Because 1924 was a presidential year, delegates to the Democratic National Convention had to be selected. Behrman, Fuqua, and J. Y. Sanders preselected a delegate slate that they expected the convention of 716 elected delegates to ratify. Huey objected, but a chorus of boos and yells prevented his being heard, and Chairman Behrman gaveled for order so hard that he broke the marble podium. On a roll call, Huey was outvoted 536 to 180. Behrman also ruled that only resolutions passed by an appointed committee that he controlled could be considered by the convention. One delegate proposed to denounce the Klan, but this caused pandemonium and his resolution was defeated on a voice vote. Another wanted to repeal Prohibition, but Behrman shoved him off the rostrum while a mob of delegates cheered.
Huey also objected to the slate of four at-large delegates. Striding to the podium and waiting five minutes for silence, he denounced bossism and proposed to enlarge the at-large slate to eight persons, each with a half vote, the extra positions to be filled by representatives of the people. This proposal had no chance, and Huey’s request for a roll call was denied. The convention adjourned. Huey and his supporters “were swept aside like chaff before the wind,” said the Times-Picayune. The Item said he was finished. The revolutionary was repressed.
In September, Huey ran for reelection to the Public Service Commission and U.S. Senator Joseph Ransdell stood for reelection. Despite the cooperation between the Old Regulars and J. Y. Sanders at the convention, the Old Regulars endorsed Ransdell, not Sanders, who wanted to replace him. The Old Regulars did not want to break a pledge to support Ransdell or substitute the Protestant Sanders for him just after electing a Protestant governor over a Catholic candidate. In consolation, Behrman promised to support Sanders in 1926 against Senator Broussard (also a Catholic).1
Born on a plantation nine miles south of Alexandria, in central Louisiana, Ransdell moved to Lake Providence in northeastern Louisiana to study law. He practiced there for fifteen years, twelve of them as district attorney. A delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1898, he promoted the poll tax and the single-term limit for the governor’s office. Running for Congress, he supported the whites-only primary. In several early campaigns, his Catholicism was an issue. Many of his speeches were given to extol religion or promote outstanding Catholics: “The Patriotism of Catholics”; “Christian Life Maintained in the Course of Our Earthly Pilgrimage by the Eucharist—the Sacrament of Perseverance.” Elected to the Senate in 1912 and reelected in 1918, he had the support of the press and the Old Regulars in 1924.
Then Shreveport mayor Lee Thomas gave Huey a break. He opposed Ransdell and criticized him for advocating parochial schools and, more obliquely, for his religion. Sanders, still smarting from his rejection by Behrman, and Fuqua, for reasons unknown, decided to support Thomas and oppose Ransdell. The Klan criticized Ransdell, although Thomas denied any connection to it.2 Lack of cohesion in the incumbent elite equals weakness.
Originally, Huey had declared neutrality because both candidates had supported Fuqua against him but, about a week before the election, he changed his mind and endorsed Ransdell. Huey sent speakers to southern Louisiana to publicize his support and campaigned with Ransdell in northern Louisiana. Huey had to campaign in northern Louisiana anyway as he was running for reelection. State Senator Walter L. Bagwell opposed Huey and obtained Fuqua’s endorsement.
The Klan had receded in influence. The national Klan wanted its Louisiana membership to oppose anti-masking and enrollment laws passed during Fuqua’s administration, not appreciating that the legislation gave members time to transfer their memberships out of state before enrollment disclosure. The Monroe Klan defied the national Grand Wizard, Hiram Evans, by refusing to oppose the reelection of popular Arnold Bernstein, a Jew, for mayor. Infuriated, Evans reorganized Klan leadership in Louisiana, creating a triumvirate, one of whom was Swords Lee. Two contradictory stories emerged about the Klan’s actions in Huey’s race: one, that it had decided to help Huey by pulling out another potential opponent; the other, more likely given the Klan’s diminished power, that the Klan refused to oppose Huey to avoid a humiliating defeat.3
Huey was confident that he would defeat Bagwell and only joked about him. Bagwell was tall with a long neck and small head, and wore a high, stiff standing collar. In one joint speaking appearance, Huey said Bagwell’s collar was so high, he had to tiptoe to spit over it. In urging Ransdell’s election, Huey developed a story about Shreveport mayor Thomas. During revival meetings, when babies cried, a sugar teat (pacifier made from cloth and moistened sugar) would be put in the baby’s mouth to stop its crying. Huey accused Thomas of having had the sugar teat of public office in his mouth for three decades—and still he cried for more.
Thomas retaliated with his own story. A man went to hell and saw a locked box there. The devil warned him not to open it, for inside was Huey Long, and he would take charge of hell if let loose.4 When Mayor Thomas attacked Ransdell for having written a polite letter to Black Republican leader Walter Cohen, Huey sprang to Ransdell’s defense, playing on the same prejudice. Thomas must have gotten the letter from Cohen, Huey said, and therefore was a hypocrite: a white Louisianan seeking campaign help from a Black Republican; Thomas had taken Cohen to his bosom and “snuggled” with him on a political bed.5
Huey won his own race with over 80 percent of the vote, carrying every parish in his district: 45,000 votes to 8,600 votes for Bagwell. Huey’s margin6 was bigger than the total vote commanded by the Ring.7 Huey also helped reelect Ransdell, who won by more than 20,000 votes.8
Now Huey turned to New Orleans. The mayoral election was scheduled for February 1925. Francis Williams announced his own candidacy. Fresh from electing Fuqua, Behrman sought the mayoralty, too, and looked unbeatable, campaigning on the slogan “Papa’s Coming Home.”9 When the Old Regulars met in caucus to anoint Behrman, however, Paul Maloney challenged him. With City Attorney Ivy Kittredge, he had led the fight against Cumberland’s telephone-rate increase in New Orleans. Maloney was popular enough to defy the reform wave and win a seat as commissioner of public utilities in 1920, the only machine politician to win.
The recent vote totals showed that, if Bouanchaud’s gubernatorial vote (23,000) were added to Huey’s (12,000), Behrman (33,000 for Fuqua) could be defeated. On December 15, 1924, Huey wrote a letter to Williams, with a copy to Robert Ewing, publisher of the New Orleans States and the Shreveport Times, but told Ewing not to let the letter out of his sight. Ewing had a bristling white mustache that resembled “an angry schnauzer,” and had been a newspaper power in Louisiana for decades, at times affiliated with the Ring. If Francis Williams had a chance to win, Huey wrote, he would support him, but he wanted Williams to withdraw because they should not lead their followers into a slaughter. Nor did Huey want Williams to bargain with each side. They would lose their existing reputation with the voters as vanquished (in the governor’s race) but principled.10
Williams withdrew and endorsed Behrman’s challenger, Maloney. Huey also visited John Sullivan. Sullivan had his New Regulars back Maloney. Ewing’s newspapers recommended Maloney.
Maloney came close to an upset. Incumbent reform mayor Andrew McShane entered the race as a third candidate at the last minute, obtained only 4,000 votes, but took them all from Maloney. Some ballot boxes from a Maloney stronghold were lost overboard while on a ferry on the way to being counted.11 The Old Regulars then paid off one of Maloney’s leaders to defect. After that betrayal, Maloney withdrew, electing Behrman. Sullivan’s New Regulars nevertheless captured some offices that gave them patronage; it was “in no sense a rout.”12 Having established a coalition of Maloney, Sullivan, the Williams brothers, and Ewing, Huey thought he had formed an effective New Orleans organization.
The Public Service Commission soon considered two matters that became relevant to Huey’s gubernatorial chances.13 Because New Orleans is surrounded by water, the increased popularity of the automobile necessitated bridges. A 1918 constitutional amendment authorized the state to build a free bridge in one location over Lake Pontchartrain, but no legislation ever implemented the amendment. In 1924, instead, the legislature authorized the state Highway Commission to contract with private firms to build toll bridges.14
Two insiders offered proposals. The Watson-Williams syndicate employed former governor J. Y. Sanders as its lawyer, whereas a rival firm hired former governor Pleasant. The two firms each proposed a separate route, each different from the authorized free bridge route.
Huey opened a public assault on New Year’s Day, 1925. Claiming that only the Public Service Commission had the power to award a bridge franchise, he attacked J. Y. Sanders and the Watson-Williams proposal in a series of statements: the state should not be bartered away, Sanders was exploiting the state, the people had authorized a free bridge and should not pay Sanders a big fee to get a toll bridge, and the proposed bridge would cost the people “multiplied millions” of dollars. Huey instructed his supporters in the city to first help ex-governor Pleasant show up ex-governor Sanders and then help Sanders show up Pleasant.15 By the time the controversy concluded, Huey calculated that he would be governor and would build a free bridge.
Sanders argued that it was better to have private interests risk their capital and have the costs borne by tourists and pleasure seekers and people who could afford to pay for the privilege of a short cut. “Apparently it never occurred to the old aristocrat that people who could not afford to pay the charges might also like to tour and seek pleasure and enjoy the convenience of a short route.”16
“Luncheon clubs passed resolutions. . . . The Association of Commerce took a formal poll. All [showed] an overwhelming majority in favor of free bridges.”17 Ignoring Huey’s attacks and this overwhelming sentiment, the Highway Commission in February awarded the franchise to Watson-Williams. It would cost $5.5 million.18
The Public Service Commission authorized Huey to file a suit to annul the bridge contract because it was a public utility and the Public Service Commission had not authorized its scale of rates. Huey lost the suit, but there was no other lawsuit alternative that would have resulted in victory. Its purpose was to arouse public opinion in time to stop the toll bridge. The legislature in May took some account of the protest and altered the legislation so that the state could purchase the toll bridge at any time.
The company began to sell its bonds. It omitted mention of the state’s right to build a free bridge parallel to its route. When construction began, Huey again sued, as a citizen, as a bondholder, as a taxpayer, and on behalf of the Public Service Commission, to halt construction or for the right to set the toll rates.19 He lost again. But the court recognized the right of the state to construct the free bridge. Huey therefore warned the company that it was “building the most expensive buzzard roost . . . in the United States.”20 Huey lost the legal battle but exposed two ex-governors and their elite allies grabbing for money and imposing tolls that people detested. The elite were divided and perhaps corrupt.
The second controversy was the Galveston rate case. The federal Interstate Commerce Commission reduced the railroad shipping rates for wheat and oil into Galveston, which would help Galveston develop its port but hurt New Orleans. New Orleans businessmen and allied civic and governmental groups protested. The Public Service Commission appointed Huey to travel to Washington, DC, to argue the inadequacy of Galveston’s port, the superiority of New Orleans’s port, and the impropriety of the Interstate Commerce Commission’s order.
Changing the minds of Interstate Commerce Commission members was like pulling teeth, he said later. But Huey persevered and obtained reversal of the order. In the bridge controversy, Huey lost the court cases but won public opinion. In the Galveston rate case, he won a reversal, but the business community he had aided was ungrateful and he lost his ally on the Public Service Commission.
One business group wrote him a thank-you letter, but most blamed him for not anticipating the order or suggested that he wanted the order issued so he could claim credit for its revocation. This whipsaw of criticism was unfair, but whereas an “awful illogic” gripped his supporters, a converse illogic gripped his opponents.
Proof of the ingratitude occurred at the opening banquet of the new Roosevelt Hotel in downtown New Orleans, attended by twelve hundred leading businessmen. One businessman invited Huey. The master of ceremonies unexpectedly asked Huey to stand and be recognized. As he stood up, the crowd booed him, and he sat down. Huey believed the incident was planned to embarrass him.21
Francis Williams chimed in that he had done the hard work on the Galveston case, but Huey stole the credit, and then charged that Huey withheld support for a Union Station project in New Orleans that Williams sponsored. By the end of 1925, Huey and Francis were allies no more. Huey responded in mournful tones to Francis’s criticisms, but behind the scenes he forged an alliance with his former opponent on the Public Service Commission, Shelby Taylor, so he remained as chairman.22
The split between Huey and Williams was caused by clashing egos. It could have portended a problematic division of reform forces, inhibiting voter mobilization for reform. While Huey had done nothing for Williams except urge him to withdraw from the 1924 mayoral contest, Williams had not done much for Huey in New Orleans, either. Huey must have believed that he had traded up by backing Maloney, with his superior mobilization capability.
The election of 1926 for U.S. senator gave Huey one more opportunity to add to his support outside northern Louisiana. He liked to say “It ain’t enough to get the breaks. You gotta know how to use them.”23 He got a break in 1926, and he used it.
Recall that, in 1924, Behrman wouldn’t support J. Y. Sanders against Ransdell but promised to back him in 1926. Even though Behrman, the promise maker, had died, Arthur O’Keefe, Behrman’s successor, now endorsed Sanders. Edwin S. Broussard was the incumbent senator, a Catholic from southwest Louisiana. His brother Robert had held the Senate seat before him. Affectionately known as “Coozan Bob,” he was popular. Edwin was not as friendly or as good a speaker, but he was known as “Coozan Ed.” Since Ransdell had made it an issue in 1912,24 Louisiana had one senator from the north and the other from the south. Ransdell was from the north. Normally, then, “Coozan Ed” would have not feared reelection.25
With J. Y. Sanders as his opponent, however, Coozan Ed had a lot to fear. Described as a “virile . . . clean, brainy, fearless white man’s man, [Sanders] advocated good schools for white children, gravel roads funded on a pay-asyou-go plan, and white supremacy.”26 J.Y. had been governor from 1908 to 1912 but had run for the U.S. Senate in 1912 and 1920 and was defeated first by “Coozan Bob” and then “Coozan Ed.” He had lacked Old Regular support in 1912, and the Old Regulars were weak in 1920. After each defeat, he moved, in 1914 from Franklin to Bogalusa, and in 1920 from Bogalusa to Hammond. The French said, “Dat Broussard family, dey goin’ make a gypsy outta ol’ J.Y. yet.”27
Ironies of the campaign included the Ring’s support for Sanders even though Sanders favored Prohibition while the Ring wanted repeal. Broussard supported repeal, but the Ring endorsed Sanders. Governor Fuqua also endorsed Sanders. Sanders supported challenger Dudley LeBlanc against incumbent Shelby Taylor in their Public Service Commission race, even though LeBlanc supported Broussard.28 To Sanders, deposing Huey as Public Service Commission chairman was worth endorsing an opponent. The Times Picayune, a previous supporter of Sanders, now faulted him as a pawn of the special interests, perhaps because, as Sanders charged, one of its directors owned land in the pathway of the rival bridge deal. Former governor Pleasant joined the Times Picayune to endorse Broussard because, Sanders alleged, Pleasant lost out on the bridge deal. Paul Maloney and John Sullivan, allies from Maloney’s mayoral race, endorsed Broussard to oppose the Ring. Maloney’s other ally from the mayoral race, Francis Williams, supported Sanders, a stain on his reform credentials.
Huey was the last leader to endorse a candidate. Reporter Deutsch observed that Sanders had patronage (because of Fuqua and the Old Regulars), was strong in northern Louisiana, and was a good speaker. Broussard lacked patronage, was weak in northern Louisiana, and was an indifferent speaker. “On paper, Sanders could not lose. So, Huey Long . . . chose Broussard.”29
But Huey must have kept abreast of the views of his allies from the recent mayoral race: Sullivan and Maloney. Long negotiations took place before Huey was comfortable announcing his choice. He wanted a commitment from Broussard to campaign with him in southern Louisiana, Broussard’s home turf, and to endorse him for governor in 1928. Broussard agreed to campaign together but refused to promise an endorsement in 1928. Broussard’s leading supporters, however, made the necessary agreement to back Huey for governor.30 While Huey had backed the Catholic Ransdell two years previously, he had not campaigned in southern Louisiana with any leader like Broussard who had a popular following there. Now, he was guaranteed a warm welcome—and a seasoned organization for 1928.
Huey’s tour of south Louisiana with Broussard was a triumph. His humor, dynamic speeches, and association with their hero Broussard caused the people to nickname him Huey Polycarp Long, Polycarp being the name of a Christian martyr revered among the French. The “long-legged sapsucker” Sanders’s sins, according to Huey, included (1) leading the bridge syndicate, (2) having Valentine Irion, commissioner of conservation, corruptly issue a carbon-black permit for a company represented by Sanders, (3) influencing Governor Fuqua to keep cheap natural gas out of New Orleans, (4) controlling patronage in state departments, and (5) causing decreased expenditures by the state for the “deaf and dumb asylum” so that more money could be allocated for the patronage-rich “coonservation” department, with “all those coon-chasers and possum watchers and squirrel counters.”31
The carbon-black32 permit had been controversial for months in 1925 and 1926. Governor Fuqua in 1925 removed the conservation commissioner, W. J. Everett. Everett charged this was done at Sanders’s direction on behalf of the carbon-black interests. In mid-1926, Huey joined some legislators who demanded a ban on carbon black, the manufacture of which wasted natural gas and caused environmental problems, but this proposal failed. In 1926, Commissioner Irion was fired. Irion challenged his removal in court in a big battle featuring lawyers Hugh Wilkinson for the governor against Edward Rightor and Rene Viosca for Irion. Despite a trial court finding that he was incompetent, Irion won the case. During a court argument, Rightor made this ugly comment: “Nine out of ten of those Cajans [sic] will lie. They will lie about anything. Those Cajans [sic] are of a low order of mind and morals. One of them that took the witness stand looked like a monkey.”33
After their tour of southern Louisiana, Huey took Broussard into northern Louisiana. They faced some hostile audiences, but mostly whenever Huey saw a group of people, he would leap from his car and announce himself as Huey Long. They would say “we knew that.” Then he would introduce his friend Senator Broussard, standing for reelection, and ask them to support him, and they said they would. Huey presented Broussard as the man who was standing with him against the toll-bridge syndicate and the New Orleans Ring, ignoring his Catholicism and his support for Prohibition’s repeal. Because it was backing Broussard, the Times Picayune now liked Huey’s speeches, calling them conservative, constructive, and picturesque.34
Robert L. Prophit was a legislator attacked by Huey for holding a job in the Conservation Commission. He was short, had lost a leg during childhood, and used a cane. With the cooperation of the local sheriff, J. E. McClanahan, Prophit planned to assault Huey at a campaign appearance. If Huey fled, he would reveal himself as a coward, afraid of a small, disabled man.
When Huey arrived, he saw Prophit and said, “Hello, Bob.” Prophit whacked him. Huey ran away, and Prophit swung his cane at him. Friends of Huey formed a circle around Prophit, after which Huey returned and swung a wild blow at him that missed by two feet. Prophit was booked for assault and paid a small fine. Huey obtained a piece of Prophit’s broken cane and showed it to the crowd the next night, saying: “I had no trouble finding a conservation agent in Columbia.”35
Whereas Huey’s alliance in the New Orleans 1924 mayoralty election had failed by an eyelash, his alliance in the 1926 Senate race succeeded by a whisker. Broussard was elected with a statewide margin of only thirty-four hundred votes. Huey had only been able to convince a fraction of his supporters to vote for the Catholic and wet Broussard, but they were votes that Broussard never would have obtained otherwise. Broussard carried New Orleans, too, however, because of Ring defections over Prohibition.36
Dudley LeBlanc beat Shelby Taylor, however, and then joined with Francis Williams to depose Huey as Public Service Commission chairman. “With two members always ready to vote against me for Chairman, it is only now that any two have ever been able to assemble where one would vote for the other,” Huey said.37
Williams became chairman. He and LeBlanc rescinded the order against Standard Oil and adopted the company’s rates. Williams and LeBlanc lacked Huey’s technical knowledge of cases he was managing before his removal. They were forced to ask him to represent the commission in a few of them. In one, Huey said he would, but only if they confessed their “incompetency to fill the position to which they elected themselves.” In another, he said he wouldn’t, even though they were not “competent,” because they had elected themselves to do it. He also urged them to keep meetings public.38
The elite may have considered this an effective curtailment of Huey’s power, but it allowed him to concentrate on making money and his next objective: the governorship. While he had to withstand some adverse publicity for the huge fees he had earned in workers’ compensation lawsuits because of a movement to limit them, there was no other counterattack by the elite. Huey was dubbed the man to beat in 1928.39
Unlike Martin Behrman, who died after savoring his mayoral comeback victory, Henry Fuqua died on October 11, 1926, after feeling the sting of J. Y. Sanders’s senatorial defeat. Lieutenant Governor Oramel Simpson—who along with Maloney had backed the winner Broussard—succeeded Fuqua. Huey wrote that 1926 was disastrous to his political fortunes because Fuqua’s death allowed Simpson to run to succeed himself, and because LeBlanc’s election caused the loss of Huey’s Public Service Commission chairmanship.
A dumpy little man, Simpson had an undistinguished career. With Fuqua’s death, however, he saw his main chance. He moved to construct the free bridge authorized by the constitutional amendment of 1918 and put a free-schoolbooks plank in his platform. Commentators said he was stealing Huey’s clothes while he was swimming, but Simpson’s stratagem was too obvious. Huey offered to let Simpson use all his ideas.40
Simpson’s supporters included conservatives such as Shreveport mayor Lee Thomas. But his primary supporter revealed one of two ironies in the campaign lineups. The Ring dissident, Paul Maloney, supported Simpson despite Huey’s (indirect) help in 1924. But Broussard’s leaders backed Huey even though Simpson had supported Broussard in 1926. Maloney never explained why he chose Simpson, an uninspiring speaker, “booze hound,”41 and horse-racing gambler (a liability in north Louisiana).42
Simpson and Maloney’s opposition to the Old Regulars in the 1925 mayoral race and in the Senate race in 1926 made the Ring hunt for a candidate. Fresh from his narrow defeat in 1926, J. Y. Sanders declined to run.43 Congressman Aswell was asked to run but refused.44 A natural disaster helped the Ring discover a candidate.
Before Hurricane Katrina, the biggest natural disaster in Louisiana history was the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. Two million acres of land were flooded, and 750,000 people were left homeless. New Orleans’s elite directed certain levees to be dynamited to save New Orleans. When the levies were blown up, two parishes below the city were flooded. City leaders promised compensation to the flood victims of the two parishes but, led by lawyer J. Blanc Monroe, minimized the compensation afterward. President Coolidge sent secretary of commerce Herbert Hoover to coordinate relief work. John M. Parker assisted him. Overcome by tales of human cooperation in the face of disaster, one newspaperman wrote: “businessmen, doctors, prisoners, lawyers and negroes worked side by side.”45
Congressman Riley Joe Wilson had served for fourteen years, since 1914. Orphaned at an early age, Riley Joe had pulled himself up by his bootstraps. He attended school and studied law. After the flood, he helped pass legislation to build new flood-control systems at federal, not state, expense.46
The Old Regulars hailed him as the savior of the hour and decided that Riley Joe should be governor, ignoring his colorless personality and incompetence as a public speaker. Even a newspaper supporting him said he should loosen up. His own driver called him a tightwad.47
The Old Regulars organized a convention to nominate him on July 11. It was a prearranged, bossed gathering. J. Y. Sanders dramatically announced that he would support the choice of the convention. The delegates spent more time denouncing Huey than applauding Riley Joe. Huey responded, “Give ’em rope.”48 Privately, he wrote that the convention was a “stench in the nostrils of the good people.”49 Days after the convention, J. Y. Sanders, politically blind, filed a suit to stop construction of the free bridge for New Orleans.
Simpson favored free schoolbooks but only if it could be done without raising taxes or by raising taxes on racetracks. Wilson stressed his record on flood control, opposed free schoolbooks, but agreed he would give them to poor parents if it could be done without embarrassing them; opposed paving roads because it would cost too much; and stressed low taxes and limited government.
Huey disclosed his candidacy on July 17 and held his opening rally in Alexandria on August 3, where the Wilson convention occurred. The banner across the stage said, “Every Man a King, but No One Wears a Crown.” Huey denounced the Ring. J. Y. Sanders, instead of John Parker, was now the directing force behind it. Free schoolbooks and access to education for every child, paved roads, warehouses to aid farmers in storing their crops, vocational training for the deaf, mute, and blind, and an expanded court system were all elements of his program to modernize Louisiana. Huey promised to make Angola prison self-sustaining. The crowd was estimated at eight thousand people, three thousand in the auditorium and five thousand immediately outside, one of the largest gatherings ever assembled in Alexandria.50
Aristocratic lawyer John Overton—respectable, honest, idealistic—gave the best speech at the rally. Satirizing the convention that nominated Wilson, he compared his selection to the birth of a crown prince, attended by lords and dukes and earls in their Lincoln limousines, Rolls-Royce automobiles, and Pullman palace cars. The political stork then arrived with the “Imperial Crown Prince, Riley, of Ruston!” The babe thus presented was not old enough to stand alone, much less to walk, and by election time it would not know how to run.51 Huey told Overton: “Think yourself up another speech, John. I’m going to use yours.”52
Huey’s campaign was unlike his 1924 contest in money, in organization, and in leaders. He had more money than any other candidate.53 Road contractors awoke to the possibilities of a governor who wanted to expand road construction. Having no jobs to award, Huey could promise them all, five times over. Family and friends again contributed, this time in larger amounts: Julius and Earl Long ($10,000), Huey’s cousin and road contractor, Swords Lee ($30,000), Will Henderson, and Ernest Bernstein. Nicholas Carbajal contributed $10,000 and presided over the state campaign headquarters in New Orleans. Mike Moss, who later secured all the highway bonding business for the state, was a contributor. Wealthy Shreveport businessman Leon Kahn sent a large amount.54
The wealthiest, Robert Maestri, was a new supporter from New Orleans, and may have been the largest contributor ($40,000). Probably introduced to Huey by John Sullivan, he made a fortune in the red-light district of New Orleans in hotels and furniture. Prostitutes frequented the hotels. When they were raided, he reclaimed the furniture and resold it to the hotels when they reopened, a maneuver called “perpetual motion.” With only a third-grade education, he didn’t speak much and, when he did speak, listeners doubted he had any education at all.55 A shrewd businessman nevertheless, Maestri is an example of how a socially restrictive elite can induce the wealthy to support change. Sullivan and his other gambling acquaintances contributed substantial sums, in cash. The main stash was kept in a safe. Alice Lee Grosjean held what was needed on a day-to-day basis in her brassiere.56
With this money, Huey no longer tacked up campaign posters himself. Advertising trucks toured the state under the direction of Earl Long and Frank Odom, an expert in display advertising. The trucks themselves had pictures of Huey on their sides. They crisscrossed the state, letting Huey concentrate on writing the circulars they distributed and giving speeches. The circulars were printed on paper that people could “use on their backsides” after reading it. “Don’t use any of that damn smooth stuff,” Huey ordered. Language a six-year-old could understand was the appropriate level for writing circulars, Huey thought.
Senator Ransdell’s brother endorsed Huey, denying that Huey was a radical. Likewise, Senator Broussard’s followers backed Huey. Harvey Ellis, a lawyer from a small town (Mandeville) and member of a long-standing, respected, aristocratic family, was named Huey’s state campaign manager. John Sullivan led his cause in New Orleans. Newspaper publisher Robert Ewing endorsed him, after talking to Congressman Aswell about running, giving Huey the support of the Shreveport Times and the New Orleans States. Twenty other weekly papers supported Huey. Jeff Snyder of Madison Parish, wealthy and, along with Swords Lee, one of the triumvirate that governed the Louisiana Klan, supported Huey.57
Problems developed. Carbajal was resentful of Sullivan and Maestri, who elbowed him aside in New Orleans. After his appointment, Harvey Ellis abruptly resigned as campaign manager in a public letter that attacked Sullivan: Sullivan was crooked and only stood for racing, gambling, and whiskey. Huey denied ever gambling and then named a new campaign manager, Sheriff Charles L. Pecot of St. Mary Parish, southwest of New Orleans.
Huey’s organization in the rural parishes might be the most significant difference from his 1924 campaign. In the intervening four years, he had met with leaders of the various parishes, north and south, offering flattery and promises—implicit or explicit—to improve the state or grant patronage. Many of Huey’s leaders now were the richest men in their parish. The Fisher family of Jefferson Parish, near New Orleans, was rich from the fur trade, fishing, and canning industries. Sugar-plantation manager Clay Dugas supported Huey and was promised the directorship of the state penitentiary. Clarence Savoie owned several plantations. Williams lists many more leaders he either interviewed or researched. One can appreciate how much time and effort Huey devoted to recruiting them. “The Long movement might represent the aspirations of the common people, but in 1927 many of its leaders were of the upper classes.”
A combination of factors caused this. Intransigent leadership by the remaining members of the oligarchy contrasted with the appeal of Huey’s road building and other promises (issue framing); the split between the state machine (Simpson/Maloney) and the Old Regulars (O’Keefe) (mobilization); and the salesmanship of Huey. The split within the elite caused some of them, notably Senator Ransdell’s brother and Jeff Snyder, embarrassment. When they shared a platform with Huey, he denounced their friends supporting Wilson, much to their discomfort.58
One leader made this crucial point: “[Huey] taught [the voters] to think. He educated them to him.”59 It had taken ten years, but he had finally prepared them, with his speeches, his attacks, his lawsuits, his press agentry, and his victories, to give him the power that they had to give.
Huey ran as part of a ticket that included candidates for lieutenant governor (Paul Cyr, a dentist from southwestern Louisiana, who spoke fluent French, and who was Bouanchaud’s candidate for lieutenant governor in 1924), state treasurer, attorney general, and superintendent of education. (He had no candidate for secretary of state, state auditor, registrar of lands, or commissioner of agriculture.) O. K. Allen was running for the state Senate from Winnfield, and Harley Bozeman was running for state representative.
In the campaign, Huey charged that Wilson and Simpson were both waiters carrying food cooked up by Sanders; friends of Sanders offered to pull Wilson and Simpson out of the race if Huey would allow the Sanders toll bridge to operate without competition; Sanders supported the carbon-black industry that was wasting Louisiana’s natural gas and ruining its streams;60 a Shreveport bank president supporting Wilson had operated a Black dive saloon early in his career; the Conservation Department (or, in Huey’s words, the “coonservation” department) was wasting money on useless patronage workers: a doctor had been appointed for $250 per month to ensure that no “coons” got loose on the streets of Shreveport, and later his son was hired for $150 a month to guard the city from “coons” at night.61 Huey exploited Wilson’s congressional votes against a minimum wage, an agricultural bill, and tariffs for rice and sugar.62
Huey attacked Simpson supporter Lee Thomas: he “just can’t keep from lying. It is in the man.”63 Thomas sued Huey for slander. His lawsuit was dismissed, however, because his lawyer forgot to include the necessary allegation that he was a man of good repute. Thomas cooled off after the dismissal and didn’t refile.64
Huey was a showman: “watch me Vaudeville ’em,” he would say before starting.65 “He evolved a windmill, or air-flailing arm movement. He screwed up his eyes, tossed off his coat, [and] burlesqued the stuffed-shirt behavior of his opponents.” Huey “uttered the once unutterable, then elaborated on it.”66 One man heard Huey’s voice blaring from the loudspeaker and the crowd howling its approval: it was excitement, retribution, and entertainment. The orator was jubilant. The listener “tingled with an excitement that was not altogether pleasant.”67 Like a modern rap battle, the quality of the denunciations offered their own visceral pleasure.
Huey provided some classic repartee in the campaign. With respect to Wilson’s flood-control record, Huey commented that his record was fourteen feet of higher water than ever before, one for every year he served in Congress. With respect to Wilson’s poverty, such as having to go barefoot as a boy, Huey said “that ain’t nothin’, I got documentary evidence to prove I was born barefoot.” When it was charged that all the whiskey drinkers supported him, Huey said “That’d be mighty good news if it was only true. Unfortunately, Simpson and Wilson ain’t supporting me.” When Huey was stopped for speeding, he said that Simpson had plenty of people in jail cells waiting for room in asylums because there was no money to care for them, but meanwhile they had plenty of money for highway police to follow him all over the state.68
Neither Simpson (because he controlled the state government) nor Wilson (backed by the Old Regulars) could effectively campaign against government-spending waste. Newspapers attacking Simpson published exposés about wasteful patronage expenditures in the Highway Department.69 Huey campaigned against bossism, waste, and bureaucracy and promised to investigate corruption in the Highway Commission. Today, in conventional campaigns, conservatives rail against government bureaucracy and liberals support government services. Huey had it both ways, advocating expanded government services and criticizing excessive government regulations and expenditures.
Simpson appeared with Huey on a platform only once, and he regretted it. Huey said he was glad to confront Simpson so he could tell it to him “good and proper.” He then listed Simpson’s shortcomings, emphasizing his failure to provide pensions to Confederate veterans and his love of liquor and racetracks. Simpson proposed to tax racetracks and use the money for schools. Huey saw his opening and pounced. He had never been to a horse race, had never bet on a horse race, and had never asked racing interests for a single favor. Whirling around to face the “flabbergasted” Simpson, “How about you?” Huey further prodded Simpson into admitting that he had written to the racetrack asking for free passes.70
In other speeches, Huey attacked Simpson for having divorced his first wife and for manufacturing gambling devices, both charges that were unfair or unsupported by the evidence. Simpson’s denials were lost among Huey’s foghorn blasts.71 Riley Wilson appeared once with Huey, and an unfriendly newspaper admitted afterward that the crowd favored Huey.72
In New Orleans, Huey attacked a man in the audience, who stood up and yelled, “Hold on, you son of a bitch.” Huey directed Paul Cyr to “handle him.” Cyr pinned the man’s arms back while Huey continued his tirade. In a meeting in Minden, a recently jailed man interrupted Huey’s speech (he may have been released to do so), but policeman Louis Jones slugged him so hard his eyebrow fell over his eye. Jones’s brother grabbed Louis’s gun to hold others at bay. “That’s what I call enforcing the law!” Huey exclaimed.73 J. Y. Sanders found Huey in the lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel and called him a liar. Huey ran out “to collect witnesses” and returned and swung at him but then fled to the elevator. Sanders followed and there was a tussle, with Huey’s head buried mostly in Sanders’ stomach. The newspapers awarded the victory to the fifty-nine-year-old, corpulent Sanders, and they ridiculed the thirty-four-year-old, 170-pound Huey for running away from the older man.74 They called him “Hot Foot Huey” and reported that red-blooded men were disavowing their support.75
Huey was frightened of physical attack, frequently hearing imaginary prowlers outside his hotel room. He had a limp handshake. Williams concluded that Huey lacked the emotion that makes one want to go for the throat of someone.76 But he had a temper, which accounted for his vehement and expletive-laced private conversations. Maybe he felt guilty about his verbal attacks and feared reprisals.
As the campaign progressed, Huey discussed voter benefits: roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, mental health facilities, and honest government. Most of the time he discussed free schoolbooks, outlining the experience of other states such as Texas. Texas distributed free books at an average cost per child of $0.90, whereas in Louisiana it was $5.99. With a lawyer’s consciousness of the Texas precedent, Huey “diffused” the idea of free schoolbooks to Louisianans:77
[Huey] stacked recently discarded schoolbooks on the table until they were about to fall over and then he lined up a second stack. When he began to call out the names and prices of the discarded textbooks, the applause of the crowd was continuous. He brought the house down when he reached [Congressman] Aswell’s spelling book.
“This man Doctor Aswell refused to become the candidate against me, although requested. My enemies painted him a good record of being modern and progressive, but here, they have put his spelling book off the rack because he is out of date when they need to sell some more spellers.”
At the conclusion of Mr. Long’s address he received a tremendous ovation.78
Huey’s statistics omitted the cost of the initial purchase of the books. T. H. Harris, the superintendent of education, criticized the omission. Huey replied that he would eliminate waste from government to secure the initial outlay.
He also soft-pedaled how he was going to pay for paved highways. One would think that there would have been a big argument over pay-as-you-go versus bond financing, but there wasn’t. Huey said that, while paved roads were more expensive to build, they were less expensive to maintain. The state would recoup the extra cost of paved roads before they wore out in twelve to twenty years by the savings on maintenance.79
Paved roads were a very popular issue.80 A bulletin of the Good Roads Association discussed their advantages: they prevent tire blowouts, double tire mileage, reduce gas consumption, triple the life of a car, reduce maintenance costs, increase the value of adjoining land, and avoid personal injuries and windshield damage from spraying gravel.81 Those are plain cost-benefit analyses that any fiscal conservative could calculate.
Huey must have known eliminating wasteful government spending was not going to pay for paved highways or free schoolbooks. To say that Huey was going to accomplish these goals some other way is unfair to his critics. To say that Huey made a baseless promise is unfair to him. Politicians often make promises—the ones they intend to keep—with only a hazy or perhaps secret way of accomplishing them. Others oppose worthy reforms, asserting practical difficulties as a smokescreen. Pity the poor voters who must sort through the competing ideas and hidden motives before casting their ballots.
Near the end of his campaign, Huey visited St. Martinsville, where he spoke with poetic idealism under the famous oak tree of Longfellow’s poetic heroine, Evangeline:
And it is here, under this oak where Evangeline waited for her lover, Gabriel, who never came. This oak is an immortal spot, made so by Longfellow’s poem, but Evangeline is not the only one who has waited here in disappointment. Where are the schools that you have waited for your children to have, that have never come? Where are the roads and the highways that you send your money to build, that are no nearer now than ever before? Where are the institutions to care for the sick and the disabled? Evangeline wept bitter tears in her disappointment, but it lasted through only one lifetime. Your tears in this country, around this oak, have lasted for generations. Give me the chance to dry the tears of those who still weep here.
But if you wait here too long an agent from the “coonservation” department will touch you on the shoulder and tell you you are casting for minnows illegally.
He omitted the last sentence from his autobiography, but during the speech itself he could not leave the sentiment alone or linger on it, so instead he ended with a joke.82 In other speeches, he explained his hopes for progress, saying, “He who falls in this fight falls in the radiance of the future.”
There was a practical reason to reduce the attacks. If a runoff were necessary, he might need the votes of the candidate who finished third. His supporters showed the Simpson campaigners that the Wilson camp was denigrating their candidate and vice versa, increasing the chance that the defeated candidate would back him.83
Huey’s speaking tour covered fifteen thousand miles. He gave six hundred speeches to 300,000 people. Audiences “came from every bottom in the country, by car, wagon, horseback, on foot.”84 Some people followed him from speech to speech. The schedule he kept during the campaign, eighteen-to twenty-hour days, awed observers.85
Wilson spoke at Hammond and New Orleans in early January but returned to Washington in the closing weeks of the campaign, either because of his confidence or because his managers knew he was a poor campaigner. Nevertheless, Wilson’s managers thought that, between Simpson and themselves, a runoff would be required. Wilson’s campaign arranged the defection of Huey’s New Orleans Eighth Ward leaders on January 3;86 Wilson leaders boasted that they had eroded Huey’s support even in John Sullivan’s home ward. Anti-Long newspapers reported that Huey spoke to small crowds in Morehouse Parish.87
On election night, Wilson obtained 38,244 votes in New Orleans; Simpson 22,324; and Huey a dismal third with 17,819.88 The Old Regulars and Wilson exchanged congratulations. They maintained their optimism when Huey’s north Louisiana vote was reported. But when Huey swept the south Louisiana parishes, they realized that disaster had struck. Huey had 126,842, Wilson 81,747, and Simpson 80,326.89 Even though he lacked a majority, Huey had a bigger lead than any prior candidate in state history.90
To prevent a runoff, Huey moved fast, first meeting with Paul Maloney. Maloney agreed to endorse him and get his associates to do likewise. The mayor of Bogalusa and a state senator from Franklinton endorsed Huey.91 The Simpson New Orleans organization backed Huey on January 20, and this was followed by an editorial in the Times Picayune, a Simpson supporter, urging Wilson to withdraw.92 Wilson’s leaders asked for financing for a runoff campaign but obtained promises of only $52,000, when at least one leader thought $500,000 would be required.93
The next day, Huey invited O. K. Allen, Harley Bozeman, and O. B. Thompson down to New Orleans to watch “big time” politics. A journalist was appalled at seeing a disheveled and bloodshot-eyed Huey tell his lieutenants to “stick to me. We’re just getting started. . . . I’m gonna be President some day.” The contrast with the idealistic reformer displayed during campaign speeches was too much for him.94 Representatives of Wilson and Simpson visited Huey’s suite in a constant stream. Sullivan and Ewing stood by Huey’s side. Wilson decided to withdraw that day. Huey was elected.
Simpson emerged from the seclusion of a prolonged bender and accepted a minor job with Huey’s administration. To help Huey in the bridge controversy, he began operating free ferries parallel to the route of the new toll bridge. Probably as a further concession to Simpson, Huey never prosecuted anyone for corruption or waste in the Highway Commission.95
The NEA (Press) Service issued a nice article about Huey after his election, emphasizing his youth, his farm background, his frequent reading of the Bible, his boyhood experience selling books, his job selling Cottolene, the cake-baking contest at which he met Rose McConnell, his false arrest in Shreveport, his defense of Senator S. J. Harper during World War I, and his legal activities against the utility companies. The article included a picture of the Longs on a porch swing and Rose’s recipe for the baking contest cake, headlined with variations of “Bible-Reading Governor” or “Romance Caused by Cake.”96 When Huey went home, he celebrated with his extended family by singing songs all night around the piano.97
The New York Times wrote that Louisiana had elected an amazing personality who would be a colorful governor.98 But colorful does not equal accomplished. In a revolution, violence often establishes the change of government, which then implements the revolutionary program. Here, while Huey’s program of free schoolbooks, natural gas for New Orleans, no-toll highways and bridges was revolutionary for Louisiana, his election alone wouldn’t provide those benefits; it was only the start.
History is littered with reformers who won elections and then accomplished nothing. Appealing to the same constituency that elected Huey, Mississippi’s Theodore Bilbo won the governorship one year before Huey, but he couldn’t pass a highway bond issue and had other disasters: “Scandals rocked the State Tax Commission and other departments . . . ; impeachment proceedings were directed at some of Bilbo’s closest political associates; massive dismissals of university presidents and professors had cost the accreditation of the state’s only university and most of its colleges; [and] the budget was badly out of balance.”99 Thus, the oligarchy still had strategies and tactics to defeat Huey. While O. K. Allen had been elected to the state Senate and Harley Bozeman was elected as a state representative, Huey’s statewide ticket was only partially successful: Paul Cyr had won the lieutenant governor’s race, and Huey’s candidate won for state treasurer (H. B. Connor). The registrar of state lands (Fred Grace) switched sides and became a supporter soon after the election. Secretary of State James Bailey, Attorney General Percy Saint, Superintendent of Education T. H. Harris, Commissioner of Agriculture Harry D. Wilson, and State Auditor L. B. Baynard opposed Huey or were neutral as of the date of his election. Only eighteen of the one hundred representatives and nine of the thirty-nine senators had been elected as Long supporters.100 The field of battle now switched from electoral politics to governing.