We’re all here to pull a lot of pot-bellied politicians off a little woman’s neck.
—U.S. Senator Huey Long
Huey Long was the corrupt machine politician they say he was. To be perfectly honest, he built the biggest political machine Louisiana had ever seen and completely took over the Louisiana political establishment. He was a flashy dresser with no taste. He loved to hear himself talk. Political correctness never crossed his mind. And he probably failed every left purity test you can think of.
I have argued that adopting right-wing populism would be disastrous, and left-wing populism would be a dangerous step backward from our pluralist democracy with its checks and balances. But left populism has pluses as well as minuses, and if I were to ignore the pluses, you would be right to consider me biased. In this chapter, let me introduce you to one of my favorite politicians: the quintessential progressive populist, Louisiana Governor and Senator, The “Kingfish,” Huey P. Long.
I wouldn’t vote for him today, but in 1920s Louisiana, with only one party, controlled by “the interests” and backed by the Klan when necessary, even left populism was a step forward. Unfortunately, most present-day progressives who’ve even heard of him still view him as “the Big Sleazy.” There is some truth to this view, but there is also the reality of 1920s Louisiana to consider.
The list of negatives is not why I’m one of Long’s fans, but they account for half of the reasons why the Kingfish could teach our current Democratic Party leaders so much. He spent his whole life fighting privilege on behalf of the poor. And he fought harder and smarter than anyone else. While on the Supreme Court, President Taft called Long “one of the best legal minds” he had ever encountered.
The lesson for us today is the contradiction between Long’s corrupt machine politics and his spending a lifetime “pulling the poor parts of Louisiana out of the mud” (literally in the case of his road-building projects). As you read this, ask yourself how it is possible to break all our new-new-left dogmas and purity tests while advancing economic and social equality. No, I’m not advocating sleazy machine politics, I’m just saying our purity tests with their moralistic conclusions don’t hold water.
Reality in 1920s Louisiana
U.S. Senator Tom Connally, who chaired an investigation into Louisiana politics in the 1930s, concluded, “I advise anyone who thinks he knows something about politics to go down in Louisiana and take a postgraduate course.” And that was mainly a comment on Long’s opponents. Before Huey, not only was politics in every city and town in Louisiana run by a political “ring,” typically under the control of the sheriff, but the threat of political violence was ever-present.
Usually, this violence amounted to nothing more than a fistfight. But soon after being elected governor in 1928, Huey hired a bodyguard, fearing he would be shot. Indeed, five rifle shots were fired into his home. In early 1935, the Square Deal Association was formed and threatened to assassinate Long. With the help of an infiltrator, Long tricked about 100 of them into arming themselves and assembling at the airport, where he had the National Guard confiscate their guns. At one point he told a U.S. Senate colleague, “If there were just a few people plotting it [his assassination], I think I might live through it.” But in late 1935, he was assassinated by a lone gunman opposed to his politics.
After reading T. Harry Williams’ authoritative biography, it is hard to imagine that Huey could have accomplished much of what he did without engaging in a great deal of sleazy politics. I will leave it to you to decide if what he accomplished was worth it.
An Early Start
Huey was born a politician. After finishing sixth grade, he simply walked into the eighth-grade classroom and convinced the teacher to accept him. In his senior year, he won a debating contest. Afterward, while staying with the state superintendent of education, he promised, “Mrs. Harris, you have been mighty good to us, and when I get to be Governor, United States Senator, and President of the United States, I am going to do something for you.”
His parents had a decent house and enough land to grow most of their own food. The family read books together, often the Bible, and the children were expected to get some college education. Before he was 15, he had read a multivolume History of the World, Les Miserables, some Shakespeare, Dickens, Poe, and Balzac.
By the election of 1908, the Democrats called on him to debate a couple of local Socialists. He rejected socialism and argued instead for a populist program placing restraints on big business. Huey was still not quite 15.
Change from the Top Down
After a few years as a traveling salesman, Huey spent a year studying for the bar and passed the exam at age 21. He began getting worker-injury compensation cases and observed the stinginess of the compensation. In 1916, he provided his local State Senator, S. J. Harper, with some amendments to increase the benefits allowed by the compensation laws, and Harper presented them to the legislative committee. Huey tried to speak to them but was silenced and ridiculed. As the committee adjourned, Huey stood and spoke.
For 20 years has the Louisiana Legislature been dominated by the henchmen and attorneys of the interests. Those seeking reforms have from necessity bowed their heads in regret and shame when witnessing the victories of these corrupting influences at this capitol.
Through the press, his dramatic speech reached his intended audience and activated latent popular support for his reforms. The Harper Amendments were passed.
Note that Huey was not being propelled by a mass movement. Far from it, he was acting solely on his own initiative. This change did not come from the bottom up. This was true for every one of his progressive reforms. He envisioned both what was needed and what was possible. Of course, his vision reflected the needs of the people, but the change came from the top down in every case, although he needed and won popular support. Huey was a real leader, not a demagogue. But he was a populist leader who did not persuade from his bully pulpit, but rather was in touch with “the people” and used dealmaking and backroom politics to do what they wanted.
Huey: The Godfather of Occupy Wall Street
In 1918, 93 years before Occupy Wall Street, Huey wrote to major newspapers explaining that 2% of the people owned 70% of the wealth. Its most unfortunate effect, he said, was that the ordinary man could no longer provide an education for his children. Then, after a vigorous campaign through the backwoods towns of northern Louisiana, Huey was elected to the Public Service Commission. There he pushed through a reduction in phone rates that made him a statewide hero.
Huey ran for governor in 1924 on a platform that included badly needed road construction and free textbooks and took on the “bloated plutocracy” and the Klan. He campaigned in the small towns saying, “I come from the common people, and I am a friend of labor.” Without a real organization, he came in third but easily won in rural Louisiana. Basically, he lost to the machines in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. He immediately began campaigning for the 1928 gubernatorial election.
A Strategic Pragmatist
Huey’s first move in the next governor’s race was to back Ed Broussard for the U.S. Senate in 1926. Huey would rally northern Louisiana voters to vote for Broussard, and Broussard would rally southwestern, French-speaking voters to vote for Huey in 1928. This is like Bernie Sanders vigorously backing a moderate Republican so the Republican would later back him. Huey was the ultimate pragmatist and dealmaker.
While he ran for Senate in 1926, Broussard, speaking French, introduced Huey to his constituents. Huey displayed his usual humor and earthiness and the crowds went wild for him. He held out the hope of a better life and, said a leader of the French parish of Lafourche, “He taught them to think.” Huey carried the French parishes more strongly in 1928 than Broussard had in 1926. He became governor in May 1928, just in time for the Great Depression.
The Most Effective Progressive Populist
Louisiana had about 300 miles of paved roads in 1928, to which Huey added 2,300 miles by the end of his four-year term, and the program was still in full swing. Many poor families could not afford textbooks, and without them, children were not allowed to attend school. One consequence was that Louisiana had the lowest literacy rate in the country. Huey passed a free-schoolbook law (which was opposed because it would benefit Blacks), which was ultimately upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.
When Huey proposed a tax of five cents a barrel on oil refining, he was impeached and nearly convicted by the conservatives in the legislature. But Huey knew his agenda was popular, especially after the Wall Street crash in 1929, so he decided to take his case to the people of Louisiana by running for the U.S. Senate in September 1930.
Huey ran against Joseph E. Ransdell, a tough establishment politician who had previously won his U.S. Senate seat in a minor landslide. Huey beat him 57% to 43%. In the process, he more than doubled his vote in the Orleans parish where the strongest political machine, the “Old Regulars,” had previously held sway. In the labor wards of New Orleans, the ward leaders had not been able to keep their followers in line in the face of Huey’s popularity.
The strategy of running for the Senate to strengthen his position as governor proved effective. Huey’s stunning statewide victory frightened the legislature into backing essentially all of his policies, and his victory against the “Old Regulars” cracked the powerful New Orleans machine. Within two years, he had smashed it and put in place his own statewide machine.
By the end of 1930, Huey had embarked on a massive expansion of Louisiana State University, and by 1936, enrollment had more than tripled to 6,000 students. During his tenure as governor, he more than doubled the capacity of the state’s Charity Hospital, reduced its mortality rate and humanized services at mental institutions (including instituting dental care). He inaugurated the first prisoner rehabilitation program in Louisiana history, set prisoners to growing their own food and provided literacy classes.
Huey and the Louisiana Banks
One Friday night, Huey learned that a Lafayette bank would face a run the next morning. Arriving at the bank at 7 a.m., he occupied the president’s office. When the bank opened, the first customer, who was attempting to withdraw $18,000, was sent to see Huey. Huey showed him his own check for $265,000 to withdraw state funds and pointed out that he got there first—and that if the customer persisted, Huey would withdraw all of the bank’s available funds. The run was averted.
Huey also applied systematic pressure for banks to support each other. Through 1932, Louisiana had only seven bank failures, mostly small ones, while the rest of the country had 4,800.
Huey and Hattie
Huey is often criticized for his machine politics, and that criticism includes an implicit suggestion that he was not so popular or was popular only due to patronage. But one test case conclusively proves the opposite.
When Arkansas Senator Thaddeus Caraway died in November 1931, his wife, Hattie, was in effect appointed to finish out his term. Surprisingly, she announced her run for a full term in May 1932, saying, “The time has passed when a woman should be placed in a position and kept there only while someone else is being groomed for the job.” No one in Arkansas thought she had a chance. But Huey had noticed that Hattie almost always voted with the progressives.
Before dawn on August 1, Huey left Louisiana for Arkansas in a car followed by two sound trucks with rooftop speaking platforms and five trucks for technical support and campaign literature. The election was on August 9, and Hattie still had no significant backing.
According to Huey’s biographer, T. Harry Williams, “When Huey rose to speak, he held a Bible in his hands and began by proclaiming, ‘We’re all here to pull a lot of potbellied politicians off a little woman’s neck.’” Huey spoke five or six times a day for eight days before the election, and Hattie’s speaking abilities improved rapidly as they traveled together. Her popular vote equaled the vote total of her six opponents combined. She was the first woman ever elected to the United States Senate.
Huey had no machine or organization of any kind in Arkansas. Yet Huey and Hattie won by a landslide with only an eight-day campaign. They won because the people of Arkansas liked their message. The same was true for Huey in Louisiana.
The sad ending to this story is that because Huey out-machined the corporate conservative politicians of Louisiana, he’s been blacklisted by contemporary progressive populists, including Bernie Sanders. Most will not even mention his name while they heap praise on his deserving but oh-so-establishment rival, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Conclusion
Huey was neither politically correct nor dogmatic. He relied on machine politics as much as he could. That may well have been the right strategy in 1920s Louisiana, but even then, it resulted in terribly corrupt politics soon after his death. In a more advanced democracy, this strategy would be plainly counterproductive.
The left can learn a lot from Huey with regard to dealmaking, taking money and working strategically with the opposition. Probably the best thing about his populism was that although he still used the Us-versus-Them classification, he applied it without prejudice: He knew that some elites were part of “the people” and that some in the lower classes were on the wrong side.
- Huey Long considered dealmaking essential and didn’t care who he made deals with.
- He also didn’t care where his money came from—he knew it would not corrupt him.
Ripped Apart
