Gaston Gerald
| Gaston Gerald | |
|---|---|
| Louisiana State Senator for District 13 (East Baton Rouge, East Feliciana, and Livingston parishes) |
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In office 1972–1981 |
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| Succeeded by | Mike Cross |
| Baton Rouge City-Parish Council member | |
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In office 1965–1972 |
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| Preceded by | W.W. Dumas |
| Personal details | |
| Born | October 20, 1931 |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse(s) | Lorraine C. Gerald |
| Children |
James Darrell Gerald |
| Parents | James Edward and Cynthia Martin Gerald |
| Residence |
Greenwell Springs East Baton Rouge Parish Louisiana, USA |
| Occupation | Farmer; rancher |
James Darrell Gerald
Gaston Gerald (born October 20, 1931) is a former American politician from Greenwell Springs in East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, who was imprisoned in the early 1980s for extortion of a bribe from a Baton Rouge contractor.
A Democrat, Gerald represented Ward II on the Baton Rouge City-Parish Council from 1965 to 1972. He succeeded council member W.W. Dumas upon Dumas' election as mayor-president. Gerald then entered the Louisiana State Senate for the first of three terms. He was elected to the Senate for a second term in his state's first ever nonpartisan blanket primary held in 1975.
In 1976, as a freshman state senator, Gerald was named chairman of the Senate Labor and Industrial Relations Committee, in which capacity he tried to defeat the right-to-work legislation which passed that summer. With Victor Bussie, president of the Louisiana AFL-CIO, Gerald proposed a state constitutional amendment on the issue, which would have raised the bar for passage.
In 1979, Gerald was convicted of having attempted to extort $25,000 from a contractor who faced forthcoming late charges for his failure to complete construction of the Baton Rouge Civic Center before the contract deadline. Gerald offered to distribute money among members of the Baton Rouge city-parish council, on which he had previously served, to get additional time for the contractor. Despite legal conviction, Gerald won a third Senate term in 1979. He was soon remanded to the Federal Correctional Institution in Fort Worth, Texas. While imprisoned, Gerald befriended Everett Bleichner, an insurance adjuster convicted of extortion. Upon Bleichner release on February 9, 1981, Gerald put him on the Senate payroll as an aide with undisclosed duties at a salary of more than $900 per month. Though Gerald's sentence was for five years, he served only half that time, having been released on July 30, 1982. Gerald did not resign from the Senate when he entered prison but continued to draw his salary and expenses. In 1981, the Senate in a rare move voted 33–3 to expel Gerald as a member, with Anthony Guarisco, Jr., of Morgan City leading the majority forces. Voting in Gerald's favor were Senators Sixty Rayburn, W.E. "Bill" Dykes and Joseph Sevario. The three who voted for Gerald were, like Gerald himself, strong supporters of organized labor.
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