Billy Nungesser

Nungesser is the son of William Nungesser and Ruth Amelia Nungesser (née Marks) (1932–2012).

William Harold Nungesser (born January 10, 1959) is an American politician serving as the 54th lieutenant governor of Louisiana since 2016.

From 1980 to 1984, the senior Nungesser was the chief of staff during David C. Treen's term as governor of Louisiana.

He was later the state chairman of the Louisiana Republican Party.

Ruth Nungesser was also active in Republican politics as a charter member of Republican Women of Louisiana and a delegate to state and national GOP conventions.

In 1983, Treen appointed Nungesser to the Lake Pontchartrain and Maurepas Study Commission; in 1985 his father was appointed to the Orleans Levee Board.

While working in his family's offshore catering business, Nungesser found an alternative use for metal ship containers.

In 1991, he established General Marine Leasing Company, a business which provides portable living quarters for offshore workers.

The company grew to employ two hundred people and reach $20 million in sales.

In 2004, Nungesser was the chairman for the Plaquemines Parish United Way.

In 2004 and 2005, Nungesser worked with local business leaders to form the Plaquemines Association of Business and Industry or PABI, separate from the statewide Louisiana Association of Business and Industry.

He served on the PABI board during its early years.

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina first made landfall in the southern end of Plaquemines Parish in the town of Empire, and the eye passed over the parish community of Buras-Triumph.

Much of Nungesser's work in his first two years was on hurricane recovery.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) originally obligated $400,000 to rebuild the marina at Port Eads after Katrina.

Nungesser went to Washington, D.C. to appeal the amount; FEMA then authorized $12 million for the project.

In 2006, Nungesser ran for the open position of president of the Plaquemines Parish Commission; the population of the parish is about 25,000 people.

The incumbent president, Democrat Benny Rousselle, a former state representative, was term-limited.

Nungesser defeated then-Democrat Amos Cormier, Jr., with 4,096 votes (51.1 percent) to Cormier's 3,920 votes (48.9 percent).

Plaquemines Parish consists of the final stretch of the Mississippi River before it flows into the Gulf of Mexico.

Before Hurricane Gustav made landfall in August 2008, Nungesser used a helicopter to count the number of barges that could potentially become a safety issue to people, property, and the levee system during the hurricane.

His team called the owners of about 150 barges and told them to move them or the parish would sink them.

Seventy did not move, and were sunk, either by the parish or their owners.

Less than three weeks later, most of the barges were back up and running.

In September 2008, Hurricane Ike passed hundreds of miles south of Plaquemines, but its tide surge greatly affected the parish.

The water began rising against the levees on the east bank of Plaquemines near the Caernarvon freshwater diversion at Braithwaite.

The structure allows fresh water from the Mississippi River to flow into the marsh on the east side of the river.

Parish officials noticed the water in the river was not rising at the same rate.

After consulting the Army Corps of Engineers, a quick decision was made to open the floodgates to permit the rising water flow into the Mississippi, relieving pressure on the levees.

In February 2009, Governor Bobby Jindal appointed Nungesser to the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, a 20-member panel assigned to develop a master plan on coastal protection for the state.

Nungesser collaborated with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Vicksburg, Mississippi, to create the Plaquemines Restoration and Protection Plan, released in 2009.

The plan proposed multiple lines of defense along with the levee system to protect the parish from future tropical systems.

A member of the Republican Party, Nungesser is also the former president of the Plaquemines Parish Commission, having been re-elected to a second four-year term in the 2010 general election in which he topped two opponents with more than 71 percent of the vote.

Nungesser was heavily involved in the response to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

He made countless media appearances, including almost nightly guest appearances on the CNN alongside journalist Anderson Cooper.

Nungesser was recognized as the "face of the oil spill" by major media outlets such as the New Orleans Times-Picayune, The New York Times, Associated Press, CNN, Reuters, and ABC News.

In 2010, Nungesser won re-election to parish president, defeating former parish presidents Cormier and Rousselle.

Nungesser got 5,632 votes (71 percent) to Cormier's 1,772 (22 percent) and Rousselle's 499 (6 percent).

Nungesser began his second term with a public cry for help in removing oil from eroded land at Bay Jimmy.

His second term as parish president began on January 1, 2011, and ended four years later.