Rick Gallot
Richard Joseph Gallot, Jr., known as Rick Gallot, is the current president of Grambling State University and was a Democratic member of the Louisiana State Senate for District 29, which encompasses the African-American portions of seven parishes. In the nonpartisan blanket primary held on October 22, 2011, Gallot received 12,992 votes. Trailing was the Republican Tony "Bo" Vets, with 7,579 votes and Democrat Mary L. Wardsworth, with 5,271 votes.
Gallot, an African American born in Ruston, graduated from the historically black Grambling State University in Grambling and the Southern University Law Center of Baton Rouge. He is an inductee of the Southern Law Hall of Fame. In 2012, he succeeded the term-limited white Democratic Senator Joe McPherson of Woodworth in southern Rapides Parish, who had represented a different configuration of the district.
From 2000 to 2012, Gallot held the District 11 seat in the Louisiana House of Representatives. That district was established after the 1990 U.S. census to guarantee a black voter majority. Gallot won the position after the popular incumbent Pinkie C. Wilkerson of Grambling in western Lincoln Parish was killed on August 1, 2000, in a six-vehicle accident on Interstate 20 in Bossier City. At the time of her death, Wilkerson, committed to the Gore/Lieberman ticket, had been scheduled two weeks thereafter as a delegate to the 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, California.
In the 2007 primary, Gallot handily defeated the sister of Pinkie Wilkerson to win his third term in the legislative chamber.
Despite a generally liberal voting record, in 2014 Gallot was one of only two Democrats in the State Senate to vote against reforming Louisiana's payday lending laws, having sided with the payday lending industry against a grassroots campaign that supported reform. He was rated 43 percent in 2014 by the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry. Gallot voted 100 percent with the Louisiana Right to Life Committee in 2009 and 2014 but 67 percent in 2013 and 45 percent in 2008.
Gallot did not seek reelection in the nonpartisan blanket primary held on October 24, 2015. Joshua Joy Dara, Sr., a Republican Baptist minister and lawyer from Pineville, and Alexandria attorney Jay Luneau, a Democrat, ran to succeed Gallot. Luneau prevailed with 59 percent of the ballots cast.
In April 2016, Gallot began serving on the Board of Directors of Cleco Corporation, an electric utility company based in Pineville, Louisiana.
Gallot was selected as president of Grambling State University and to begin his tenure, donated $20,000 to the institution noting, "I wouldn't ask anyone to do what I wouldn't do myself."
Gallot is a member of the Gamma Psi chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity.
