Preceded by Robert Adley Spouse(s) Susan Lockhart Gatti | Children Four daughters | |
Alma mater Airline High SchoolLouisiana State UniversityLouisiana State University Law Center Education Louisiana State University, Airline High School | ||
Ryan Eugene Gatti (born June 1974) is an attorney in his native Bossier City, Louisiana, who has been a Republican member of the Louisiana Senate since January 11, 2016.
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Political career
In 2003, Gatti ran unsuccessfully for the District 8 seat in the Louisiana House of Representatives against fellow Republican Jane H. Smith, a former school superintendent for Bossier Parish. He received 3,456 votes (33.1 percent) to Smith's 6,999 (66.9 percent).
Twelve years later, Gatti narrowly defeated fellow Republican Henry Burns, a businessman and retired military officer originally from Webster Parish, who left the state House after two terms to seek the Senate seat vacated by the term-limited Republican Robert Adley. Gatti polled 14,023 votes (50.6 percent); Burns amassed 13,698 (49.4 percent).
Gatti ran for state senator as an intra-party critic of the term-limited Bobby Jindal, who as the departing governor launched a brief unsuccessful bid in the 2016 presidential campaign. Gatti is a close friend and supporter of Jindal's gubernatorial successor, Democrat John Bel Edwards of Tangipahoa Parish, whom Gatti met while attending LSU Law School. In 2014, Edwards delivered a campaign speech at Gatti's law office. Gatti was a large donor to Edwards as well despite his position as the vice president of the Bossier Parish Republican Party. U.S. Senator David Vitter, the Republican choice, lost the race for governor in 2015 to Edwards.
Upon his election, Gatti promised to work to halt Planned Parenthood from selling aborted children. He pledged to support higher education, to return local control to school boards, to eliminate the Common Core State Standards Initiative, to address state budgetary shortfalls, and to support policies to enhance Louisiana's energy industries.
In March 2016, Gatti joined the Senate majority, 29-10, to increase the state sales tax for five years, as proposed by Governor John Bel Edwards. A House and Senate conference committee subsequently trimmed the five years to twenty-seven months, from April 1, 2016 to June 30, 2018.
Personal life
In 1992, Gatti graduated co-valedictorian of Airline High School in Bossier City. He then procured his undergraduate education in three years from Louisiana State University in the capital city of Baton Rouge, at which he was president of the fraternity, Kappa Sigma. While at Louisiana State University Law Center, he was a clerk to the state Senate. From 2007 to 2009, he was a judge of worker's compensation cases in Shreveport. He also owns and operates a farm near Plain Dealing in northern Bossier Parish, at which he grows oak trees.
Gatti is married to the former Susan Lockhart, formerly an assistant professor at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center Shreveport and previously the assistant headmaster at Providence Classical Academy in Bossier City. The couple has four daughters, Katherine, Elizabeth, Rebecca, and Charlotte.
At the time of his legislative election, Gatti was on a Christian mission trip to Haiti. He has made such trips to El Salvador and Mexico as well. Since 2012, he has been a trustee of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. Gatti is a deacon at the large First Baptist Church in Bossier City.