Quentin Dastugue

Who is Quentin Dastugue?

Quentin D. Dastugue is a founding partner and the chief executive officer of the New Orleans-based real estate firm Property One, Inc., and a former four-term member of the Louisiana House of Representatives. Dastugue was elected as a Democrat to the state House in 1979 and 1983 as the District 82 representative for suburban Jefferson Parish. In 1984, as he began his second term in the House, he switched his affiliation to the Republican Party to support the reelection of U.S. President Ronald W. Reagan and Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush.

As the chairman of the House Committee on Transportation, Highways, and Public Works, Dastugue authored and secured passage of the state Transportation Trust Fund and the TIMED program. In 1994, he received one of eleven national "Legislator of the Year" awards.

In 1990, Dastugue announced that he would run as a Republican for the U.S. Senate in a bid to unseat popular Democratic incumbent J. Bennett Johnston, Jr., of Shreveport. However, when the Republican State Central Committee endorsed state Senator Ben Bagert of New Orleans as the official party choice, Dastugue abandoned plans to make the race. Bagert later withdrew from the contest, and Johnston defeated the remaining Republican hopeful, controversial state Representative David Duke, then of Jefferson Parish, a former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.