W. T. McCain

Wilbur Teal McCain, Sr., known as W. T. "Brandy" McCain (October 19, 1913 – March 16, 1993), was a Democratic legislator and judge from his native Colfax in Grant Parish in north central Louisiana.

Career

McCain was one of six children, five being sons, of the Colfax attorney Clair Henry McCain (1880-1945) and the former Minnie Gray (1885-1953). At the time of his death, Clair McCain was retired from his legal practice and married to a second wife, Elmeanie H. McCain (1899-1981). Clair McCain was Roman Catholic and is interred at the Montgomery Cemetery in Montgomery in northwestern Grant Parish, where he resided.^[1]

A graduate of Louisiana State University Law Center in Baton Rouge, W. T. McCain was attending law school^[2] while serving the first of his two consecutive terms in the Louisiana House of Representatives, a position he held from 1940 to 1948.^[3] In February 1943, as a senior law student, he was named Chief Justice of the Honor Court.^[2]

He left the House to run unsuccessfully in 1948 for the Louisiana State Senate from a district including Winn, Caldwell, LaSalle, and Grant parishes. Both McCain and the incumbent senator, Bill Hodges, were defeated by another Democrat, businessman Puckett Willis of Winnfield and Sikes.^[4] In 1952, McCain again failed in a political race, this time in a bid to return to the state House. He lost in a heated runoff election to fellow Democrat Willard L. Rambo of Georgetown in eastern Grant Parish, an ally of the Long faction. In that House campaign, McCain was the victim of a smear campaign insinuating each week that he was at a place he should not have been on such a date and time.^[5]

McCain practiced law in Colfax. In 1976, he became the first elected Louisiana 35th Judicial District judge only for Grant Parish; Colfax native Billy Gene "B. G." Lutes (1931-2006) similarly became the first district attorney to represent only Grant Parish.^[6] Lutes, who was also in the construction business, subsequently was elected the state court judge to succeed McCain.^[7]

In 1983, prior to leaving his office, Judge McCain successfully sued the Grant Parish Police Jury to compel the governing body to fund clerical expenses of the 35th Judicial District Court. In 1982, McCain had sought $11,400 for such expenses, but the police jury budgeted only $2,500. The Louisiana Court of Appeal for the Third Circuit, ruled in McCain's favor: the courts have the "inherent power to compel the guardians of the public [the police jury] to budget adequate funds for the operations of the court to insure ... the proper independence among our three co-equal branches of government."^[8]

McCain and his wife, the former Erin Purifoy Sandlin (1918-1989), wed in 1937. They had ten children, including his namesake son and, later, grandson.^[9]

McCain died at the age of seventy-nine.

References