Watkins was defeated in the general election held on November 7 by RepublicanDavid C. Treen, then of Jefferson Parish. In a hard-fought campaign, the fourth that Treen had waged for a congressional seat over a decade, Treen prevailed with 71,090 votes (54 percent) to Watkins' 60,521 (46 percent). Treen polled narrow margins in the swing parishes of Iberia and St. Charles. Watkins won handily in St. Martin and Lafourche parishes and took 50.1 percent in Bauer's St. Mary Parish. While Watkins received 72.8 percent in his own parish of Terrebonne, Treen received practically the same margin in his home parish of Jefferson.[4]
Treen had lost races for the then Second District House seat in 1962, 1964, and 1968, all against the Democratic party leader Hale Boggs. In 1972, the reconfigured Third District contained the conservative stronghold of Metairie, which had been removed from the Second District. The Third District overall, however, was still less conservative and much more rural than the former Second District. Treen became the first member of his party elected to a U.S. House seat from Louisiana in the 20th century; seven years later, he became the first Republican elected as governor of Louisiana.[5] In 2013, Republicans held all but one of the six House seats from Louisiana; the Second District is now the only Democratic seat in the delegation.
After his defeat in the congressional campaign, Watkins became a member and served as the president of the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. He was elected circuit judge in 1978 and remained in the post for nearly two decades; his service ended with his death of cancer in Houma at the age of sixty-eight.[2]
Watkins' father, J. Louis Watkins Sr. (1899–1978), was a judge in Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes.[8] Watkins and his wife, Shirley Theresa Watkins (1928–2013), had a son, J. Louis Watkins III, who practices criminal, domestic, and personal-injury cases in Houma.[8][9] The younger Watkins, known as "Bubba", was an unsuccessful Republican candidate for Terrebonne Parish clerk of court in the primary held on October 22, 2011. He polled nearly a third of the vote against fellow Republican Theresa A. Robichaux.[10]
