Raymond Blanco Biography | Who is Raymond Blanco?| Kathleen Blanco Husband

Raymond Sindo Blanco is an American academic administrator and football coach who served as the First Gentleman of Louisiana from 2004 to 2008 during the gubernatorial tenure of his wife, then Governor of Louisiana Kathleen Blanco.

Blanco, the first man to serve as First Gentleman of Louisiana, was also nicknamed “The first Coach” during his tenure in the position.

Blanco worked as an administrator at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette since 1982 until his retirement in 2009. He served as Vice President for Student Affairs, responsible for coordinating various non-academic departments that relate directly to UL Lafayette students.

He also serves as a link between the student body and the university. He is known as “Coach” on the campus of UL Lafayette.

Raymond Blanco Age | How Old is Raymond Blanco?

Raymond Blanco is also known as Raymond Sindo Blanco (born August 16, 1935, Birmingham, Alabama, U.S. ) is an American academic administrator and football coach who served as the First Gentleman of Louisiana from 2004 to 2008 during the gubernatorial tenure of his wife, then Governor of Louisiana Kathleen Blanco. Raymond Blanco is 84 years old as of 2019

Raymond Blanco Background, Family, Children

Raymond Blanco was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama. He received his Bachelor of Arts in philosophy and political science from the former St. Benedict’s College (now part of Benedictine College) in Atchison, Kansas, in 1958.

He served as Assistant Football Coach at Kirwin High School in Galveston, Texas and Head Football Coach at Catholic High School in New Iberia, Louisiana between the years 1958-1962. In 1962 he led the Catholic High team to win the State Championship. From 1963-1969, Blanco served as Assistant Football Coach at then USL under the direction of Coach Russ Faulkenberry.

In 1969, he became Dean of Men. With the merger of the offices of the Dean of Men and Dean of Women, Blanco was named as USL’s Dean of Student Personnel in 1972. In 1974 he became the Chief Student Officer for the university functioning as the Dean of Students and overseeing the operations of the entire student welfare area.

As a member of the University Council, he is responsible for the operations of the following areas: Student Personnel, University Police, Student Union, Counseling and Testing, International Students, Housing, Child Development Center, Career Services, Parking and Transit, One Card System,…

Intramurals, Student Health Services, Student-Athlete Center, Physical Plant, Student Government, Campus Organizations and Student Publications. Since the fall of 1982, Mr. Blanco has served in the capacity of Vice President for Student Affairs. His duties have remained unchanged.

Blanco’s transition from football coach to Dean of Men came as a result of the university’s need to find an administrator capable of understanding and quelling the severe student unrest which plagued USL (and universities around the country) in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Raymond Blanco Net Worth And Salary

Raymond Blanco is an American academic administrator and football coach who served as the First Gentleman of Louisiana from 2004 to 2008 during the gubernatorial tenure of his wife, then Governor of Louisiana Kathleen Blanco. Raymond Blanco has an estimated net worth of ‎$4 million as of 2019

Raymond Blanco’s Wife Death(Kathleen Blanco), Who is Raymond Blanco Married to?

Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (December 15, 1942 – August 18, 2019) was an American politician who served as the 54th Governor of Louisiana from January 2004 to January 2008. A member of the Democratic Party, she was the first woman elected as the state’s governor.

When first elected, Blanco outlined her top priorities as providing affordable healthcare, improving the education system in the state, and helping to create a strong and vibrant economy through aggressive economic development initiatives. Her work as governor changed dramatically when, in 2005, coastal Louisiana was severely damaged by two hurricanes that struck less than a month apart.

In August, Hurricane Katrina devastated the New Orleans region, an urban area of 1.4 million people. Then, in September, Hurricane Rita struck the southwestern coast, displacing another 300,000 people.

More than 200,000 housing units were destroyed, 81,000 businesses closed, entire electrical and telecommunication systems were torn apart, and one million people were made homeless as a result of severe flooding caused by levee failures and storm surges.

Many believed the immediate response from the city, state, and federal governments was inadequate, and Blanco later acknowledged there were failures on the part of her administration before and after the storm; much criticism, however, was directed at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, for what was seen as a slow initial response to the disaster and an inability to effectively manage, care for and deliver promised resources to those trying to evacuate from New Orleans.

Blanco announced in March 2007 that she would not seek re-election later that year, saying that she would instead “focus her time and energy for the remainder of her term on the people’s work, not on the politics” of running for another term. In December 2017 she was diagnosed with cancer, and she died nearly two years later, on August 18, 2019.

Raymond Blanco Height | How Tall is Raymond Blanco?

Raymond Blanco is an American academic administrator and football coach who served as the First Gentleman of Louisiana from 2004 to 2008 during the gubernatorial tenure of his wife, then Governor of Louisiana Kathleen Blanco. Raymond Blanco has a height of 5′ 7″ (1.70m) tall.

Early life and career

She was born Kathleen Babineaux in New Iberia, Louisiana, the daughter of Louis Babineaux and his wife, the former Lucille Fremin, both of Cajun ancestry. Her Babineaux grandfather was a farmer and grocer with a country store, and her father was a small businessman who moved to the rural hamlet of Coteau, a community near New Iberia with one church and one elementary school.

Blanco attended Mount Carmel Academy, an all-girls school run by the Roman Catholic Sisters of Mount Carmel, which was situated on the banks of Bayou Teche.

In 1964, Blanco received a Bachelor of Science in Business Education from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, then named the University of Southwestern Louisiana. She was also a member of the Kappa Delta sorority.

On August 8, 1964, she married Raymond Blanco, a football coach, and educator; the couple had four daughters: Karmen, Monique, Nicole, and Pilar and two sons: Ray Jr., and Ben.

Following college, Blanco taught business at Breaux Bridge High School. She then worked for roughly fifteen years as a stay-at-home mom for her six children.

She later worked as a District Manager for the U.S. Department of Commerce during the 1980 Census initiative and with her husband, owned Coteau Consultants, a political and marketing research firm.

Prior to her election as governor, Blanco served twenty years in public office. In 1983, elected as the first woman legislator from the city of Lafayette, she served five years in the Louisiana House of Representatives.

In her first term, she and her friend Evelyn Blackmon of West Monroe were two of only five women in both houses of the legislature.

Blanco in 1988 defeated the Republican Kernan “Skip” Hand to become the first woman in Louisiana elected to the Louisiana Public Service Commission, a post that she held for seven years, She was also the first woman chairman of the PSC. She was then elected Lieutenant Governor, a post that she held for eight years.

Aftermath and recovery

Blanco continued to press President Bush and Congress for additional recovery funds for Louisiana, pointing out the disparity in assistance received by Louisiana compared to neighboring Mississippi.

Early in 2006, Blanco was inducted into the Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame in Winnfield.

On June 19, 2006, Blanco announced that she would send the National Guard to patrol the streets of New Orleans after five teenagers were killed, in an effort to combat a greatly increased rate of violent crime.

Also on June 19, 2006, Blanco signed into law a ban on most forms of abortion (unless the life of the mother was in danger or her health would be permanently damaged) once it passed the state legislature.

Although she felt exclusions for rape or incest would have “been reasonable,” she felt she should not veto based on those reasons. The bill would only go into effect if the United States Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade.

In August 2006, Blanco filed a lawsuit and formally objected to the federal Gulf of Mexico lease sale “to force the federal government to spend part of its oil and gas income from the Outer Continental Shelf to help shore up Louisiana’s coastline”.

In December 2006, Blanco called a special session of the Louisiana State Legislature which she intended to use to dispense $2.1 billion worth of tax cuts, teacher raises, road projects and other spending programs.

Legislators allied with Blanco attempted to lift a spending cap imposed by the Constitution of Louisiana, but Republican lawmakers rejected the governor’s spending measure. The high-profile defeat further eroded Blanco’s political reputation.

By late 2006 and early 2007, Blanco was facing increasingly heated accusations of delays in administering the Road Home Program, a state-run program that Blanco and the Louisiana Recovery Authority had set up following Katrina in order to distribute federal aid money to Katrina victims for damage to their homes.

By January 2007, fewer than 250 of an estimated 100,000 applicants had received payments from the program, and many of the payments were apparently based on assessments that grossly undervalued the cost of damage to homes.

Facing an upcoming re-election campaign with greatly reduced popularity, Blanco made repeated public criticisms of the administration of President Bush in January 2007.

Noting that Bush neglected to mention Gulf Coast reconstruction in his 2007 State of the Union Address, Blanco called for a bipartisan Congressional investigation into the conduct of the Bush administration following Katrina, to determine whether partisan politics played a role in the slow response to the storm.

This call followed comments by former Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) director Michael D. Brown, who claimed that the White House offer to federalize the National Guard in the days following the storm was part of a plan to upstage Blanco.

Blanco has also publicly stated that Mississippi received preferential treatment because its governor, Haley Barbour, is Republican.

Blanco announced on March 20, 2007, that she would not seek re-election. On January 14, 2008, Bobby Jindal succeeded her as governor.

Health and death

In December 2017, Blanco was diagnosed with ocular melanoma metastatic to her liver. A year later at a meeting of the civic association, the Council for a Better Louisiana, Blanco said there is “no escape” from the disease as it had metastasized throughout her body and she has “made peace” with her future. On April 19, 2019, it was announced that she was in hospice care.

Blanco died on August 18, 2019, at the St. Joseph Hospice Carpenter House in Lafayette, Louisiana.