Reynard Rochon was a Republican who got a Democrat elected. He ran numbers as a child and became Louisiana’s second Black Certified Public Accountant in 1967. He lived in New Orleans and ran a Chicago mayoral campaign part-time.
The duplicities served him well.
Rochon, the Chicago Tribune wrote in 1988, “built a reputation as a tireless numbers-cruncher who draws exhaustive political game plans and carries them out without flaw.”
A graduate of Louisiana State University at New Orleans (now the University of New Orleans), Rochon opened Louisiana’s first Black accounting firm in 1968. By 1977, he had offices in New Orleans and Houston with more than 30 employees. That same year, New Orleans Mayor Ernest N. “Dutch” Morial selected Rochon as his top administrator.
In 1979, Rochon was the chief negotiator during a police strike that began right before Mardi Gras. The strike soon fell apart, however, after the Carnival krewe captains either canceled their parades or moved them outside of the city limits.
According to the Tribune, Rochon managed more than a dozen candidates without a defeat. Those candidates included Morial, his successor Sidney Barthelemy and Philadelphia Mayor W. Wilson Goode. Rochon also served as a consultant on Marc Morial’s mayoral campaign and Jim Singleton’s run for a council at-large seat.
Rochon’s winning streak ended in 1989 when Eugene Sawyer, Chicago’s interim mayor lost his special election bid. Sawyer, who was appointed after the sudden death of Harold Washington, paid Rochon $14,000 to manage the campaign on a part-time basis.
“The Mayors: The Chicago Political Tradition” blames Rochon’s “cookie-cutter” campaign approach for the loss. “Rochon,” the book states, “was an outsider who had little interest in and less appreciation for the subtleties and nuances of Chicago politics.”
Rochon died from a heart attack Nov. 20, 1993. He was 56.
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