Randy Wiggins

Randy E. Wiggins (born February 13, 1951) is a State Farm Insurance agent in Alexandria, Louisiana,^[1] who is the first Republican since Reconstruction to have been elected from Rapides Parish to the Louisiana House of Representatives.^[2]

Political life

Wiggins served only a single term in the Pineville-based District 27 from 1996 to 2000.^[2] In 1999, he failed in a state senate race against former Senator Joe McPherson, a businessman then of Pineville and later of Woodworth in southern Rapides Parish.^[3]

The late Jock Scott, a professor and lawyer, served as a Republican in the Alexandria-based House District 26 from 1985 to 1988, but he was elected in 1983 to his third term as a Democrat.

On October 6, 1995, Wiggins won the District 27 seat when as the only opposing candidate he upset the incumbent Democrat Rick L. Farrar of Pineville, 6,350 votes (51.1 percent) to 6,077 (48.9 percent).^[4]

In the House, Wiggins served on the Joint House and Senate Health and Welfare Committee and in 1997 participated in a legislative tour of health-care facilities in Rapides and neighboring Avoyelles Parish, including St. Mary's Training School in Alexandria, Avoyelles Hospital in Marksville, and Bunkie General Hospital in Bunkie. Wiggins said the purpose of the tour is to allow lawmakers a better understanding of health-care issues and budget considerations.^[5]

Wiggins ran for the state Senate when B.G. Dyess, an Alexandria Baptist minister and former Rapides Parish registrar of voters, declined to seek a second term, having served only from 1996 to 2000. In the primary held on October 23, 1999, McPherson prevailed, 13,820 (50.4 percent) to Wiggins's 12,393 (45.2 percent), and another 1,212 votes (4.4 percent) for Democrat Jerry M. Guillory.^[3]

Wiggins is a contributor to such Republican candidates as U.S. Representative Rodney Alexander, U.S. Senator David Vitter, and the 2002 Republican senatorial nominee Suzanne Haik Terrell of New Orleans, defeated by the Democratic incumbent Mary Landrieu.^[6] In 1998, he contributed to current Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon in Donelon’s unsuccessful Republican challenge to U.S. Senator John Breaux of Crowley.^[7]

In 2011, Wiggins failed in a bid to unseat fellow Republican State Representative Chris Hazel of Ball, who won a second term in the District 27 seat.^[8]

Personal life

Wiggins is married to the former Kathy Daniels. He graduated in 1969 from Buckeye High School in Deville in eastern Rapides Parish. He subsequently graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, then known as the University of Southwestern Louisiana. He is a Baptist and affiliated with Kiwanis International in Pineville.^[9] His insurance office, established in 1982, is located at 2146 North Mall Drive near the Alexandria Mall.^[10]

References