John Leigh "Jay" Dardenne, Jr. (born February 6, 1954) is an American lawyer and politician from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who is serving as commissioner of administration for Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards. A Republican, Dardenne served as the 53rd lieutenant governor of his state from 2010 to 2016. Running as a Republican, he won a special election for lieutenant governor held in conjunction with the regular November 2, 2010 general election. At the time, Dardenne was Louisiana secretary of state. Formerly, Dardenne was a member of the Louisiana State Senate for the Baton Rouge suburbs, a position he filled from 1992 until his election as secretary of state on September 30, 2006.
Political overview
Dardenne was reelected to a full term as secretary of state in the October 20, 2007, nonpartisan blanket primary with 758,156 votes (63 percent) to 373,956 (31 percent) for the Democrat R. Rick Wooley. A "No Party" candidate, Scott Lewis, received the remaining 64,704 votes (5 percent). Dardenne won fifty-eight of the state's sixty-four parishes. He outpolled gubernatorial candidate Bobby Jindal, a fellow Republican, in raw votes and won sixty-one parishes to Jindal's sixty.
On November 2, 2010, Dardenne was elected lieutenant governor when he defeated Caroline Fayard, a young Democrat originally from Denham Springs in Livingston Parish. Tom Schedler, Dardenne's chief deputy in the secretary of state's office, succeeded him as acting secretary of state when Dardenne was sworn in as lieutenant governor.
Dardenne polled 719,243 votes (57 percent) to Fayard's 540,633 (43 percent). Dardenne won most of the sixty-four parishes but lost Orleans, Caddo, and St. Landry.
Background
Dardenne is one of two sons of the late Tonet and Johnny Dardenne; his grandparents were Nathan and Ula Coronna Abramson and Teakle Wallis "T. W." and Esther Cohn Dardenne. His younger brother, Richard James Dardenne (1956-2018), was a basketball and track coach who spent his last years in Fort Worth, Texas.
Dardenne is married to the former Catherine "Cathy" McDonald (born September 23, 1955). The couple has two sons: John Dardenne of Los Angeles, California, and Matthew Dardenne of Baton Rouge.
Dardenne is Jewish and a graduate of Baton Rouge High School and Louisiana State University, from which he obtained a Bachelor of Arts in journalism. He earned a degree from the Louisiana State University Law Center. He was elected student body president at LSU. He is a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity.
Dardenne is active in social and civic endeavors in his native Baton Rouge and through non-profit organizations throughout Louisiana. He volunteers with the Muscular Dystrophy Association, the annual Labor Day Telethon, the Cerebral Palsy Foundation, and the River City Festivals Association. He serves as chairman of the U.S. National Senior Sports Classic (the Senior Olympics), and has served as president of ten non-profit organizations in the greater Baton Rouge Community.
Dardenne has played with fiction and won "Dishonorable Mentions" for his entries in the 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, a competition where contestants submit bad opening lines to imaginary novels. Dardenne also won the 'Most Vile Pun' award in the 2006 contest.
State senator
In 1987, Dardenne narrowly lost his first race for the District 15 state Senate seat to the Democrat Larry S. Bankston, one of three sons of former Democratic state party chairman and centenarian Jesse Bankston. Dardenne then won an election for a seat on the East Baton Rouge Metropolitan Council and held that seat until 1992.
Following the election of Republican Murphy J. "Mike" Foster, Jr., as governor in 1995, Dardenne became the governor's floor leader and began to pass landmark legislation. He continued to push unsuccessfully for reforms in the administration of Foster's successor, Democrat Kathleen Babineaux Blanco. He did help pass constitutional amendments on term limits, coastal erosion, and victims' rights. He worked for the creation of a single State Board of Ethics, spearheading reform of the river pilots' system, and reducing government waste as the chairman of the Louisiana Senate Finance Committee. In 2003, Dardenne was named the "National Republican Legislator of the Year".