Carl W. Bauer

Carl Wiegmann Bauer (October 4, 1933 – June 11, 2013) was a lawyer and businessman who served as a Democrat in both houses of the Louisiana State Legislature from 1966 to 1976 and capped his career as the chief lobbyist, specifically the "Coordinator of Governmental Relations," for the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Background Born Carl Packard Wiegmann in rural Centerville in St. Mary Parish in south Louisiana, Bauer, also known by the nickname "Wimpy", was the third son of Fred and Mary Packard Wiegmann. After his parents divorced, Carl was placed in foster care at the age of five in Alpine in Brewster County in southwestern Texas. A foster mother, Elma Wooster Boudreaux, cared for Carl until he was twelve. He was then adopted by a distant cousin and Elma's niece, Margaret Wooster Bauer, and her husband, Ralph Norman Bauer, both lawyers in their middle forties and childless. As a teenager, Carl was reared in Franklin, the parish seat of St. Mary Parish. His father, a leading figure in anti-Long politics in Louisiana, served as a member of the Louisiana House from 1928 to 1936 and again from 1940 to 1948. He was the Speaker for his last two terms during the administrations of Governors Sam Houston Jones and Jimmie Davis. In 1929, as a freshman lawmaker, Ralph Bauer led the "Dynamite Squad" which sought to impeach and remove Governor Huey Pierce Long Jr., from office, but Long was spared conviction in the state Senate.

In 1951, Bauer graduated from Franklin Senior High School. He then studied at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge and in 1955 completed his first year at the LSU Law School. An alumnus of the LSU Reserve Officer Training Corps program, he was called into active duty in the United States Air Force. Bauer was trained as a navigator at Ellington Air Force Base in Houston, Texas. Until his release from duty in 1957, he was stationed in Waco, Texas, Panama City, Florida, and Sacramento, California. He thereafter finished his legal studies at LSU and joined the law firm Bauer and Bauer, named for his father and his uncle, Theodore Bauer. Watkins was then defeated in the 1972 general election by David C. Treen, then of Jefferson Parish, the first Republican in the 20th century to represent Louisiana in Congress. Seven years later Treen was elected as the first Republican governor of his state since Reconstruction. Treen and a Republican "search committee" had offered to support Bauer for the House seat in 1972 if the Democrat would switch parties, but Bauer remained Democrat and expected to face Treen in the general election.

Bauer served as the chief lobbyist for twenty years at ULL, when he retired in 2010. Ray Authement, the former university president, termed Bauer "one of the most effective leaders, as far as grants and contracts, that we ever had." and second to the former Mary Jane Peacher, a Realtor whom he married c. 1980. He had six children, four from his first marriage and two from Mary Jane's former marriage to a man named "Heymann": Carla R. Bauer, of Atlanta, Georgia; Margaret Donovan Bauer of Greenville, North Carolina; Irene Colvin Bauer Casper and her husband, Trevor Allen Casper, of Lafayette; Theodore Norman "Ted" Bauer and his wife, Cassie, of Lafayette; Kelli Claire Heymann Dautreuil and her husband, Bryan, of Cecilia, Louisiana, and Blake Ronald Heymann and his wife, Kristi, of New Orleans. There were eight grandchildren. Bauer donated his body to medical science. A memorial service was held on June 14, 2013, at Asbury United Methodist Church in Lafayette.