Hazel Beard

Hazel Beard (née Fain; born September 16, 1930) is the first woman and the first Republican to have served as mayor of Shreveport, Louisiana, since the era of Reconstruction. A fiscal conservative, Beard grappled with many economic and social problems during her single term as mayor from 1990 to 1994. Prior to her mayoral service, Beard was a small business owner and a member of the Shreveport City Council from the southwest portion of the city. She was the first woman to have been chairperson of the city council.

Beard entered the mayoral race against three serious opponents, including the African-American dentist C. O. Simpkins, Sr., a Democrat civil rights activist, and two fellow council members, Republican Carolyn Calhoun Whitehurst and Democrat Bill Bush. Bush, a businessman, led in the pre-election polls. Whitehurst, a real estate broker, later Carolyn C. Huckabay (born March 1935), is descended from a prominent DeSoto Parish family: her father, Riemer Calhoun, was a Democratic member of the Louisiana State Senate from 1944 to 1952. Whitehurst, who represented a southeast Shreveport council district, had the support of The Shreveport Times.[1]

Simpkins led in the primary with 31 percent of the ballots cast, but Beard secured the second slot to proceed to the general election.[2] However, in the second round of balloting, Beard prevailed, 38,604 votes (59 percent) to Simpkins' 26,341 (41 percent).[3]

The Beard administration granted the first riverboat gambling license in Shreveport history. The designation went to Harrah's. Beard created a Growth Management Issues Committee, chaired by former Democratic Mayor James C. Gardner and Wendell Collins, a telephone company executive who thereafter became the city's chief administrative officer under Beard's successor as mayor, Robert W. "Bo" Williams.[4][5] Soon after taking office, Beard appointed Steve Prator, a 17-year member of the Shreveport Police Department as chief of police, a position that he held until 1999. Prator successfully sought the office of Caddo Parish sheriff and became the first Republican since Reconstruction to hold that position.[6] He won a fifth term in the primary election held on October 24, 2015.

In 1992, when Mayor Beard welcomed U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush to Shreveport during Bush's ill-fated reelection campaign, the president mistakenly referred to her as "Nasal" Beard. The mayor accepted the slip of tongue with humor.

As mayor, Beard appointed the Republican activist Harriet Belchic to the Shreveport Women's Commission and the Riverfront Redevelopment Advisory Committee. The panel completed Riverfront Park although it was poorly designed and unable to withstand seasonal overflows of the nearby Red River. Rising waters would flood the fountains in the park and interfere with the operation of the waterpumps.

Mayor, Beard had often expressed her opposition to any form of legalized riverboat gambling legislation which then Governor Edwin Washington Edwards had pushed for legislative approval. Shreveport-Bossier received five gaming licenses, and the area stood to benefit financially from such efforts. Beard hence changed her position and announced her support for one riverboat operation in Shreveport. But as legislative dealmaking resume, Beard recanted her support once a limited gambling operation. When Harrah's Casino opened to much fanfare in Shreveport, Edwards (a strong proponent of legalized gambling in Louisiana) could be overheard at the podium expressing his displeasure with Beard's anti-gaming comments and was reported to have told Beard during a chat at the dais that he (Edwards) "...had never had he worked with nor known a Louisiana mayor who was as stupid as she..."

It was widely anticipated that former Mayor John Brennan Hussey, the man whom Beard had succeeded, would challenge Beard for reelection in 1994, but Beard surprised political observers by not seeking reelection. Hussey ran as expected, but two city council members, Republican Robert Warren Williams, and Democrat Roy Cary, an African-American, went into the general election, which Williams won by a comfortable margin. Former Mayor Gardner, in his memoirs, Jim Gardner and Shreveport, Vol. II, describes Beard as:

"... [A] large woman physically and had been a high school basketball player ... totally self-assured, [this] gave her strength as mayor. Her public appearances and demeanor were of one who was acting under a voter mandate to change everything. She began her term in office by asking for the resignation of all board and commission members, something not done before or since. At her inauguration, she had stated that 'the era of darkness was gone, the era of light had begun.'... This made me uncomfortable with Mayor Beard ... but we did develop a comfortable working relationship."