He was the father of Charles Elson "Buddy" Roemer III, who served as governor from 1988 to 1992, between the third and fourth Edwards terms.
On January 31, 1961, U.S. Representative Overton Brooks of Louisiana's 4th congressional district, based about Shreveport, voted with a narrow majority of 217–212 to increase the size of the House Rules Committee to permit Speaker Sam Rayburn of Texas to appoint newer, members to the panel, which determines the legislation brought to the House floor.
Roemer was among the organizers of a civic group known as the Congressional Affairs League of Louisiana, created to express a vote of "No Confidence" in Representative Brooks.
[5] Brooks died in 1961, and Waggonner won a special election for the seat by defeating the Republican nominee, Charlton Lyons of Shreveport.
Within a decade, however, Roemer became an advocate of civil rights for African Americans, a position which led him to support then U.S. Representative Edwin Edwards of Crowley in south Louisiana for governor in the 1971 Democratic primary though a state senator from Shreveport, J. Bennett Johnston Jr., was Edwards' principal rival for the party nomination and subsequently a long-term U.S. senator.
Roemer frequently invited black leaders to Scopena Plantation to discuss politics and chart a course of action at election time.
He made use of relatively new computer software through his company, Innovative Data Systems, to gauge the importance of various political issues and to enhance get-out-the-vote activities, using telegrams to targeted voters.
"[1] In 1981, a year after the second Edwards administration ended, Roemer and four others, including Carlos Marcello, the boss of the New Orleans crime family; Aubrey W. Young, a key administration figure during the administration of Governor John J. McKeithen; New Orleans attorney Vincent A. Mannello, and lobbyist I. Irving Davidson were charged in U.S. District Court in New Orleans with conspiracy, racketeering, and mail and wire fraud in a scheme to bribe state officials to give the five men multimillion-dollar insurance contracts.
[7][8] U.S. District Judge Morey Sear allowed the admission of secretly-recorded conversations that demonstrated corruption at the highest levels of state government.
[12] Marcello was convicted of conspiracy and then indicted on additional charges involving an alleged attempt to bribe the judge.
[16][17][18] The FBI agents posed as crooked insurance executives and engaged in a sting operation against Roemer and his co-defendants.
[3][19] In July 1992, Roemer and his younger son, Franklin Daniel "Danny" Roemer (born 1946), like his brother a graduate of Harvard University, and R. Lee Harvill, a developer from Benton, the seat of government of Bossier Parish, were indicted by a federal grand jury on conspiracy and bank fraud charges stemming from a loan involving a real estate deal in Bossier Parish.
[22] Adeline Roemer gave her husband the nickname "Budgie," referring to a small bird,[3] not to budget decisions that he made as commissioner of administration.
[23] Roemer died in his sleep at Scopena Plantation[24] at the age of eighty-eight after a ten-year struggle with Alzheimer's disease.
[25] Melville was the unsuccessful Democratic nominee for Louisiana's 4th congressional district seat in the 2010 general election, having been defeated by the Republican incumbent John C. Fleming of Minden.
McCrery held the House seat until his retirement in January 2009, when he was succeeded by Fleming, who vacated the position to run for the United States Senate in 2016.