The life of John Treen, who died last week of the coronavirus at age 94, is an example of how even fair and accurate headlines can nonetheless fail to do justice to their subjects.
Treen’s obituary headlines will rightly identify him as the brother of a governor (David Treen of Louisiana) and as the only man ever to lose an election to neo-Nazi David Duke. But those headlines give short shrift to John Treen’s life of work as a stalwart of the Republican Party in his state for more than 70 years.
Yes, his brother David Treen was the more famous, more readily genial, and far more diplomatic and politically successful. But John Treen, two years older, did yeoman’s volunteer work for David Treen for decades. He actually preceded David Treen by more than a decade in joining the Republican Party, in what was then the solidly Democratic South, by volunteering for Thomas Dewey in the 1948 presidential campaign. He remained active in party politics until his death. His mind remained sharp as a tack and, until the virus hit him, he was boastful (in an appropriate way) about his robust health.
The bigger headline stuff, part two, was John Treen’s 227-vote loss to Duke in a 1989 special election for a Louisiana state legislative seat. John Treen entered the race thinking it would be a sleepy contest that he could easily win. Smart and diligent, he surely would have been a good legislator. In a multicandidate race, Duke wasn’t even supposed to be a factor, but the former Klan leader rode a wave of discontent (as the nation’s economy roared, Louisiana’s suffered from an oil industry bust) and his own preternatural talent for media manipulation into a runoff with John Treen.
By mid-afternoon on the day of that runoff election, with the outcome still very much in doubt and a maelstrom of activity on the district’s streets, John Treen sat largely alone in a back room of his campaign headquarters, silent and nearly catatonic. A successful homebuilder by trade, honest but blunt and sometimes cantankerous, he was not a natural candidate. The runoff had drawn international media attention and a “scary clown” sort of nightmarish circus atmosphere. Duke’s minions were spreading rumors in the vilest sort of whisper campaigns about John Treen. Forgive the cliche, but John Treen just didn’t know what hit him.
But within weeks of his devastating loss, John Treen was back in the fray as a volunteer Republican leader and member of the party’s State Central Committee, working to elect others even though he could not elect himself.
By southern Republican standards, John Treen was very much a moderate, and he wasn’t bashful about his views. Those more conservative than he didn’t necessarily enjoy the exchanges. But the good things about John Treen were that everyone always knew where he stood, that his word was reliable, and that he was loyal to those he counted as allies.
To younger generations of party activists, he had a habit of reminding them in no uncertain terms that they had much to learn (from people like him, naturally). But once that point had been made, he would often encourage them and praise them generously to others. He cared.
As longtime New Orleans political analyst Clancy DuBos put it, the media knew John Treen as “a principled man, the likes of which we seldom see today. Headstrong but thoroughly honest & always accessible.”
By the time he was an elder (or the eldest) local party statesmen, even many of John Treen’s rivals in internal party skirmishes had grown to respect him. As quoted in an excellent news obituary by Tyler Bridges of the Advocate, state Public Service Commissioner Eric Skrmetta, who defeated John Treen in 2012 for reelection to the State Central Committee, said, “We were competitors and friends. He was a lion of the Republican Party, a tremendous advocate.”
All too often, the general public sees politics only as the machinations of elected officials vying for advantage, without seeing so much of the work and dedication of volunteers like John Treen. Volunteers too have foibles, ambitions, and personal interests, but those volunteers are the very lifeblood of what makes our constitutional republic work, even in sometimes clunky fashion, to safeguard our liberties.
John Treen was not just a homebuilder but also a party builder and a patriot. That’s a legacy at least as relevant as the headlines.
