Francis C. Heitmeier

Francis C. Heitmeier (born August 2, 1950) is a lobbyist and former manager of a telephone company from his native New Orleans, Louisiana, who is a Democratic former member of the Louisiana State Senate for District 7 in Orleans, Jefferson, and Plaqueminesparishes. First elected in 1991, he was term-limited and ineligible to seek a fifth term in the nonpartisan blanket primary held on October 20, 2007.

Background

Heitmeier was reared in the Algiers neighborhood of New Orleans. He graduated from Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, Louisiana. He has worked as an assistant manager of a telephone company and as a lobbyist in Baton Rouge.^[1]

Heitmeier is a member of the executive board of the Greater New Orleans Tourist and Convention Committee. He has served on the headmaster's council for Roman Catholic Holy Cross School in New Orleans and is a board member of the religious institute, the Little Sisters of the Poor. He is married to the former Rai Lynn Umbach (born December 1950).^[1]

Political life

From 1984 to 1992, Heitmeier was a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives for Orleans Parish District 102. From 1978 to 1984, he was a member of the Orleans Parish Democratic Executive Committee.^[1]

Heitmeier was handily elected in the 1991 primary for the District 7 state Senate seat vacated by the Republican Fritz Windhorst. Heitmeier polled 14,966 votes (54.8 percent) over five opponents, the strongest of whom was Republican Edward D. "Ed" Markle (born January 1950) of New Orleans, with 4,536 votes (16.6 percent).^[2] Heitmeier was handily reelected to a second term in the 1995 primary. With 14,551 votes (57.7 percent), he defeated two opponents, the strongest of whom was Republican Lynn Cheramie of New Orleans, who received 6,371 votes (25.3 percent).^[3] Heitmeier was unopposed for Senate District 7 in the 1999 and 2003 primaries.

In 2006, Heitmeier ran second with 179,100 votes (27.8 percent) of the vote in a special election for Louisiana Secretary of State to fill the position left vacant in 2005 by the death of W. Fox McKeithen, a convert to the Louisiana Republican Party. The interim secretary of state, Al Ater, did not contest the position. The top vote-getter, State Senator Jay Dardenne of Baton Rouge, another Republican, polled 191,543 votes (29.8 percent) and was forced into a runoff election with Heitmeier. In third place was Republican former state party chairman Mike Francis, an energy industrialist from Crowley, who polled 168,118 (26.1 percent). None of the other four candidates, two of whom were Republicans, garnered more than 9 percent of the vote.^[4] Francis, a staunch conservative refused to support the more moderate Republican, Dardenne, in the pending runoff. However, Heitmeier withdrew from the race on the grounds that he lacked needed funding from national party sources. He also noted the decimation of the African-American voter base caused by Hurricane Katrina the previous year. Dardenne hence won by default.^[5]

Dardenne was secretary of state until 2010, when he won another special election for a vacancy as lieutenant governor created by the resignation of Mitch Landrieu, who became mayor of New Orleans. In 2015, Lieutenant Governor Dardenne is a candidate for governor of Louisiana.^[5]

Senator Heitmeier was rated from 38 to 100 percent by the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, 50 percent by the National Federation of Independent Business, 33 percent by Planned Parenthood. He had ratings from 8 to 60 percent by the American Civil Liberties Union. The Louisiana Family Forum ranked him 33, 60, and 80 percent in 2005, 2006, and 2007, respectively. The Louisiana Hospital Association scored him 100 percent in 2005. The Louisiana Association of Educators rated him 80 percent in 2001. The AFL-CIO rated him 79 percent in 1998.^[6]

In 2014, Republican Governor Bobby Jindal signed a bill sponsored by Democratic State Representative Jeff Arnold to permit Heitmeier to lobby the legislature even though Heitmeier's brother, David Heitmeier, is the sitting senator for District 7, which includes the Algiers neighborhood. The special exemption permits an immediate family member of an elected official who was a lobbyist for the executive branch of state government for one year prior to January 9, 2012, to be able to lobby the legislature. David Heitmeier abstained from voting on the bill.^[7]

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