Donald G. Kelly

Who is Donald G. Kelly?

Donald Gene Kelly, usually known as Don Kelly, is a prominent trial lawyer and American Quarter Horse breeder in Natchitoches who served as a Democratic member of the Louisiana State Senate from 1976 to 1996. His tenure covered three of the four terms of Democratic Governor Edwin Washington Edwards and the single gubernatorial terms of Republican David C. Treen and Democrat-turned-Republican Buddy Roemer.

In 1981, Treen appointed Kelly to the board of the newly established statewide accelerated high school, the Louisiana School for Math, Science and the Arts in Natchitoches.

Kelly's nephew and law partner, Natchitoches attorney Thomas Taylor Townsend, served in the Louisiana House of Representatives from 2000 to 2008, having been defeated in a race for Kelly's former Senate seat in 2007 by Gerald Long of Natchitoches, the only member of the Long family thus far to have been elected as a Republican. Kelly is a brother of Townsend's mother, Dorothy Kelly Townsend. In the 1999 election for state representative, Townsend unseated Gerald Long's brother, Jimmy D. Long of Natchitoches.

In the 1975 nonpartisan blanket primary, also known as the jungle primary, the first ever held in Louisiana in which all candidates regardless of party appear on the same primary ballot, Kelly upset freshman Senator Paul Lee Foshee, Sr., of Natchitoches. In Louisiana state and local elections, the winner of the primary, or the runoff election, hence wins the office. In 1979, Kelly defeated Foshee's 23-year-old son, George Barnes Foshee. In 1987, Foshee, Sr., unsuccessfully challenged Kelly. In 1991, Kelly defeated 19-year-old Republican Randall T. Hayes, 29,410 votes to 9,599. In 1995, Kelly did not seek a sixth term and was succeeded by fellow Democrat Kenneth Michael "Mike" Smith of Winnfield, the seat of Winn Parish and the traditional home of the Longs.