Hazel Beard

Beard entered the 1990 mayoral race against three serious opponents, including C.O. Simpkins and two fellow council members, Republican Carolyn Calhoun Whitehurst and Democrat Bill Bush. Bush, a businessman, led in the pre-election polls. Simpkins, an African-American dentist and civil rights activist, had recently moved back to his native Shreveport from New York City. Whitehurst, a real estate broker, was descended from a prominent DeSoto Parish family. Her father, Riemer Calhoun, was a Democratic member of the Louisiana State Senate from 1944 to 1952. Whitehurst, who represented a southeast Shreveport council district, had the support of The Shreveport Times.[1]

Simpkins led in the primary with 31 percent of the ballots cast, but Beard secured the second slot to proceed to the general election.[2] In the second round of balloting, Beard prevailed winning 38,604 votes (59 percent) to Simpkins' 26,341 (41 percent).[3]

Beard created a Growth Management Issues Committee, chaired by former Democratic Mayor Jim Gardner and Wendell Collins, an AT&T executive who thereafter became the city's chief administrative officer under Beard's successor as mayor, Robert W. "Bo" Williams.[4][5] Soon after taking office, Beard appointed Steve Prator, a 17-year member of the Shreveport Police Department as chief of police, a position that he held until 1999. Prator successfully sought the office of Caddo Parish sheriff and became the first Republican since Reconstruction to hold that position.[6] He won a sixth term in the primary election held on October 12, 2019.[7] Beard appointed Republican activist Harriet Belchic to the Shreveport Women's Commission and the Riverfront Redevelopment Advisory Committee. The panel completed Riverfront Park although it was poorly designed and unable to withstand seasonal overflows of the nearby Red River. Rising waters would flood the fountains in the park and interfere with the operation of the waterpumps.[8]

In 1992, when Mayor Beard welcomed U.S. President George H. W. Bush to Shreveport during Bush's ill-fated reelection campaign, the president mistakenly referred to her as "Nasal" Beard. The mayor accepted the slip of tongue with humor.

Mayor Beard had often expressed her opposition to any form of legalized riverboat gambling legislation for which then Governor Edwin Edwards had sought legislative approval. Shreveport-Bossier received five gaming licenses, and the area stood to benefit financially from such efforts. Beard hence changed her position and announced her support for one riverboat operation in Shreveport. The Beard administration granted the first riverboat gambling license in Shreveport history to Harrah's. At the opening of the casino, Edwards could be overheard at the podium expressing his displeasure with Beard's anti-gaming comments and was reported to have told Beard during a chat at the dais that he (Edwards) "...had never had he worked with nor known a Louisiana mayor who was as stupid as she..."

It was widely anticipated that Beard's predecessor as mayor, John Brennan Hussey would challenge Beard for reelection in the 1994 election, but Beard surprised political observers by not seeking reelection. Hussey ran as expected, but city council members Robert Warren Williams and Democrat Roy Cary went into the general election instead, which Williams won by a comfortable margin. Former Mayor Gardner, in his memoirs, Jim Gardner and Shreveport, Vol. II, describes Beard as:

"... [A] large woman physically and had been a high school basketball player ... totally self-assured, [this] gave her strength as mayor. Her public appearances and demeanor were of one who was acting under a voter mandate to change everything. She began her term in office by asking for the resignation of all board and commission members, something not done before or since. At her inauguration, she had stated that 'the era of darkness was gone, the era of light had begun.'... This made me uncomfortable with Mayor Beard ... but we did develop a comfortable working relationship."

Hazel Beard was married to Charles Carroll Beard until his death in 2002. After her term as mayor ended, the Beards moved to Kingsland, Texas.

• James C. Gardner, Jim Gardner and Shreveport, Vol. II (Shreveport: Ritz Publications, 2006), pp. 289–90