Haywood Hillyer III
Haywood H. Hillyer III was for 35 years one of the key behind-the-scenes builders of the Louisiana Republican Party and, as the state’s Republican National Committeeman from 1988-1992, he played a lead role in keeping David Duke from taking control of the official party apparatus.
Hillyer, a New Orleans native, champion sailor, and jazz aficionado, objected to one-party machine politics and thus registered with the GOP in 1958 when there were fewer than 10,000 Republicans in the state. He worked closely for years with later governor Dave Treen and others to turn Louisiana into a competitive two-party system – one based not on racial issues but on ideals of maximum liberty and honest local government.
At Tulane University, he founded and published a conservative journal called The Liberator, where his eye for talent brought onto its masthead two future federal judges, one future Republican nominee for mayor and U.S. Senator, and a future Pulitzer Prize-winning editor. Hillyer also was one of just 100 young people nationwide invited to a conference at National Review editor William F. Buckley’s Connecticut estate, where they founded the Young Americans for Freedom organization that would turn modern conservatism from a mostly intellectual pursuit into a true political movement.
Hillyer, an attorney, was president of the New Orleans Bar Association and held executive positions for the Louisiana Bar Association and the Federal Bar Association. He spent 25 years on the Republican State Central Committee, the last four of which as the National Committeeman. He also was Ronald Reagan’s campaign chairman for the Second Congressional District of Louisiana in 1980.
As National Committeeman, he faced the insurgency of former Ku Klux Klan leader Duke, and, as local journalists will attest, he led the charge on the party’s state executive committee to block Duke at every turn.