Regular Democratic Organization

The Regular Democratic Organization (RDO), or Old Regulars, or the New Orleans Ring, is a conservative political organization based in New Orleans. It has existed for 130 years and as of 2017 is still active. The symbol of the RDO is the rooster. For many years the organization's headquarters was at the Choctaw Club.

The RDO organized in the latter days of Reconstruction, toward the end of Republican Party control of the city. In 1876 the Democrats regained control of the state legislature, in part due to violent intimidation by the paramiliary White League of white and black Republicans to suppress voting. In 1877, the Democrats regained political power in New Orleans via the political muscle of the RDO. The RDO leadership enacted Jim Crow laws such as segregated facilities and a poll tax, similar to laws being enacted by the state legislature.

In 1896 RDO lent its support to the reelection of Governor Murphy J. Foster in order to stop a biracial alliance between the Republican Party and the Populists behind the candidacy of John N. Pharr. After an election characterized by fraud so widespread that the actual results may never be known, Foster maneuvered to rewrite the state constitution so as to disfranchise most black voters, related to similar actions by Mississippi and other former Confederate states through 1910. This resulted in several decades in which Louisiana and other states were effectively controlled by one political party, and blacks were closed out of the political process. Nomination by the white-controlled Democratic Party of the state or winning its primary was all that was tantamount to election.

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