[3] As chairman of the Senate Education Committee, Hennigan was instrumental in the upgrading in 1950 of McNeese State University in Lake Charles to a four-year institution.

Toby O'Rillion, the husband of Dozier's maternal aunt Hope,[2] ran for the office of state comptroller in 1959 on the Bill Dodd intraparty ticket but was eliminated from the runoff election won by Roy R. Theriot, then the mayor of Abbeville in Vermilion Parish.

A pilot at the age of twenty-four, Dozier commanded aircraft in the military transport service and flew missions to South Korea, Japan, Hawaii, Southeast Asia, and the Bering Strait.

Long-term incumbent Democrat Dave L. Pearce trailed with 30 percent and decided not to pursue a general election (commonly called the runoff in Louisiana) contest with Dozier, who therefore won the position outright.

[12] Though Dozier had planned to run for governor in the 1979 nonpartisan blanket primary in which no incumbent was listed on the ballot, his ensuing legal problems and unsavory headlines made such a race highly speculative.

Hanchey, whose broadcasting career included stints in Mobile, Alabama, and New Orleans, recalls that he left the post when Dozier's legal troubles began to surmount.

Leland George Rawls (born August 9, 1950), a young farmer from Bastrop in Morehouse Parish and then a member of the Louisiana Republican State Central Committee, also ran in the 1979 primary.

[16] The month after his defeat for reelection, Dozier was formally charged in a five-count indictment with violations of both the Hobbs and the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations acts.

[17] Among specific instances of extortion cited: Dozier sought $25,000 in 1977 from Nicholas Fakouri and the Vermillion Dairymen's Cooperative Association in Abbeville in Vermilion Parish in return for a loan guarantee from the Louisiana State Market Commission.

In all the incidents specifically cited, Dozier maintained that "his various solicitations were nothing more than the ordinary fundraising activities of a public official faced with the financial burdens of electioneering.

District Judge Frank Joseph Polozola, a recent appointee of U.S. President Jimmy Carter, hence added another eight years to the sentence though there was no indictment or additional trial proceedings.

[23] On June 24, 1982, the district court revoked Dozier's probation and imposed a prison term of eight additional years on one of the counts in the original indictment.

[26] Reagan did not release his files in the Dozier case, but it was learned that Mayor Ernest Morial of New Orleans, a fellow Democrat, submitted a character reference for the former agriculture commissioner.

The commutation was one of ten issued by Reagan, who said that Dozier's original sentence was excessive compared to what other political figures in similar circumstances had been receiving.

[27] Dozier told a civic gathering in Minden that he believed problems in the Carter administration could lead, as it developed, to the election of a Republican as governor of Louisiana in 1979.

[29] In the hearing, Dozier's attorneys described their client as a "Darth Vader", who turned from a "crusading reformer to a man obsessed by the dark side within a year of taking office, an attitude fueled by an overwhelming desire to run for governor."

...[30]Judge Polozola opposed the commutation and resisted any change to the 18-year sentence, but President Reagan made the ultimate decision for Dozier's release on parole.

[31] U.S. Representative Henson Moore of Louisiana's 6th congressional district, a Republican first elected in 1975 and his party's unsuccessful nominee for the United States Senate in 1986, questioned Reagan's decision not to release the commutation file in the Dozier case.

According to Edwards, Dozier paid him by check several times for gambling debts incurred from poker games on Thursday evenings at the governor's mansion.

[32] Dozier developed a friendship with Billy Cannon, a dentist and the 1959 Heisman Trophy winner who played for the Louisiana State University Tigers and the American Football League but became involved in counterfeiting.

[citation needed][34] In 1986, Dozier petitioned for a pardon of his crimes to gain readmittance to the Louisiana bar, for he had lost his right to practice law with the federal convictions.

[38] Dozier's successor, Bob Odom, faced eleven charges of theft, bribery and extortion in his management of the agriculture department, but he was acquitted in a trial held in 2002.

Survivors included his long-term companion, Treva Lea Tidwell (born 1962) of St. Francisville and Baton Rouge; five children from the 1955 marriage to the former Jean Helen Kirkland (born 1935) of Laurel Park, North Carolina:[40] Susan Laborde and husband Robert, Denise Dupre and husband Greg, Leslie Lynelle Dozier, Carrie Johns, and Gilbert H. Dozier and wife Kelly.