Who We Are
Duane Cowart
President, The cowart group
Duane Cowart formed The Cowart Group in 1997 to represent businesses and associations of business in their relations with all branches of state government in Louisiana. The Cowart Group was formed following a lengthy career in corporate public and governmental affairs and two years as manager of investor relations for a Fortune 500 company. He previously worked in broadcasting and edited a small newspaper.
Cowart has been a registered lobbyist in the State of Louisiana since 1981, working in scores of coalitions. He has served in a number of governor-appointed positions including four years as a member of the Louisiana Insurance Rating Commission. He currently serves on the board of directors of the Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana and is a past board member of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry and the Louisiana Pulp and Paper Association.
Darrell Hunt
President, The Alchemind Group and Associate in The Cowart Group
A native of Lake Charles, Louisiana, Darrell Hunt is a political science graduate of Amherst College and studied in the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He began his career as a member of the Washington Staff of then-Louisiana Congressman John B. Breaux, where he managed public works, environmental, foreign affairs and transportation issues. He returned to Louisiana to serve as Executive Assistant to Governor Edwin Edwards, and was later appointed Executive Assistant Commissioner of Administration for the State of Louisiana.
In 1989, Hunt began a career in governmental affairs consulting and in 1995 founded the Alchemind Group to serve individual clients and associations in a broad range of industries, professions and specialties. He has developed strategies and managed issues for clients in: health care, telecommunications, environmental, legal, education, oil and gas, renewable energy and others. Hunt enjoys close relationships with leadership at all levels of state and local government in Louisiana and serves in a number of volunteer and appointed positions in governmental and charitable activities.
Mason Dupré
Associate
Mason Dupre joined The Cowart Group in 2013 after working three years as a member of the Louisiana State Senate staff and later gaining lobbying experience with the state's largest solar energy company.
In the Senate, Dupre served as legislative aide to the chairman of the Senate Labor and Industrial Relations Committee and later the chairman of the Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Committee. Those assignments gave Dupre valuable experience working directly with legislative leadership and key agencies of state government. He gained depth in a number of legislative and regulatory issues ranging from workers compensation, unemployment issues and workforce development to the state's important capital outlay process and details of corporate taxation, tax exemptions and credits. In the State Senate, he gained a broad understanding of the overall economic development arena.
His lobbying experience has included involvement in a successful coalition effort to preserve a valuable homeowner tax credit which had proven crucial to the growth of the solar energy industry in Louisiana.
Dupre is a native Louisianian and Summa Cum Laude graduate of Louisiana State University.