Quick Facts
Biography
Robert Warren Williams, known as Bo Williams (born July 21, 1938), is a Republican former mayor of Shreveport, Louisiana, having served a single term from 1994 to 1998.
Williams defeated his fellow city council member, Democrat Roy Cary, an African-American, 38,596 votes (59 percent) to 27,018 (41 percent). Eliminated in the nonpartisan blanket primary was the Democratic former Mayor John Brennan Hussey.
In 1990, Williams was elected to a single term on the Shreveport City Council from District E. He received, 6,293 votes (53 percent) to Democrat John L. Albritton's 5,503 ballots (47 percent). He left the council after one term to become mayor.
Williams was physically impaired as mayor. He used a wheelchair as a result of an accident several years earlier and had limited upper-body movement. Former Mayor James C. Gardner in his memoirs entitled Jim Gardner and Shreveport, Vol. II, describes Williams as follows:
I came to realize that most Shreveporters did not comprehend the physical limitations of the mayor. This was to handicap him politically as he could not be as physically visible as the citizens were accustomed . ... and this was sometimes interpreted as lack of activity. ... Mayor Williams compensated for his physical limitations by his study of city government. He knew his facts and figures: he did his homework. ... A very pleasant man, he was always especially gracious to former mayors. Invitations were forthcoming to us for dedication type ceremonies. This included his election opponent, Mayor Hussey.
Williams pushed for the completion of Interstate 49, the north-south link from Shreveport to Lafayette. Gardner claims that I-49 was not a priority of Governor Murphy J. "Mike" Foster, Jr., the Republican who served from 1996 to 2004.
In the 1998 nonpartisan blanket primary, Williams ran a weak second and withdrew from a pending general election. Democratic candidate Keith Paul Hightower, the District C council member from southeast Shreveport, led with 20,250 votes (42 percent) to Williams' 13,637 (28 percent). Three other candidates, two Democrats and another Republican, divided the remaining 30 percent of the ballots. Williams, who trailed by nearly 7,000 votes, declined to proceed to a second round of balloting, and Hightower hence won the position outright. Hightower served two terms.
Williams and his wife, the former Melba Clark (born 1939), reside in Shreveport.