Kenneth Osterberger

Kenneth Eli "Ken" Osterberger, Jr. (April 3, 1930 – August 10, 2016), was a member of the Louisiana State Senate for East Baton Rouge Parish. He served first as a Democrat in the elections of 1972, 1975, 1979, and 1983 and then as a Republican in the contest held in 1987. His tenure ended in 1992, and he was succeeded by the Moderate Republican Jay Dardenne, the current Louisiana commissioner of administration and the former lieutenant governor. His legislative service corresponded with the first three administrations of Governor Edwin Edwards and the intervening years of Governors David C. Treen and Buddy Roemer.[1]

One of two children of Kenneth Osterberger, Sr. (died 1946), Osterberger was the president of the Louisiana State University student body from 1952 to 1953. At LSU, he was affiliated with the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity. During the Korean War, he was a second lieutenant in the United States Army's 10th Infantry Division. He was the local and state president of the Junior Chamber International.[2]

Prior to his Senate service, Osterberger was for eight years a member of the Baton Rouge Metro government. From 1969 to 1972, he was the President Pro Tempore of the Metro government.[3]

In 1975, in his first reelection to the state Senate, Osterberger polled nearly two-thirds of the votes cast in the first ever nonpartisan blanket primary held in Louisiana, when he was challenged by the then Democrat, later Republican, David Duke, a former Grand Wizrd with the Ku Klux Klan who then resided in Baton Rouge.

In 1983, Osterberger in his last race as a Democrat defeated the Republican "Rocky" Powell, 29,816 (73.8 percent) to 10,607 (26.2 percent).[4] In Osterberger's last election to the Senate, as a Republican in 1987, he polled 37,172 votes (80.8 percent) to 8,845 (19.2 percent) for A.T. "Apple" Sanders Jr., a Democrat who served in the Louisiana House of Representatives from 1956 to 1964.[5] Osterberger was the founder of the Louisiana Senate prayer breakfast. He died at the age of 86 of Alzheimer's disease on August 10, 2016.[2]