State senator and national congressional candidate Dan Claitor, born in 1961, will occasionally tell people he attended LSU in 1965 — and he’s not lying.
Claitor’s prolonged and ongoing relationship with the University did begin in the ’60s when he was sent to LSU preschool. Now, 49 years later, he represents part of the University in his state senate district.
Claitor, 52, said he hopes to continue to advocate on behalf of LSU, as well as the entirety of Louisiana’s 6th Congressional District, should he be elected to the United States House of Representatives.
Claitor said he did not have too much of a social life while at the University. He was working throughout college in his family’s local business, a bookstore that published, bought and sold law books.
Claitor, who later received his law degree from Loyola University New Orleans, said his experiences working for the bookstore at a young age taught him that every dollar is important in a small family business.
Working at the bookstore helped Claitor develop a love of language and he initially pursued an English major, though he eventually switched to a degree in finance.
“It gave me an appreciation for how the economy works and how markets work,” Claitor said. “The classes that I had in finance and economics still apply to what I do today as a legislator.”
Claitor said he registered early as a Republican when he was 18 in 1979, and acknowledged that, at the time, he did not fully comprehend what that meant.
“As I went through school and had a better understanding of the market and how it works, it made me more comfortable with my decision to be a Republican.”
Claitor said he now has a huge number of students and professors in his senate district, and expressed his disappointment with the amount of funding Louisiana has put toward higher education.
“I have always, when I meet with LSU kids, have asked them to make sure that their legislators, wherever they’re from, understood that LSU was important to them,” Claitor said.
Claitor credits his legal training with teaching him to read every bill and conduct his own research on legislation.
“People in the legislature know that I’m keeping an eye on what’s going on down there and that I speak up,” Claitor said. “A lot of people say that I speak up too often and draw attention to the various issues that we see with bills.”
Claitor also said he supports localizing the issue of higher education as much as possible.
“It’s a funding issue and it’s an issue of needing the federal government to stay out of our business and let the states handle their business on their own,” Claitor said. “They’re closest and best in a position to understand how to handle their own issues.”
Claitor also said the current state of Congress is grounded too much in extremism and said he plans to exercise “Southern civility” in the U.S. House of Representatives.
On the issue of gay marriage, Claitor acknowledged that “the government has zero business in your bedroom,” but he also said he does not believe there is a constitutional right to marriage between the same sex.
“I think my legal training sometimes gets in the way of an absolute straight answer,” Claitor said. “I don’t think it’s a bad thing that I try to look at it from both sides.”
Claitor, who was a prosecutor in New Orleans in the late ’80s, said he saw lots of violent crimes during his experiences there.
“The supply of guns is huge; it’s unbelievable,” Claitor said. “There is no legislation that would ever work, in my mind, to reduce the number of guns that are out there.”
“I have always, when I meet with LSU kids, have asked them to make sure that their legislators, wherever they’re from, understood that LSU was important to them.”