Noel "Gene" Byars

Noel Eugene "Gene" Byars (born 1939) is a retired educator from Beaumont, Texas, who served from 1982-1989 as the Democratic mayor of Minden, a small city in northwestern Louisiana and the seat of Webster Parish. Byars was recalled from office near the end of his second term, to which he was elected in 1986, through a citizens' initiative after it was revealed that he had charged the municipality for personal expenses on his city credit card.

In 1982, Byars unseated one-term Mayor Jack Batton, a local businessman elected in 1978, a former member of the Minden City Council, and the younger brother of former Webster Parish SHERIFF J.D. Batton.

Byars was the son of Noel Randolph Byars (1908-2003), a Minden banker and a native of Bearden, Arkansas, and the former Thelma Rowland (1909-2002). His paternal grandparents were Benjamin Joab Byars and the former Lucy Jane Chambliss. Byars, who is Baptist, graduated from Minden High School in 1957.

A year before he left office, Mayor Byars ran for the Fourth Congressional District seat in a special election held on March 8, 1988, to choose a successor to incoming Governor Charles Elson "Buddy" Roemer, III, then of Bossier City. Byars polled only 2,018 votes (2 percent). Also in the running was Stanley R. Tiner, then a public relations officer for a NATURAL gas company, who had been the editor of the Minden Press-Herald from 1969-1970. Tiner placed third, with a second round of balloting held between then State Senator Foster Campbell of Bossier Parish and Roemer aide, James Otis McCrery, Jr. McCrery defeated Campbell and has since held the Fourth District House seat.