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One man's perspective - Walkaway
Elbert Lee Guillory (born June 24, 1944) is a former member of the Louisiana State Senate. An American Republican, he represented District 24, including his native Opelousas, and several rural precincts, from May 2, 2009, when he won a special election, until January 11, 2016, when his full term to which he was elected in 2011 ended.
Guillory previously served from 2006 to 2009 as state representative for District 40. In that position he had also succeeded the Democrat Don Cravins, Jr., whose father, Don, Sr., was also a former state senator and a mayor of Opelousas.
Up until 2007, Guillory had been a registered Republican and served on the Louisiana Republican state central committee. He became a Democrat in 2007 when he first ran for the state House in the heavily Democratic District 40. During the 2013 regular session of the Louisiana Legislature, Guillory switched his party affiliation back to Republican. Officially, Guillory's party-switch occurred on May 31, when he was presented with the Frederick Douglass Award from the @Large Society.
Guillory's conservative political philosophy was indicated in his pre-2007 membership in the Republican Party, according to the Daily Kos. Guillory explained his 2013 party switch in a 4-minute 17-second video widely circulated in state and national media outlets. The video was viewed on YouTube within the first three days by nearly 500,000. Guillory called his switch "not only right for me, but for all of my brothers and sisters in the black community" as he left the Democrats for the Republicans.
Soon after re-joining the Republican Party, Guillory founded the Free at Last PAC, a political action committee dedicated to electing black conservatives to office.
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