Sen. B.B. “Sixty” Rayburn dead at 91
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NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Former state Sen. B.B. “Sixty” Rayburn of Bogalusa, the last of former Gov. Earl Long’s allies who weathered five decades of often tumultuous times in the Louisiana Legislature, died early Wednesday. He was 91.
Rayburn’s granddaughter, Alicia Harvin, said Rayburn died at a hospital in St. Tammany Parish, north of New Orleans. The exact cause of death was not immediately known, but Rayburn had been hospitalized late last month and was diagnosed with lung cancer, Harvin said.
With a voice reminiscent of his mentor Long — loud and raspy as a buzz saw — Rayburn was a legislative power during generations of stormy change in Louisiana politics. He built a reputation as a deal maker, legislative power broker and a folksy if unpolished raconteur, spinning yarns about “Mr. Earl” in the old days.
He survived allegations of racism and went on to work with rising black politicians in the 1970s.
“I used to have some friends in the Ku Klux Klan, I admit that,” Rayburn said in a fiery 1977 speech responding to news articles that he was racist. “But things have changed and Rayburn rides with the waves,” he said.
He maintained his reputation as a populist Democrat and champion of big labor after the state elected its first Republican governor since Reconstruction in the 1980s and as the unions’ influence declined. He was an ally of the scandal plagued four-term Gov. Edwin Edwards during Edwards’ on-again-off-again tenure in the ’70s, 80s’ and early 90s. And for years he wielded influence as chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee.
His political career ended amid scandal in the 1990s. He was accused of taking bribes to protect video poker interests, allegations that were a factor in his losing a re-election bid in 1995.
Later found innocent, he never returned to elective politics. But he did return to the Capitol at times to lobby for favorite causes. Those included promoting thoroughbred horse racing and fighting attempts by animal rights activists to crack down on “hog dog” competitions, in which dogs, often used to hunt wild hogs, are set loose to corral pigs in a spectator event. He proudly noted in 2004 committee testimony that it was Earl Long who took him on his first hog hunt in 1948; and he declared “I can’t understand why anyone’s so upset about a hog’s ear,” in response to a video showing a dog grabbing a hog by the ear.
Born to a poor Mississippi farming family, Benjamin Buras Rayburn moved to Bogalusa, La., north of Lake Pontchartrain in southeastern Louisiana. He got a trade school education and went to work as a pipefitter for a paper mill.
It was 1943 when friends talked him into a race for the police jury (Louisiana’s rough equivalent of a county commisison).
He won that race but said the real beginning of his love for politics came in 1946 when Earl Long, the brother of assassinated populist U.S. Sen. Huey Long, was running for governor and speaking to a police jury convention.
“He was just my type of person. He was down to earth. He liked hogs, cattle and people,” Rayburn once said.
Rayburn was elected to the state House in 1948 and to the state Senate three years later where he was to reign as Long’s right-hand man and confidant.
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