Raymond Strother:
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Raymond Strother was born in 1940 in Port Arthur, Texas and was graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in 1958. He attended Northwestern State College in Natchitoches, Louisiana (Now University of Northwest Louisiana) on a track scholarship which he held for two years until he was asked to leave the institution because of political activities. He moved to LSU where he became advertising director of the Daily Reveille and later editor. While attending LSU he was the night reporter and photographer for the Associated Press.
While earning his MA in Journalism, Strother focused on propaganda and its use in politics. In his 1965 Master’s thesis (The Political Candidate and the Advertising Organization) he predicted that media and not organization would dominate future political campaigns.
He has been the media producer and consultant for Senators Lloyd Bentsen, Russell Long, John Stennis, Dennis Deconcini, Gary Hart, Al Gore, Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln, and others. Strother guided the Gary Hart media campaign for president in 1984 and 1988 and was assigned the Super Tuesday states for Albert Gore. He worked in governors races for Bill Clinton, Arkansas; Mark White, Texas; Bill O’Neil, Connecticut; Rudy Perpich, Minnesota; Martha Layne Collins, Kentucky; Buddy Roemer, Louisiana; Roy Barnes, Georgia and Mike Lowry, Washington. Strother has handled more than 50 campaigns for the U. S. House of Representatives and scores of campaigns for other statewide offices. He has won awards for long form documentaries for civil rights hero, John Lewis and U. S. Treasurer Lloyd Bentsen.
Strother has been named to the LSU Journalism Hall of Fame and the Long Purple Line at Northwestern Louisiana. He served as both president and chairman of the board of the American Association of Political Consultants, and in 1999 was a resident fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard University. In 2004, he was named the first honorary Fellow at the University of Akron. In 2002 Strother was given a new national award created to recognize political professionals who have an “exemplary record of achievement in the field and contributions to students and academic institutions. “ The annual award is now called “The Strother. “
In 2006, an exhibit depicting his life was dedicated in the Hall of Notable People in the Gulf Coast Museum.
In 1991, E. P. Dutton published his novel, Cottonwood, about a political consultant who loses his soul. In 2004, a new autobiography, Falling Up, was published by LSU Press. He is currently under contract working on a political text book. A novel, The Seduction of Mary Faye will be published next year. Strother is a frequent commentator on network television and was an analyst in 2000 on the Vice Presidential Debates for PBS. He is a regular political contributor to BBC Midlands in Birmingham, England and lectures every year at the University of Bologna. He has written for Newsweek, the New York Times, Washington Post, Atlanta Constitution, and scores of other publications. Campaigns and Elections magazine called him, “The poet of Democracy.”
