Fulton Eugene Eason was a businessman from Springhill, Louisiana, who ran as a Republican in four elections for the Louisiana House of Representatives in calendar year 1991. He won the special electionrunoff on March 23 for a 9-month unexpired term from District 10, then encompassing all of Webster Parish in northwestern Louisiana. Eason was the first Republican ever to seek election to the heavily Democratic Webster Parish seat in the Louisiana House.
Background
Eason was born in Clarks, a lumbering town in Caldwell Parish, to Fulton Filmore Eason and the former Jewel Parker, but he lived most of his life in Springhill, where he managed Stauffer Chemical Company for thirty-seven years. Eason was twice a member of the Springhill City Council, having served from 1966 to 1970 and 1987 to 1991. From 1975 to 2006, he was a member of the Webster Parish Library Board, much of that time as the board vice-president under the president, Henry Grady Hobbs. Coincidentally, Hobbs, an attorney, twice lost races for the District 10 legislative seat. Eason served too on the Louisiana Highway 7 Corridor Commission, the Office of Community Services, and the North Webster Parish Industrial Board. He was a member of Rotary International and the Central Baptist Church of Springhill.
Legislative campaigns
In addition to Eason, two educators, both since deceased, sought the representative position, Ralph Lamar Rentz, Sr., the former Webster Parish School Board personnel director, and Faye Newsome, the principal of Minden High School, but neither polled sufficient votes to enter the determining runoff election. In the first balloting Eason trailed Patti Lou Cook Odom of Minden. She is the daughter of Thelma Louise "Lou" Cook and Harold Ray "Boe" Cook, who came to Minden in 1961 and became co-owners of the Minden radio station KASO. Odom's husband, Charles Deck Odom, is a former member of the Webster Parish Police Jury. Her son, Chad Odom, ran unsuccessfully in 2014 for mayor of Minden; he was narrowly defeated by the Republican incumbent Tommy Davis. In the runoff campaign for the state House, Eason challenged Odom from the political right. He questioned her backing for affirmative action, minority set-aside arrangements on public contracts, abortion, the Second Amendment, the 1984 Mondale-Ferraro ticket. Eason said that he had been supporting Ronald W. Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush while Odom was backing liberal Democratic candidates. In 1987, Odom was elected to the Louisiana Democratic State Central Committee, which Eason called a liberal political group. Eason defeated Odom, 3,659 to 3,309 votes. With little time to accumulate a legislative record., he concentrated his attention to efforts to promote economic development and highway expansion within District 10. On November 16, 1991 Eason was unseated in the regular general election by the Democrat Everett Doerge, a retired school administrator from Minden. Doerge polled 8,389 ballots to Eason's 8,318, a margin of 71 votes. This election occurred at the same time that the Democrat Edwin Washington Edwards staged his fourth-term comeback in a nationally watched race against outgoing State Representative David Duke, a former figure in the Ku Klux Klan from Jefferson Parish. In 2003, two members of the Webster Parish Police Jury, including Charles Odom, the husband of Eason's former legislative opponent, and Daniel Thomas, questioned Eason's long-term tenure as the chairman of the North Webster Industrial Park. The two jurors proposed that Charles Jacobs, then the city attorney for Springhill and later a judge of the Louisiana 26th Judicial District Court, be appointed to replace Eason on the industrial park board. Odom and Thomas claimed that Eason had been unwilling to cooperate with other industrial park members and municipal and parish officials in the administration of the facility. However, jurors voted 8–2 to retain Eason in the position. "The park speaks for itself. It is growing and successful. We've done a lot and we have a lot of good things on the horizon.... All someone has to do is take a drive through the area and see how good things are going. I think I've done a damn good job and trust me, it hasn't been easy," Eason said. Until 2018, Eason had been the only Republican since Reconstruction to have represented this particular legislative seat. The seat is now held by the second Republican in the position, Wayne McMahen of Springhill, who succeeded Harlie Eugene Reynolds of Dubberly, another retired educator, who resigned in 2018 from the state House to accept a position in the administration of Democratic GovernorJohn Bel Edwards.
Family and death
Eason and his wife, the former Frances Smith, an educator, married on July 15, 1951. The couple had four children, John Wesley Eason of Victoria, Texas, Joy Kathleen Langston of Magnolia, Arkansas, David Eugene Eason of Houston, Texas, and Barbara Jean Dees of Springhill, Louisiana. The Easons are interred at Springhill Cemetery.
