In 1990, state Representative Garey Forster, a New Orleans Republican, had introduced two bills, one to ban the practice outright and another to reclassify fowl as "animals" so that they could secure the protection of animal-cruelty laws.
A defender of cockfighting, then Representative Raymond "La La" Lalonde, then a Democrat from Sunset in St. Landry Parish, but who later switched parties, said that the practice is ingrained in Cajun heritage: “This is part of their culture and heritage, and they're not going to give up on this issue without a fight.
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On leaving the legislature, Forster was succeeded by another Democrat, who later turned Republican, but one more liberal than most Louisiana Republicans, Melinda Schwegmann, who in 1991 was elected to a single term as lieutenant governor.
In 1997, she won a special election to the Louisiana State House of Representatives, District 98, from the Orleans Parish Lakefront, a predominantly African American area, previously represented for fifteen years by a conservative Republican Garey Forster.
Robert Forster | Georg Forster | E. M. Forster | Marc Forster | Forster | Robert Forster (musician) | Henry Forster, 1st Baron Forster | William Edward Forster | John Forster | Thomas Ignatius Maria Forster | Margaret Forster | Garey Forster | Forster, New South Wales | Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche | Anthony Forster | William Forster (Australian politician) | William Forster | Roger T. Forster | Robert Förster | Michael Forster | John Forster (biographer) | H. O. Arnold-Forster | George H. Forster | Forster's Tern | Förster resonance energy transfer | Förster | Ernst Joachim Förster | Edward Forster the Elder | Charles Smith Forster |
Forster as caricatured by Ape (Carlo Pellegrini