In his four-year tenure as the governor of Louisiana, Long built an extensive network of highways and bridges through the isolated rural areas of the state, expanded lower-class access to health care and education, and implemented strict new regulations in the state banking industry that improved consumer protections.
After reaching the Senate in , he pushed to implement a similarly progressive agenda on a federal level. Feeling that the New Deal was too moderate, he introduced a more radical alternative called the Share Our Wealth program, which would limit personal assets and earnings for the wealthiest Americans and redistribute money to guarantee a partial annual income to every family, fund old-age pensions for every senior, improve pensions and healthcare benefits for every veteran, and make a free college education and vocational training available to every student.
Much of his vision remains an unrealized dream for progressives in the present day. His efforts to fight poverty, rooted in his own lower-class upbringing, endeared him to poor voters and secured the support of his base from the beginning.
But in pursuit of those ends, Long worked to consolidate and expand his power by means that many felt were authoritarian. When politicians or institutional leaders opposed his agenda, he blocked funding and authorization for programs they wanted, ousted their family members from government jobs, and targeted them with retributive legislation.
Incensed by negative coverage in the press, he founded his own newspaper. Later he co-founded an oil company, extending his powers of patronage beyond politics and into industry. Even after joining the Senate, he continued pushing bills through the Louisiana state legislature and retaliating against enemies and promoting supporters using his personal connections and state funding.
These tactics, Frank R. Long was neither the first nor the last American populist leader to display authoritarian tendencies. In the s, Andrew Jackson was dubbed King Andrew the First because of his liberal use of executive power.
At the same time Long was amassing political capital, the Catholic priest and radio personality Charles Coughlin used his platform to promote fascism and racism to his listeners.
The Louisiana of his youth was characterized by poverty and despair—implications of defeat in the Civil War , exploitation by distant market forces, and neglect from insensitive local politicians. As he advanced politically from railroad commissioner to governor, and finally to US senator, Long offered the common folk relief through improved roads, free school textbooks, and tax reductions. To thousands of Louisianans, Long personified social justice and opportunity for the oppressed.
While Long offered relief to the poor that correspondingly annoyed those who were expected to pay for his social programs, the Long machine also included other qualities that ensured determined opposition would develop. Though energetic and hard working, Long was crass and profane. Not content to whip them at the polls, Long found it necessary to berate and insult his opponents at nearly every opportunity.
In a state where many people regarded personal and familial honor as more important than life itself, Long ceaselessly taunted and denigrated those opposed to his policies, often mocking the physical characteristics of his opponents. As he delivered necessary reforms, Long seemed increasingly to be consumed by a ceaseless desire for more power.
He rapidly concentrated virtually all aspects of state authority under his ultimate control in Baton Rouge and ruthlessly marginalized any who opposed him. Local political entities were rendered almost exclusively dependent on state authority, and electoral districts were gerrymandered specifically to defeat Long opponents. In Long went so far as to order National Guard troops into New Orleans and declared martial law to wrest control of the city from Mayor Walmsley, who had led an anti-Long rally in Baton Rouge.
Such heavy-handed disregard for the democratic process soon made anti-Longs out of powerful figures and corporations ranging from Standard Oil to President Franklin Roosevelt, who allegedly declared Long one of the two most dangerous men in America the other being anti-Semitic radio evangelist Father Charles Coughlin.
Though Long continued to taunt and berate his opponents, he was clearly concerned about the determination of some anti-Longs. By turning out the aristocratic ruling establishment and repealing the poll tax, Long enabled more than a quarter million citizens the opportunity to vote, nearly doubling the size of the electorate the year following his assassination. The poll tax ensured that only citizens of sufficient wealth could vote. Before elections, voters were required to pay a dollar fee at the parish courthouse and receive a receipt.
On election day, only voters presenting receipts for two consecutive years could cast a ballot. If you could not present two correct receipts, you were effectively disenfranchised for the next three years. Property owners were the only citizens likely to pay the poll tax, because they could afford the fee and had to travel to the courthouse anyway to pay their annual property taxes.
In a particularly cruel twist, the poll tax was due at Christmastime, adding another disincentive for poor citizens to seek the privilege of voting. Participation in the legislative process was firmly restricted to the wealthy class.
Political corruption and bribery was rampant.
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