He was among the earliest advocates for the Republican political movement at a time when no GOP candidate had been elected statewide in more than a century.
After Louisiana adopted the jungle primary system, Ross qualified again for governor in 1983 and also the United States Senate in 1984.
He additionally ran for the Louisiana State Senate as well as mayor of Mangham during other election years.
In 1956, he obtained a Bachelor of Science degree, with a major in agriculture, from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.
[4] He was decorated with the Bronze Star Medal at McChord Air Force Base for services while engaged in military operations against the Viet Cong in 1962.
[7] Treen, had run unsuccessfully for the United States House of Representatives from suburban New Orleans in 1962, 1964, and 1968. in the gubernatorial primary, Treen carried the support of the party leadership, including GOP chairman Charles deGravelles, of Lafayette, while Ross was the "outsider."
Nonetheless, with party leaders heavily backing Treen, as well as support from President Richard Nixon and Governor Ronald Reagan of California, Ross stopped active campaigning for the nomination but did not officially remove his name from the ballot.
The other Republican candidate that year was David Treen, by then the embattled incumbent governor, who failed in his bid for a second term.
Long retired, Ross entered the primary for the open U.S. Senate seat in September 1986, but was soundly defeated in the field of fourteen candidates.
Breaux went on to defeat Moore by 77,000 votes and held the seat for eighteen years until he retired in January 2005 and was succeeded by the Republican David Vitter.
In addition, he was survived by his wife of fifty-one years, the former Barbara Faye "Bobbie" Paul (born February 1940), originally from Simmesport in Pointe Coupee Parish; a son, Kenneth Ross and wife, Lottie Fields Ross, of Covington in St. Tammany Parish, and two other daughters, Tricia Ross Guidry and husband, Ricky Guidry, of Lake Charles, and Christy Ross Maier of Montgomery, Alabama; nine grandchildren, two sisters, Maxine Smart of Vidalia in Concordia Parish, and Terry Jean Agnew and husband, Raymond Agnew, of Monroe.
"He helped break ground for the growth of the Republican Party in Richland Parish," said Hixon, a Democrat and the author of The History of Mangham and the Big Creek-Boeuf River to 1940.