How does the old clans of the past, Longs and Jones shake
out in LA politics today? If at all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_H._Jones
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Long
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huey_Long
I guess one would have to say that those old political machine are gone or have been completely rearranged.
My Mother’s family - my grandfather and great-grandfather - were part of the Long machine, so goes the family history. They owned a general store in North Ascension parish and it was the area’s meeting place and hub of community activity. As a result, they enjoyed a bit of clout with the Longs. One of my great uncles was a state police lieutenant, when such jobs were only given out as political patronage.
Here’s from a history of the area that a cousin of mine wrote some years ago.
THE HISTORY OF THE HOPE VILLA and OAK GROVE COMMUNITIES
By Ira Paul Babin, II
“On frequent occasions during his campaign travels to and from New Orleans, Governor Huey P. Long included stops at the Webb store, and at Vinnie Dixon’s store in Hope Villa. One of the governor’s personal bodyguards was Murphy J. Webb, a resident of Oak Grove, and the son of the Webb store proprietor. During these stops, it was the bodyguard’s assignment to first enter the store to purchase cans of sardines, a red onion, a hunk of hoop cheese, a dime’s worth of soda crackers, and a Nehi orange soda pop—all favorite snacks of the governor.”
The Long factions were the agrarian, rural voters. Kind of the William Jennings Bryan types. The anti-Longs were the business types, the city voters, the white collar types.
You have to remember that black voters were not a significant factor in Louisiana elections until the mid 60s.
Today, that’s all gone.
Louisiana’s GOP is made up of people that would have been in the Democrat Party fifty or hundred years ago, I suspect. Small business, middle class, family oriented.
Core Louisiana Democrats are today a coalition of blacks, a smattering of white limousine liberals (college profs, etc), and the government deadhead class - teachers unions, courthouse crowds, etc.
But I love the history and politics. It’s in my blood, I guess. The Webb family first settled in the North Ascension area in the early 1800s. There was a Webb plantation where the Country Club of Louisiana is located, according to an old map I’ve seen.