Baton Rouge was granted the right to
incorporate in 1817 under
legislation approved by Louisiana's second
governor,
Jacques Villeré. The city was chartered the following year and led by a
magistrate who was chosen among the popularly-elected, five-member
board of selectmen. Selectmen were up for election annually. Early
mayors also served one-year terms. The office had a two-year term in the 1880s and was increased to four years in duration in 1898. The first mayoral election in 1846 was between James Cooper (who had previously served as a magistrate who won the balloting. after actually tying in the popular vote, the commissioners of election decided to award the election to the incumbent. Cousinard later won the mayor's seat himself in the 1857 election. It was also largely stripped of influence at one point by the First
Reconstruction Act, which was issued in 1867. Multiple mayoral elections during the
Reconstruction Era were disputed. After the 1871 election Gov.
Henry Clay Warmoth did what he legally could from the temporary capitol in New Orleans to briefly prop up the new
African American Republican mayor, who was facing an overwhelmingly Democratic-controlled board of selectmen Ultimately, the 1872–73 term essentially ended up with two separately-functioning city governments, one recognized primarily by African American and pro-
Union white Republicans (including so-called "
carpetbaggers" and "
scalawags") and one recognized primarily by native white Democrats. the board of selectmen really seems to have begun transitioning over to the use of the term under the Republican mayor that year, perhaps in anticipation of needing to differentiate it from the competing board of selectmen that the Democrats were in the process of setting up (the board finally formally adopted the title "city council" in 1874). The Republicans had shown improvements in their organizational efforts (and electoral strength in general) by being able to win the 1872 election without Warmoth's help—and then by holding a share of the government for the duration of the term. While the Democratic mayor,
James Elam, had been willing to fight to hang on to his seat after the disputed votes of 1871 and 1872, he either determined that he had no chance at the ballot box in the 1873 annual municipal elections or he simply no longer felt up to the challenge any more (he did, in fact, die only several months after the scheduled election date). Shortly before the election was to be held, African American
state senator J. Henri Burch, a prominent area Republican, met with Elam, and they negotiated a compromise where Elam would resign his position and support new governor
William Pitt Kellogg's appointment of the Republican incumbent to the mayor's seat—along with three Republicans and three Democrats to the city council (as selected by a
conference committee). This compromise was largely acceptable to both sides (very rare for Reconstruction), although a rogue faction of the Democrats did attempt to hold their own election for the council (which failed to draw many to the polls and apparently quickly faded away). After making it through 1873 relatively peacefully, Kellogg also appointed the mayor in 1874. for the first of 28 consecutive Democratic chief executives. In 1914 the city began using a
city commission government under then-mayor Alex Grouchy, Jr. In 1949 the governments of the city and the
Parish of East Baton Rouge were largely consolidated under then-mayor S. Powers Higginbotham, and in 1982 they were fully merged into a single governing body (similar to a
consolidated city-county, although the municipalities of
Baker,
Central, and
Zachary remain self-governing). At that time, the title of "mayor" changed to "mayor-president," being that they were now both mayor of Baton Rouge and president of East Baton Rouge Parish. Indeed, three recent mayor-presidents resided in Baker or Zachary at the time of their elections, giving them the distinction of serving as mayor of Baton Rouge without actually living there. No candidate from the City of Central has been elected mayor-president yet, although
Mack A. "Bodi" White, Jr. came very close to doing so in 2016 by receiving 48.2% of the vote. No families have dominated the office over the years, although Baton Rouge's longest-serving mayor—Wade Bynum (24 years over two different periods of time) and
Mary Webb was later appointed by the city council to complete the term of her late husband,
Jesse Webb, Jr. Although most of Baton Rouge's mayors have been white male Democrats, the last four mayor-presidents have included multiple Republicans and African Americans, as well as a woman. The current mayor-president is
Sid Edwards. ==List of magistrates, mayors, and mayor-presidents==