation from law school, LeBlanc was cited with an "Outstanding Alumni Award" by the Tulane Alumni Association.^[8]

In 1971, LeBlanc ran for the state legislature with his half-brother, Rob Couhig, then twenty-two, as the campaign manager. Couhig also managed LeBlanc's 1975 campaign.^[9] After two terms, LeBlanc left the legislature in 1980,^[8] when he was succeeded by the Republican Terry W. Gee, an oil and natural gas businessman whose victory corresponded with that of David C. Treen as the first Republican governor of Louisiana since Reconstruction. LeBlanc is the last Democrat to have held the District 86 House seat.^[1] In 1976, Rob Couhig himself switched to the Republican Party and ran unsuccessfully in September 1980 against U.S. Representative Lindy Boggs for Louisiana's 2nd congressional district seat.

LeBlanc was an attorney for the New Orleans and Baton Rouge firm Adams and Reese, from which he retired in 2002. He was also a partner in Rob Couhig's Couhig Partners.^[8] One of his colleagues at Adams and Reese was the former Louisiana House Speaker E. L. "Bubba" Henry, then of Jonesboro, subsequently of Baton Rouge, a fellow Democrat with whom LeBlanc had served in the legislature.^[10] LeBlanc is a former commissioner and chairman of the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority. He is a former chairman too of the New Orleans Regional Chamber of Commerce. LeBlanc and his wife served for two years in the Peace Corps in Romania. Upon returning to New Orleans, he was appointed as a temporary judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.^[8]

On February 1, 1986, LeBlanc finished in a strong third place in the race for mayor of New Orleans. He polled 40,606 votes (25.3 percent),^[11] but victory in the runoff election went to the African-American Sidney Barthelemy, a Democratic member of the New Orleans City Council, who defeated another black candidate, then State Senator William J. Jefferson, later the successor to Rob Couhig's former opponent, U.S. Representative Lindy Boggs.

After more than four decades of building the firm and upon his retirement from Adams and Reese LLP, LeBlanc and his wife Noelle joined the Peace Corps. They were sent for language training to Valenii de Munte, Romania, for three months and then assigned to Zalau, where they lived for two years. LeBlanc worked with the Romanian EPA; Noelle, for an NGO, Friends of the Library. After completion of their twenty-seven months of service they returned home intending to divide their time between residences in New Orleans and Aspen, Colorado. While they were in Aspen in August 200, Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. For a while Sam practiced law part time with his brother Rob Couhig's law office but retired from all practice in 2008, bought property in West Feliciana parish near the town of St. Francisville. Thereafter the LeBlancs commissioned the Baton Rouge architect Billie Ann Brian to design and build a house they named Roussillon after similar residences in the Provence region of France. The image of the house is reflected in a small lake in the front yard and was featured in the May issue of Louisiana Life.^[6]

After moving permanently to West Feliciana Parish, LeBlanc became active in the community. He joined the Rotary International and was the president of the club in 2012. He was a member of the Home Rule Charter Commission which wrote the charterr for the parish and was active in the successful campaign to bring it to fruition. Another of LeBlanc's half-brothers, Kevin H. Couhig, the CEO of Source Capital Corp., was elected in 2013 as the first ever parish president of West Feliciana Parish.^[12] LeBlanc is also an active member of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Catholic Church and the Knights of Columbus Council 7856.

References