SmashMouth

Ken Hollis, the state senator whose dogged approach to lawmaking helped cement Louisiana as a home for state-sponsored property insurance, legalized gambling and the New Orleans Saints football team, died this morning at Ochsner Medical Center of complications from neuroendocrine cancer. He was 68.

A long-time insurance agent who lived in Metairie, Mr. Hollis entered elected office in 1980, running for the Jefferson Parish Council. He spent two years there before running for the state Senate's 9th District, a seat he would hold for the next 26 years.

Mr. Hollis made a career of taking hold of larger issues and wrestling them to the ground, said colleagues and friends.
"Just a genuinely decent, good, honest and wonderful public servant," said Peppi Bruneau, who represented a New Orleans district in the state House of Representatives while Mr. Hollis was in the Senate. "He was always kind of a mentor to me, in a way."

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