Long, Huey

Long, Huey (1893–1935), Louisiana political leader and would‐be presidential candidate.A populistic and politically ambitious lawyer from the northern Louisiana town of Winnfield, Long won election to the state railroad commission in 1918. His relentless opposition to corporate privilege, especially the unbridled power of the Standard Oil Company, led to an unsuccessful run for governor in 1924. Fours years later he won the governorship thanks to a folksy style and shrewd maneuvering that disrupted traditional alliances. As governor, Long did what other reformist politicians only talked about: He built roads, schools, and hospitals, and he shifted the tax burden to the corporations and the wealthy. He also organized a statewide machine that all but destroyed the conservative “Bourbon” oligarchy that had controlled Louisiana politics since the end of Reconstruction. Long offered the downtrodden a long‐awaited taste of power, but his increasingly ruthless and graft‐driven methods polarized the state. Followers regarded him as a populist champion and a political messiah; critics labeled him a demagogue and political gangster. After surviving a 1929 impeachment trial, he won election to the U.S. Senate in 1930.

Long strongly supported Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the 1932 presidential race, but he later became a sharp critic of the New Deal's measured response to the Great Depression. In 1934, after publishing a manifesto entitled Every Man a King, Long launched a nationwide “Share Our Wealth” campaign. He used radio broadcasts and high‐profile personal appearances to promote his radically progressive tax proposals that he claimed would alleviate unemployment and the maldistribution of wealth. In 1935 he planned a run for the presidency and even wrote a book entitled My First Days in the White House. But his insurgent candidacy ended abruptly on 9 September, when he was fatally shot by Dr. Carl Weiss (the son‐in‐law of Judge Benjamin Pavy, an anti‐Long leader), in the Louisiana statehouse in Baton Rouge.

During his brief but remarkable career, Huey Long ruled Louisiana with an iron hand, dispensing economic panaceas and political retribution with a ferocity seldom seen in American politics. The most powerful southern politician of his day, the “Kingfish,” as he liked to be called, spawned a political dynasty that influenced state and national politics decades after his death. Immortalized in Robert Penn Warren's novel All the King's Men (1946), a semifictional meditation on the temptations of power, this talented but tragically flawed leader left an ambiguous and troubling legacy.
See also Depressions, Economic; New Deal Era, The; Political Parties.

Bibliography

T. Harry Williams , Huey Long, 1969.
William Ivy Hair , The Kingfish and His Realm: The Life and Times of Huey Long, 1991.

Raymond O. Arsenault