Huey Long

[merrily]

I had a grand plan of a series of posts from the Revolution to the present, but I didn't follow through.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1133&pid=5770

Too ambitious and too disciplined for me, I guess. Instead, I'll be posting on whatever interests me and hoping it interests others, too. Huey Long, aka "Kingfish," interests me.

The question has been whether Long was a populist or a demagogue.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12779697

I'll leave that to you, dear, dear reader. Anyway, I give you



Huey Long

When Long, who had been home schooled earlier on, completed the 11th grade of his school, his school decided to make completing the 12th grade a requirement. Long circulated a petition to protest, which got him kicked out of school. So, technically, he never completed high school. Nonetheless, he won a debating scholarship to Louisiana State University. However--and this is heartbreaking--he could not afford the textbooks he had to buy. (This is from his wiki, which describes his family as a "middle class" farming family.)

His mother urged him to attend a Baptist university, but he decided he was not cut out to be a preacher and quit. He took some law courses. After a year, he took and passed the bar exam, without a high school or a college or a law school diploma. He practiced law for ten years, bragging that he never took a case against a poor man.

Long won fame by taking on the powerful Standard Oil Company, which he sued for unfair business practices. Over the course of his career, Long continued to challenge Standard Oil's influence in state politics and charged the company with exploiting the state's vast oil and gas resources......In 1918 Long was elected to the Louisiana Railroad Commission at the age of 25 on an anti-Standard Oil platform...

He used his position on the Commission to enhance his populist reputation as an opponent of large oil and utility companies, fighting against rate increases and pipeline monopolies. In the gubernatorial election of 1920, he campaigned prominently for John M. Parker, but later became his vocal opponent after the new governor proved to be insufficiently committed to reform, later calling him the "chattel" of the corporations....

As chairman of the Public Service Commission in 1922, Long won a lawsuit against the Cumberland Telephone & Telegraph Company for unfair rate increases, resulting in cash refunds of $440,000 to 80,000 overcharged customers. Long successfully argued the case on appeal before the United States Supreme Court (Cumberland Tel & Tel Co. v. Louisiana Public Service Commission, 260 U.S. 212 (1922),[1] prompting Chief Justice William Howard Taft to describe Long as one of the best legal minds he had ever encountered.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huey_Long (emphasis added)

Well, I'm impressed so far.


In 1924, at age 31, he ran in the primary for Governor of Louisiana, but lost. In 1928, he won the primary by a plurality with the slogan, "Every man a king, but no one wears a crown," which he had copied from William Jennings Bryan. Long then won the general with 96.1% of the vote, despite a poll tax that kept many of the poor from voting. After consolidating his power via firings and other strong arm and dubious means, he instituted a program of free textbooks for schoolchildren and an adult literacy program, as well as an unprecedented public works program. He also called for a tax on oil. That got him impeached, but he foiled that cleverly and the state legislature abandoned the effort.

Following the failed impeachment attempt in the Senate, Long became ruthless when dealing with his enemies. He fired their relatives from state jobs and supported candidates to defeat them in elections. After impeachment, Long appears to have concluded that extra-legal means would be needed to defend the interests of the common people against the powerful money interests. "I used to try to get things done by saying 'please'," said Long. "Now...I dynamite 'em out of my path."[18] Since the state's newspapers were financed by the opposition, in March 1930 Long founded his own paper, the Louisiana Progress, which he used to broadcast achievements and denounce his enemies.[19] To receive lucrative state contracts, companies were first expected to buy advertisements in Long's newspaper. Long attempted to pass laws placing a surtax on newspapers and forbidding the publishing of "slanderous material," but these efforts were defeated. After the impeachment attempt, Long received death threats. Fearing for his personal safety, he surrounded himself with armed bodyguards at all times.[20]

id.

Soon after that, Long ran for the U.S. Senate, and won, beginning his term in 1931, but also remained Governor until 1932 and continued to control politics in Louisiana until his death in 1935. In Washington, he denounced both Republicans and Democrats for failing to do enough about the crisis of that era and supported Franklin Roosevelt for President.

Roosevelt considered Long a radical demagogue. The president privately said of Long that along with General Douglas MacArthur, "[H]e was one of the two most dangerous men in America."[31]

In June 1933, in an effort to undermine Long's political dominance, Roosevelt cut Long out of consultation on the distribution of federal funds or patronage in Louisiana and placed Long's opponents in charge of federal programs in the state. Roosevelt also supported a Senate inquiry into the election of Long ally John H. Overton to the Senate in 1932. The Long machine was charged with election fraud and voter intimidation but the inquiry came up empty, and Overton was seated.[citation needed]

To discredit Long and damage his support base, in 1934 Roosevelt had Long's finances investigated by the Internal Revenue Service. Though they failed to link Long to any illegality, some of Long's lieutenants were charged with income tax evasion, but only one had been convicted by the time of Long's death.

id.


Long was shot in 1935, one month after announcing his intent to run in the 1936 Presidential election, presumably by Dr. Weiss, the son in law of a Louisiana judge and long-time opponent whom Long was attempting to oust. (Speculation had it that the fatal bullet had actually come from the gun of one of Long's bodyguards and had been mean to stop Weiss, but historians reject that theory.) A doctor treated Long unsuccessfully and that doctor's actions have also been called into question. Long's machine continued to control Louisiana politics and a number of Long's family members served in state and national politics.


I urge you to read his entire wiki, which is friggin' fascinatin'.