Melinda Schwegmann Politician

Melinda B. Schwegmann (born October 25, 1946) was the lieutenant governor of Louisiana from 1992–1996 – the first woman to hold the position. She made an unsuccessful run for governor of Louisiana in 1995. In 1997, she won a special election to the Louisiana State House of Representatives, District 98, from the Orleans Parish Lakefront, a predominantly African American area, previously represented for fifteen years by a conservative Republican Garey Forster. Schwegmann was elected to a full House term in 1999. In 2003, she relinquished the House seat, which was dismembered by reapportionment. Formerly a member of the Democratic Party, that same year she switched affiliation to the Republican Party in a fruitless effort to regain the lieutenant governor's position.