Baton Rouge – Former St. Tammany Parish President Pat Brister, a longtime figure in parish and state Republican party politics, died Monday, according to a family spokesperson. She was 73.
Brister was first elected parish president in 2011 with 73 percent of the vote and was re-elected to a second term in 2015. Before leading St. Tammany Parish, she had a decades-long career in Louisiana politics.
Brister was the first female chair of both the Republican Party of Louisiana and the St. Tammany Parish Republican Party. She also served as the Republican National Committeewoman from 1996 to 2000.
In 2006, President George W. Bush appointed Brister as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations' Commission on the Status of Women, an international panel that promoted women's rights worldwide in political, social, civil and educational fields.
