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Walter Boasso owns the largest tanker container shipping company in North America but can’t drive a tractor-trailer. He has the largest container repair facilities in the world but doesn’t know the first thing about welding. As a youngster in Chalmette, his family scraped by on food stamps, powdered milk and government cheese. Walter Boasso is no stranger to overcoming obstacles. It’s part of who he is, and he believes he’s ready to take on the gargantuan obstacles crippling Louisiana as the state’s next governor.

“I got to see dead bodies floating in the water,” he recalls about the days after Hurricane Katrina. “I got to see people hanging on for their lives. I got to see how our government has failed us on all levels. And I don’t see enough being done to help people get their lives back together.”

Boasso is the guy who’s a Democrat who used to be a Republican who used to be a Democrat. He carries around a life-size cardboard cutout of Bobby Jindal on his television ads, a stunt he vows to continue until the Republican candidate agrees to a debate. It’s a tactic that seems to be breaking down the frontrunner, who until recently kept a low profile while maintaining his steadfast lead. Admittedly, the commercials have doubled Boasso’s name recognition outside of the Greater New Orleans area he calls home, but not without sharing some unforgettable adventures with his opponent. Who can forget the time Bobby and Walter went fishing together? Or what about the one where they go to an elementary school show-and-tell? Classic.

I joined the larger-than-life candidate on a Tuesday morning in mid-August on his small prop plane, and I found myself immediately looking for cardboard Bobby. My previous meetings with Boasso had been limited to the television, of course, and the Kenilworth Fourth of July parade.

What struck me then was that Boasso walked among the people, waving and shaking hands, while Jindal decided to loftily ride atop a fire engine.

All day, through Rapides, Winn, Natchitoches and Sabine parishes, Boasso came off as a man of the people.

“This leap from the Senate to the Mansion is a big one and he knows that,” says fellow state Sen. Mike Smith of Winnfield. “He’s got the right ideas and he really cares about the people of this state.”

The sun is blazing as we walk across the tarmac. Onboard, Boasso settles in to read the paper. He is dressed simply in black slacks, a starched, white button-down shirt and a pair of Maui Jim sunglasses. His black loafers have a worn look about them, not something I expected from a man who just sold his business for $60 million.

Our first stop is Alexandria, a 30-minute flight from Baton Rouge. Then it’s onto Many, Winnfield and finally Natchitoches by car before returning to Alexandria to catch the plane home.

Airborne, Boasso grows bored with his paper. “You didn’t tell me we were going to be joined by such lovely ladies,” he tells his communications director Brian Welsh, blatant flattery of our young intern photographer and me. “Now, I’m going to have to behave myself.”

Wanting him to remain candid and open, I worry this could be a problem. But five minutes later he’s teasing Welsh about his tie, which spurs the other guys onboard to do the same. So much for “behaving” himself.

Life for Boasso as a public servant has not always been fun and games, however. After Katrina, he was one of the first people allowed back into the Lower Ninth Ward and St. Bernard Parish. His first night there was spent in his truck with a 9-millimeter on his chest and a wildlife agent next to him. “At about 6:30, five gentlemen knocked on the window and said, ‘Senator, we need your help.’”

The men needed help rescuing a relative from a home near the breach. So, the group piled into a boat and set out.

“They kept talking about floaters,” he says. “I didn’t know what a floater was, but it didn’t take long for me to find out.”

The boat passed through toxic waters containing dead bodies and downed power lines. The house they were headed to was near the levee breach wedged up against a tree, and they found the severely injured man, pulling him safely into the boat.

“His leg had been severed at the ankle and you could see where the infection and the gangrene had already begun to set in. We had to do something. If we didn’t he was going to lose more than just his leg.”

The crew wrapped a scrap of cardboard around the man’s ankle like a cup, securing it with duct tape—the best they could do to keep the wound covered and hold the leg together until they could find paramedics. “I can still hear his screams,” Boasso says.

Fortunately, they were able to steer the boat toward the St. Claude Bridge where the National Guard was stationed. The man was dropped off to receive medical treatment and the crew went back to search for more survivors.

In the heat of the moment Boasso never got the man’s name and always wondered what happened to him. If he hadn’t run for governor he may have never found out. “I was up in Shreveport for the Juneteenth Festival,” he says. “People had seen my commercials and were coming up to me. One lady walked up and tells me that she lost seven family members in the Ninth Ward. I asked her if any had a leg injury. She said, ‘I do have one cousin who lost his leg.’ Come to find out he’s doing just fine and living in Alaska now. I tell ya, God works in mysterious ways.”

Boasso was also able to help a former teacher holed up at Chalmette High. After steering the boat over the submerged football field he found an open window and began yelling to see if there was anyone inside. “Finally, my math teacher stuck her head out and said, ‘Oh, Walter, I’m so glad to see you,’” he remembers.

Throughout our day together, Boasso shows the same compassion, helping a group of elderly women find the right office to settle a land dispute at the Sabine Parish Courthouse. In fact, it’s this character trait that first attracted Welsh to the campaign. Joining the campaign late in May as the communications director he says he was struck by Boasso’s commitment to the state.

“I knew right away that I wanted to work for him,” Welsh says. “His stories from Katrina are so powerful. He’s so committed to the people of Louisiana. How could you not want to work for someone like that?”

My first contact with Boasso didn’t feel quite so warm, however. I had tried repeatedly to arrange an interview through Welsh, but to no avail. Then, on Aug. 7, Welsh accidentally copied me on an e-mail intended for his boss. “This chick is driving me nuts. Can we get something together for her?”

As well as repeated and uncomfortable apologies, that little gem got my photographer and me 15 hours of uninterrupted access to the candidate.

The trip’s purpose, we learn, is to tout Boasso’s comprehensive plan to overhaul the insurance industry. It’s a battery of pro-customer protections, from banning insurance companies from cherry-picking profitable customers, to establishing criminal penalties for fraud and bad-faith conduct, to requiring insurance contracts written in plain English.

“The big insurance companies are willing to insure our cars and boats, but they refuse to insure our homes,” he tells a group of citizens in the law library of Gravel & Cespiva Attorneys at Law in Alexandria. “They can’t just come here for dessert if they’re not willing to stay for the main course.” He will repeat this phrase many times as the day goes on, always generating a raucous applause. It’s at the end of one of these speaking engagements that an elderly, white-haired woman in the back raises her hand. “Mr. Boasso,” Opal Hudson begins. “Will you be as nice and friendly when you are in office as you are now?” Hudson, a resident of Alexandria, explains that it has been her experience in local politics that people change once elected.

“You don’t have to worry about Walter changing,” he replies, referring to himself in the third person, which he does frequently. “I’ve been in the state Senate for four years now and I’m still the same guy I was four years ago. Walter’s not beholden to anyone. I’ll give you my mother’s home phone number. She can attest to that.”

The loud-mouthed yat from Arabi parlayed a successful business venture into a winning bid for state Senate, and found time to help save lives during Hurricane Katrina.

This isn’t the first time he brings up his mother, a schoolteacher for 26 years. At 42, his father became disabled and could no longer support the family. It was his dream to have a son graduate from college, so after leaving Chalmette High, Boasso enrolled at the University of New Orleans. He began cleaning shipping containers on nights and weekends to pay for school, and jokes that at 19-years-old, a box of Tide laundry detergent and a garden hose launched his million-dollar enterprise that now employs 500 people in six states.

And to help support the family, his mother also went back to college. They spent the next five years at UNO together, graduating on the same day in 1983—Walter with a business degree, and his mother with her education degree.

“I’m a Roads scholar, didn’t you know?” Boasso asks me. “That’s R-O-A-D. I come from the road of hard knocks.”

He and his wife, Cindy, have already rebuilt their home in Arabi, trying to keep the economy going in their small hamlet just outside of New Orleans. Their children are all enrolled in local schools—their daughter Brittany, 22, begins Loyola Law School this fall; their eldest son Walter, 18, joins the freshman class at LSU; and their youngest son Rori, 13, is an eighth-grader at Holy Cross.

When he’s not jetting around the state hot on the campaign trail, Boasso likes to relax at his 994-acre ranch between Poplarville and Wiggins in Mississippi, where he raises cattle and exotic animals such as zebra, sable and impala.

“Unfortunately I don’t have much time to get out there these days, and I probably won’t get out there again until after the election,” Boasso says. “It really is my sanctuary.”

But this loud-mouthed yat from Arabi who parlayed a successful business venture into a successful bid for state Senate four years ago has more noise to make first.

“As a business man I live and die by financial statements, and I know the financial statements of Louisiana,” he says. “We’re not growing. We have enough money in state government, but we don’t have our priorities in the right place. I plan to completely dismantle the structure we have put in place and rebuild it from the ground up. You’re talking to an entrepreneur. We don’t wait for anybody to do anything for us. One thing I can promise you is the next four years with me as governor will be the most productive Louisiana has ever seen.”

‘I’m a Roads scholar, didn’t you know? That’s R-O-A-D. I come from the road of hard knocks,’ says state Sen. Walter Boasso, hot on the campaign trail for governor.