[2] In 1972, Watkins, then a practicing attorney, was the unsuccessful Democratic nominee for Louisiana's 3rd congressional district seat vacated after two terms by Patrick T. Caffery.
Watkins won his party's nomination in a runoff election with State Senator Carl W. Bauer, then of Franklin in St. Mary Parish.
[6] Bauer's father, Ralph Norman Bauer, and Cecil Morgan of Shreveport had in 1929 as freshman state representatives led the impeachment for abuses of power against Governor Huey Pierce Long Jr.[7] After his defeat in the congressional campaign, Watkins became a member and served as the president of the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.
He was elected circuit judge in 1978 and remained in the post for nearly two decades; his service ended with his death of cancer in Houma at the age of sixty-eight.
[8][9] The younger Watkins, known as "Bubba", was an unsuccessful Republican candidate for Terrebonne Parish clerk of court in the primary held on October 22, 2011.