The last year (1935) in the life of Huey P. Long (Louisiana Senator) Essay

The last year (1935) in the life of Huey P. Long (Louisiana Senator) - Essay ExampleParker won the old, and Long insisted that it was his doing. In that era sooner the advent of radio and electrical sound-amplifiers, a candidates effectiveness was usually proportional to the lustiness of his voice at open-air rallies. Longs lungs were strong.Long perfected his oratorical technique in these campaigns. He stave in terms of we We are a-goin ter do this -- we done that. He eschewed polysyllabic words he exaggerated his hillbilly parlance he reveled in the idioms of his native hills. Longs apologies were somewhat disingenuous. His formal education had been spotty, of course, but his ignorance was a pose. He was an able lawyer. Once when he was drunk, he uttered a franker appraisal of his own abilities. 1Soon after the election, Long broke with the new governor, nominally because Parker was reluctant to levy higher taxes on Standard Oil. On August 30, 1923, his thirtieth birthday, Lon g announced his own candidacy for the governorship. The campaign began at once. Some opposition candidates might offer money for votes, Long predicted to his audiences. So take the money and then vote for me. He cited his teachers as Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, and Almighty God. He assailed Governor Parker as a damnable demagogue. He charged the naked Orleans Item and the Times-Picayune with being journals of Wall Street. A heavy rain fell on Primary Day, January 15, 1924. Longs rural followers were kept at home. A second cause of his defeat lay in his inability to attract votes in the French parishes. The ambitious railroad commissioner soon found opportunity to cost to Catholic Creoles and Cajuns of southern Louisiana. In 1926 United States Senator Edwin S. Broussard came up for reelection. Long set out to sell Broussard a French Creole Catholic, an advocate of a protective-tariff on sugar, and as wet as Lake Pontchartrain on the prohibition question to his Anglo-Saxon Prot estant, low-tariff, dry followers in northern Louisiana. He stumped the state, told the Creoles that French blood flowed in his own veins, and referred to Broussard as Couzain Ed. He assured his own disciples of his complete loyalty to the senator. Broussard squeaked through the primary with a 4,000-vote margin. Opposing Long in the gubernatorial primary of 1928 was Congressman Riley Wilson, candidate of the New Orleans Old Regular machine, which controlled much of the state through an alliance with the rural courthouse cliques. Long ridiculed Wilson as a babe, although Wilson was xxii years older than himself and had already served seven terms in Congress. Governor O. H. Simpson also filed in the primary. Longs irrelevant and crudely humorous talk amused his followers. 2Long provided his campaign with a slogan Every Man a King but No Man Wears a Crown. Long said he borrowed the vote catching words from that perennial Democratic-Populist seeker after the presidency, William Jenning s Bryan. In a speech on Imperialism, delivered in the campaign of 1900, the Great Commoner spoke of a republic in which every citizen is a sovereign, but in which no one cares or dares to wear a crown. Henceforth, Every Man a King was to be Longs battle cry. Longs candidacy was considerably strengthened by