GOP governor loosened Democratic grip on La.

Dave Treen, 81, who was elected Louisiana's first Republican governor since Reconstruction in 1979 but lost a reelection bid to flamboyant Democrat Edwin Edwards four years later, died Oct. 29 at a hospital in a New Orleans suburb. He had complications from a respiratory illness.

Edwards had served two terms as governor and couldn't run for a third consecutive term in 1979. Mr. Treen's victory over Democrat Louis Lambert was a watershed for Louisiana's Republican Party in a state long dominated by Democrats. It was a precursor to Republican growth in the state that would coincide with the two-term presidency of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s and continue through today.

Mr. Treen, however, wasn't destined to benefit from the rising Republican tide.

Still wildly popular when he left office, Edwards would come roaring back in a 1983 landslide despite Mr. Treen's unassailed reputation for integrity and Edwards's penchant for scandal, which would lead to his being indicted in three criminal cases and convicted in one.

Mr. Treen's term was marked by frustration over a downturn in Louisiana's boom-and-bust oil-based economy. Oil prices and production fell during his tenure, cutting sharply into state revenue. He tried to make up for it by taking on oil with a proposal to tax production, but business interests shot it down.

Mr. Treen was personable and jocular when out of the public eye but was colorless on the campaign trail and no match for the quick-witted Edwards, who delighted in making Mr. Treen the butt of his jokes. Edwards once quipped that Mr. Treen was "so slow it takes him an hour and a half to watch '60 Minutes.' "

Edwards is serving a 10-year sentence for a scheme to rig the riverboat casino licensing process during his fourth and final term in office, which ended in 1996.

Mr. Treen's administration was based on clean government and low taxes, and he established the Department of Environmental Quality. That resonated little with voters, with only 36 percent supporting his reelection bid.

Mr. Treen also appointed more minorities to state government than any predecessor, including Edwards. But he often encountered opposition in the legislature from newly powerful black members. And he had to counter his early history of involvement with segregationist groups.

As a young lawyer in New Orleans at the end of the 1950s, Mr. Treen became chairman of the Louisiana States' Rights Party in 1960, an anti-Kennedy elector for the party and a "stalwart" of the white supremacist Citizens Council, according to historian Adam Fairclough. Mr. Treen later reacted angrily to mentions of this part of his biography, and he omitted it from official résumés.

As a convert to the tiny Republican Party in the 1960s, he three times unsuccessfully took on Rep. Hale Boggs (D-La). Mr. Treen attacked Boggs for supporting the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which enfranchised millions of Southern black residents. From a suburban, white-flight New Orleans district, Mr. Treen finally made it to Congress in 1972, and his constituents sent him back to Washington three more times.

David Conner Treen was born in Baton Rouge on July 16, 1928, and graduated from Tulane University and its law school. He spent his last years in retirement in Mandeville, across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans.

His wife, Dolores "Dodie" Brisbi Treen, died in 2005. Mr. Treen is survived by his three children.