Rob Maness

Robert Leon Maness, known as Rob Maness (born November 14, 1961), is a retired colonel in the United States Air Force and a Republican and Tea Party figure in his adopted U.S. state of Louisiana.

Born to a military family in Fort Lewis, Washington, Maness was an unsuccessful Republican U.S. Senate candidate in 2014. He lost out to fellow Republican Bill Cassidy of Baton Rouge, who unseated then sitting Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu of New Orleans. Maness endorsed Cassidy in the runoff contest against Landrieu. Maness was endorsed in the primary election by the Senate Conservatives Fund and such luminaries as former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican candidate for Vice President of the United States. Maness polled 202,556 votes (13.8 percent).

Vitter supported Cassidy in the 2014 campaign, but Maness endorsed David Vitter to succeed fellow Republian Bobby Jindal as governor. Meanwhile, Jindal was an unsuccessful contender for his party's 2016 presidential nomination. Maness's political action committee called Gator PAC has been active in several state campaigns, including the unsuccessful effort in 2015 to elect Vitter as governor. Upon his defeat for governor, Vitter announced that he would not seek a third term in the Senate in 2016.

Maness received his bachelor's degree from the University of Tampa in Tampa, Florida, and his master's degree from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. He attended the Air Command and Staff College and the College of Naval Warfare. He and his wife, Candace, reside in Madisonville in St. Tammany Parish in suburban New Orleans. The couple has five children.

In December 2015, Maness announced his candidacy to succeed Vitter in the Senate. With 90,812 votes (5 percent), Maness finished sixth in the primary election on November 8, 2016, held in conjunction with the U.S. presidential election in which Donald Trump handily carried the state over Hillary Clinton. The two leading Senate candidates, state Treasurer John Neely Kennedy, a Democrat-turned-Republican, and veteran Democratic former state senator and current Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell, met in a December 10 runoff election for the right to succeed Vitter. Kennedy won a large victory over Campbell. Eliminated in the primary were Republican U.S. Representatives Charles Boustany of Lafayette and John Fleming of Minden, two physicianswho gave up presumably safe House seats for the Senate race. David Duke, a former figure in the Ku Klux Klan, who joined the GOP in 1989 finished seventh with 58,581 votes (3 percent).

Maness received some 112,000 votes fewer than he had in the 2014 Senate election and had been urged to drop out of the race to support the equally conservative Fleming, who led in six parishes but finished fifth in the voting. Maness and Fleming both pursued positions with the Trump administration in Washington, D.C., but thus far only Fleming has been successful in that regard.

A campaign to draft Maness for the special election scheduled for October 14, 2017, for Louisiana state treasurer is underway. The treasurer's position opened when John Neely Kennedy resigned to become the junior U.S. senator for Louisiana. If he runs, Maness would face at least two other Republican candidates, state Senator Neil Riser of Columbia in Caldwell Parish in North Louisiana and state Representative Julie Stokes of Kenner in suburban Jefferson Parish near New Orleans, both of whom are announced candidates for the position.