Russell B. Long


Russell Billiu Long was an American Democratic politician and United States Senator from Louisiana from 1948 until 1987. Because of his seniority, he advanced to chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, serving for fifteen years, from 1966 to 1981, during the implementation of President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and War on Poverty programs. Long also served as Assistant Majority Leader from 1965 to 1969.
The son of Rose McConnell Long and Huey Long, notable Louisiana governor and U.S. senator, Russell Long served during the administrations of eight U.S. presidents, from Truman to Reagan. According to biographer Bob Mann, Long "became a leading voice for the plight of the elderly, the disabled, the working poor and the middle class." Long quietly wielded enormous power in the Senate and shaped some of the most significant tax legislation of the twentieth century. As chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Long held jurisdiction over 100 percent of all federal revenue and 40 percent of all government spending, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, welfare and food assistance programs, foreign trade, and tariffs. In 1980 he was voted the most effective chairman and most effective debater by his colleagues in a US News and World Report survey. In a 1982 survey, Long was voted the most influential Democrat by his Senate colleagues. The Wall Street Journal once called him "the fourth branch of government." Upon his retirement in 1987, Long had a 75 percent approval rating among Louisiana voters.

Early life

Russell Billiu Long was born in 1918 in Shreveport, the son of attorney Huey Long and his wife Rose McConnell Long. He is of English and Irish descent. His father later became a politician, was elected Louisiana governor in 1928 and U.S. senator in 1930. Rose Long also served in the Senate after her husband was assassinated in 1935. The boy's unusual middle name was that of his mother's favorite cousin.
Long received his bachelor's degree from Louisiana State University and his law degree from Louisiana State University Law Center, both in the capital city of Baton Rouge. He was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. During his undergraduate years, he served as freshman class president, sophomore arts and sciences president, and lastly, student body president.
In June 1942, during World War II, Long entered the United States Navy Reserve and completed his service as a lieutenant in December 1945. He participated in the Allied invasions of Northern Africa, Sicily, Italy, and Southern France. He was awarded four battle stars for his service, including as commander of a landing craft transport vessel in the first-wave landing at Cavalaire-sur-Mer.

Senate career

Upon his return from the war, Long entered legal practice and served as executive counsel to his uncle, Earl Long, who returned to the governorship in 1948. He was elected in 1948 to fill the U.S. Senate vacancy created by the death of John Overton in office. Before the special election, the seat was briefly filled by the appointment of William Feazel. In winning election to the Senate, Long became the only person in U.S. history to be preceded in that chamber by both his father and his mother. He was elected on November 2, 1948, one day before his 30th birthday, and took office on December 31, thus meeting the Constitutional requirement that Senators be at least 30 years old upon taking office. Because he had filled a vacancy, Long gained a few days of seniority over others in the Senate class of 1948, including Lyndon B. Johnson and Hubert Humphrey, whose terms began January 3, 1949. Seniority determined chairmanships of committees.
From 1953 to 1987, Long was a member of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee; he served as its chairman for 15 years, from 1966 until 1981, when Republicans assumed control of the Senate and took over the chairmanships. Long served as President Lyndon B. Johnson's Senate floor leader, helping gain passage of the bills that enacted many of the Great Society programs, including the 1965 creation of Medicare. He served as the Democratic Assistant Majority Leader from 1965 to 1969. As the Democratic ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, he served alongside Republican chairman Bob Dole and was instrumental in the passage of the Tax Reform Act of 1986.
Long had an encyclopedic knowledge of the federal tax code. He realized that he could achieve his legislative goals most effectively by attaching his priorities as amendments to tax bills rather than sponsoring legislation under his name. With all federal revenue and forty percent of all government spending controlled by the Senate Finance Committee, Long exercised authority over all major revenue bills and entitlement programs, as well as foreign trade and tariffs. According to biographer Bob Mann, "For almost four decades, no single revenue measure passed through Congress without influence."

Legislative accomplishments

Long's legislative priorities balanced a desire to help the disadvantaged, while providing tax relief for the middle class and small businesses. He was particularly sensitive to the plight of the elderly poor, and his colleagues referred to Long's various aid proposals as his "grandma amendments."
In 1956, Long led the first major expansion of Social Security to include benefits for the disabled and, later, to their dependents. Long's success in maneuvering President Kennedy's major tax reduction bill forward in early 1964 confirmed his reputation as a rising leader.
Long created the Earned Income Tax Credit, the largest and most effective anti-poverty assistance program in the U.S., which reduces the tax burden on poor working families and rewards work in place of direct welfare payments. In 2016, the EITC lifted an estimate 6.5 million Americans out of poverty, including 3.3 million children. It is credited with reducing the severity of poverty for an additional 21.5 million families, including 7.7 million children. Especially crucial for low-income, single working mothers, the EITC increased lifetime average earnings for less-educated women by 17 percent, leading to long-term income growth in earnings and Social Security income. In 2019, the EITC boosted the incomes of 9 million women of color, who disproportionately benefit from the tax credit.
Long was the architect of employee stock ownership plans, employee benefit plans designed to allow employees to invest in the stock of their employers and share in the prosperity created by their work. To curb the growing influence of big money in politics, Long created the mechanism for public financing of presidential campaigns, allowing taxpayers to allocate $1 of taxes for a Presidential election fund. He also championed the Child Support Enforcement Act, requiring unmarried fathers to financially support their children.
During his time in the Senate, Long was a strong champion of certain tax breaks for businesses, once saying, "I have become convinced you're going to have to have capital if you're going to have capitalism." On the other hand, he was aware of some of the political ramifications of "tax reform," stating that it simply meant "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind the tree!"
Long was legendary for achieving his legislative priorities by attaching small, yet significant, amendments to tax bills. In 1966, at the request of former National Football League Commissioner Pete Rozelle, Long and Congressman Hale Boggs used their influence to pass legislation that allowed for the merger of the American Football League and the National Football League, a provision Long inserted into a tax bill. Without the legislation, the merger would have been prohibited by anti-trust laws governing monopolies. In exchange for ensuring the passage of the legislation, Long and Boggs requested that Rozelle award the next NFL expansion franchise to New Orleans. Rozelle complied, and Long and Boggs joined Rozelle in announcing on November 1, 1966 that New Orleans had obtained the New Orleans Saints.
In 1972, Long single-handedly created the United States District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana, comprising the nine parishes surrounding Baton Rouge. In a House-passed tax bill to allow a marine from Thibodaux, La., to keep an excess federal payment of $547 he received on active duty, Long added, "that Section 98 of Title 28 of the United States Code is amended as 'Louisiana is divided into three judicial districts to be known as the Eastern, Middle and Western Districts of Louisiana.'"

Elections

1948

To win the Senate seat vacated by the death of Democrat John Holmes Overton, Long first defeated Judge Robert F. Kennon of Minden in the Democratic primary, 264,143 to 253,668. The margin was 10,475 votes. Long overwhelmed Republican oilman Clem S. Clarke of Shreveport in the general election, gaining 306,337 votes to 102,339. Clarke had been the first Louisiana Republican U.S. Senate nominee in 1914, when the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was implemented for popular election of Senators. He carried Iberia, Caddo, Lafayette, and East Baton Rouge parishes. In 1948 Clarke had tried to get the courts to forbid Long from running on both the Harry Truman and Strom Thurmond slates in Louisiana, but he failed to convince the judges. Votes for Long from the Truman and Thurmond slates were counted.
Harvey Locke Carey of Shreveport was Long's campaign manager for northwest Louisiana. Later, he was the short-term U. S. Attorney for the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana.

1950

After being elected in 1948, Long never again faced a close contest for reelection. Because the 1948 election was for a two-year unexpired term, Long had to run again in 1950 for his first full six-year term. That year, he had no trouble defeating the intra-party challenge of Malcolm Lafargue. A great-nephew of the late Senator John Overton, Lafargue resigned as U.S. Attorney for the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana in Shreveport to make the Senate race. In an advertisement, Lafargue questioned how Long was the self-proclaimed "poor man's friend," because the incumbent "pretends to sneer at millionaires, but Long is a millionaire himself."
Mayor deLesseps Story Morrison of New Orleans formally endorsed Lafargue in the primary against Long, but this action was a smokescreen. Morrison had struck a deal with Governor Earl Long, that he would not oppose Russell Long for a full term in the Senate if the governor would agree to restoration of home rule for the City of New Orleans. At the time the city was virtually being governed by the state government in Baon Rouge. Although Morrison publicly endorsed Lafargue, he privately urged his followers to support Russell Long.
After winning the Democratic primary, Long overwhelmed his Republican opponent, Charles Sidney Gerth, a businessman from New Orleans. In 1948 he had run as a Democrat for senator against Long's colleague, Allen J. Ellender. In the 1950 general election, Long polled 220,907 to Gerth's 30,931.

1962

In 1962, Long defeated Philemon Andrews "Phil" St. Amant, a retired career United States Army lieutenant colonel from Baton Rouge, 407,162 votes to 100,843 votes in the Democratic primary. In 2016, St. Amant was listed by the Louisiana Secretary of State as a "No Party" voter.
Long trounced his Republican challenger Taylor W. O'Hearn, a Shreveport attorney and accountant, with 318,838 votes to O'Hearn's 103,066. Later O'Hearn was elected as state representative for Caddo Parish.

1963 and 1964 campaigns

Speculation persisted that Long would run for governor in the 1963 Democratic primary. He had received encouragement from "all the shades of factionalism in the state." Instead, he endorsed his cousin, Gillis W. Long, the U.S. representative from the since disbanded Eighth Congressional District based about Alexandria. At the time, Long was second to the aging Senator Harry F. Byrd, of Virginia on the Senate Finance Committee and had already presided as chairman during Byrd's prolonged absence because of failing health.
As a result of President Johnson's signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Long did not attend the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City. However, Long defied conventional wisdom by delivering a television address in Louisiana in which he strongly endorsed the Johnson-Humphrey ticket, which lost the state to the Republican Barry M. Goldwater-William E. Miller electors. The action had no consequence on Long's future, however, as Republicans declined to challenge his reelection in 1968, 1974, and 1980.

1968

In 1968, Long overpowered a primary rival, Maurice P. Blache Sr., to win renomination. He was unopposed in the general election when the presumed Republican candidate, Richard Kilbourne, the district attorney in East Feliciana Parish, withdrew from the race. Kilbourne abandoned his campaign so that his party could concentrate on trying to elect David C. Treen to represent Louisiana's 2nd congressional district over incumbent Democrat Hale Boggs.

1974

In the 1974 Democratic primary, Long defeated state Insurance Commissioner Sherman A. Bernard of Westwego in Jefferson Parish, 520,606 to 131,540. Another 44,341 ballots went to a third candidate, Annie Smart. Louisiana Republican state chairman James H. Boyce of Baton Rouge said that the party could not find a viable candidate to challenge Long.

1980

In 1980, Long defeated State Representative Woody Jenkins of Baton Rouge, 484,770 to 325,922 in the state's nonpartisan blanket primary. During the 1980 campaign, Long's friend and colleague, Robert J. "Bob" Dole, the Kansas Republican who had been his party's vice presidential nominee in 1976 and who would be the presidential nominee in 1996, made a television commercial for Long in the race against Jenkins. Dole and Long were both running for reelection that year. The 1980 primary was the last time Long's name was on a ballot. Jenkins had run against Johnston in 1978 and ran again in a disputed outcome against Mary Landrieu in 1996 for the seat Johnston vacated on retirement.
Jenkins won majorities in only four parishes, Rapides, La Salle, Iberia, and St. Tammany. When Jenkins claimed to have received 55 percent of the votes cast by whites, Long called the claim "racist." Long urged the media to investigate Jenkins' claim. He contended that his own research was in conflict with Jenkins' assertion.
Near the end of his last term in office, Long hired the young journalist Bob Mann as his press secretary. Mann, who now holds the Douglas Manship Chair of Journalism at LSU, later penned the 1992 book, Legacy to Power: Senator Russell B. Long of Louisiana.

Retirement

After he considered and rejected a run for governor of Louisiana, Long retired from the Senate in January 1987. Senator J. Bennett Johnston said of his colleague: "His absence will leave a huge void that's going to be very, very difficult to fill here in Washington." Edward J. Steimel, president of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, described Long as "very well regarded in the business community nationally."
Summing up his career in the Senate, President Ronald Reagan called him a "legend... one of the most skillful legislators, compromisers and legislative strategists in history."
In 1986, Democratic U.S. Representative John Breaux of Crowley, a former legislative aide and House successor of Governor Edwards, was elected to succeed Long in the Senate. Breaux defeated the Republican U.S. Representative Henson Moore of Baton Rouge. Moore had led the balloting in the nonpartisan blanket primary but lost the general election to Breaux in a nationally Democratic year.
Long remained in Washington, D.C., after his senatorial retirement as a highly sought-after lobbyist. For a brief period following his retirement, he was a partner in the law firm of Finley, Kumble, Wagner, Underberg, Manley, Myerson & Casey, which dissolved in 1987. He later founded the Long Law Firm, where he remained a partner until his death. Long served on the board of directors of the New York Stock Exchange, Lowe's Companies, Inc., and Metropolitan Life Insurance Company.
In 1996, he endorsed Mary Landrieu, the Democratic nominee, in the race to succeed retiring Senator J. Bennett Johnston. Coincidentally, Landrieu defeated the same Woody Jenkins, a Democrat-turned-Republican, whom Long had beaten in Long's last Senate race in 1980. Long was particularly critical of Jenkins' national sales tax proposal to supersede the federal income tax, a move which Long claim would benefit "the wealthy".

Political positions

Long was known as a political realist rather than an ideologue. Inspired by his father’s “Share Our Wealth” governing philosophy, he endorsed liberal social programs such as the New Deal, Fair Deal, New Frontier and Great Society. He supported more conservative positions in the areas of business policy, states’ rights and foreign policy. In labor relations, Long voted fifty percent of the time with the AFL-CIO position, and the National Chamber of Commerce reported that he supported the business position sixty-three percent of the time. Long was a formidable protector of Louisiana’s industries, particularly the oil and gas industry.
Long’s positions on race relations evolved over the course of his 38 year career. Despite his support for segregation in his early a career, Long received more than 90% of the African American vote in his seven elections to the Senate. He was frequently criticized for his moderate racial views by the White Citizens Council and Ku Klux Klan.
As a junior member of the Senate during the 1950s, Long joined his Southern colleagues with a segregationist voting record and signed the Southern Manifesto of 1956, a position he later repudiated as required by the white majority of voters at the time. Long described his hardline colleagues’ refusal to compromise “disastrous” and advocated gradualism toward desegregation, expressing his concern that moving too quickly would spark violence and divisions among the races while failing to practically improve the daily lives of African Americans.
In 1953, Long broke ranks with his Southern colleagues by supporting Hawaiian statehood which had been blocked for a quarter of a century by the "Solid South"'s refusal to accept the possibility of non-whites in Congress as well as the possibility of adding two pro-civil rights votes in the Senate.
Long opposed judicial intrusions into police power by the Warren Court. Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education 1954 decision, he proposed a constitutional amendment to limit Supreme Court justices to six or twelve-year terms.
Long became Assistant Majority Leader in 1965 and advanced in seniority to the chairmanship of the Senate Finance Committee the following year. He championed the economic interests of minorities, the poor and the elderly by steering the landmark social welfare legislation of President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and War on Poverty. During his fifteen-year tenure as Senate Finance Committee Chairman, Long exercised authority over all federal revenue collection and a vast array of entitlement spending. His most recognized achievements include the creation of Social Security benefits for the disabled and their dependents, Medicare and Medicaid, child support enforcement, Employee Stock Ownership Plans and the Earned Income Tax Credit, the centerpiece of American poverty alleviation efforts.
Long was one of only four southern senators to vote for the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, which included most of President Johnson’s anti-poverty programs. As Majority Whip, he guided through the Senate much of the Great Society legislation, including Medicare, the Appalachian Regional Development Act, the Economic Opportunity amendments, the Clean Water Act, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the Immigration and Nationality Act.
Long was the only southern senator who voted to outlaw the poll tax in both 1960 and 1965. To break the Congressional gridlock over voting rights, he urged President Kennedy and President Johnson to send federal registrars through the South to register black voters. Although he secured rare concessions in the Voting Rights Act of 1965, he ultimately voted against it but refused to join a filibuster against it. He confided in President Johnson that he “felt the bill should have passed and made applicable to Louisiana.” Long subsequently voted to expand and strengthen the Voting Rights Act in 1975 and 1982, which he co-sponsored.
In 1960, Long was the first Southern Senator in the twentieth century to hire black staff members. Long’s Senate office launched the careers of many trailblazing African Americans, including Kerry Pourciau, the first black student body president of LSU.
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. described Long’s 1965 election as the Assistant Majority Leader as a “blessing in disguise” in that he “may bring an end to the solid Southern bloc.” Following King’s assassination in 1968, Long reflected on his own father’s assassination, which he attributed to Huey Long’s repeal of the Louisiana poll tax shortly before his death, saying “I’ve tried to continue some of the work he started – to help the poor people of our state and nation, both colored and whites.” In 1983, Long supported the creation of the federal holiday to honor Martin Luther King, Jr.
Long supported the creation of the Senate Select Committee to investigate the 1972 presidential campaigns following the Watergate break-in. He co-chaired the special Congressional Committee on Internal Revenue Taxation that determined President Nixon owed nearly a half-million dollars in back taxes.
To combat the economic “stagflation” of the 1970s, Long guided President Ford’s 1974 Trade Reform Act and 1975 tax cut bill through Congress, which included the creation of the Earned Income Tax Credit and Employee Stock Ownership Plans.
Long opposed President Carter’s energy policies but supported Carter’s implementation of stimulus tax cuts, the creation of the Department of Energy and the Panama Canal Treaty. Long supported Carter’s 1979 loan guarantees to save the Chrysler Corporation from bankruptcy, which included a $175 million Employee Stock Ownership Plan for Chrysler’s workers.

Illness and death

At the time of his death in 2003 from heart failure, Russell Long was the last living former senator who had served in the 1940s. The funeral was held in Baton Rouge, and included eulogies delivered by his grandson, attorney Russell Long Mosely, and former colleagues Johnston and Breaux.

Family

In June 1939, Long married the former Katherine Mae Hattic. She predeceased her former husband by just over three months. Both Russell and Katherine Long are interred in Baton Rouge but in different sections of Roselawn Memorial Park and Mausoleum. The couple had two daughters, Rita Katherine and Pamela.
; the couple was married for thirty-four years until his death in 2003. Long himself is interred in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
After the Longs divorced in 1969, the senator married the former Carolyn Elizabeth Bason, a native of Yanceyville in Caswell County in northern North Carolina. Her father, Samuel Bason, was the long-term president of the Bank of Yanceyville and a Democratic member of the North Carolina State Senate during the 1940s and 1950s. Her mother, the former Martha Eliza "Mamie" Hatchett, was a homemaker. There were two other Bason children, William Hatchett Bason and Dorothy Helen Burke, both of whom predeceased Carolyn. A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Carolyn Bason worked for U.S. Senator Clyde Hoey and became personal secretary to Hoey's successor, Sam Ervin, a position which she held until her marriage to Russell Long on December 23, 1969. Ervin retired in 1974. Carolyn Long was active in many charitable and civic causes and historical preservation during her 34-year marriage to Russell Long. She resided at the time of her death at the age of ninety-two in Bethesda, Maryland. She is interred beside her parents and siblings at the Yanceyville Presbyterian Church Cemetery.
Long's brother, Palmer Reid Long Sr., of Shreveport, was named for two of his father's lawyers in the 1929 impeachment case. The Long children had learned to fold and mail campaign literature by the time they could walk. Palmer Long worked in the 1948 Senate campaign for his brother as well as the successful effort to return Earl Long to the governorship. Palmer Long attended Sewanee Military Academy in Tennessee and LSU in Baton Rouge and was a flight instructor in the United States Army Air Corps, forerunner of the Air Force during World War II. Married to the former Louene Dance, who preceded him in death by nine months, Palmer Long was also involved in the family's oil and natural gas business and shunned most other political participation beyond personal contributions.
Long had a sister, Rose Long "Dolly" McFarland, later of Boulder, Colorado.

In popular culture

Long and New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison were reported to be longtime personal and political friends. According to Garrison, Long voiced doubts to him about the thoroughness of the Warren Commission aboard an airplane flight back from Washington. He was portrayed by Walter Matthau as expressing skepticism of the Commission's findings regarding the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Oliver Stone's film JFK.
William C. Havard, Rudolf Heberle, and Perry H. Howard, in The Louisiana Election of 1960 noted that Russell Long as a US senator extended his family dynasty. "Russell Long represents a modified and tone-down version of Longism but retains a basic orientation toward the active use of governmental power as a means of adjusting social and economic imbalances among group interests."
In 1993, Russell Long was among the first thirteen inductees into the Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame in Winnfield, along with his father and his uncle, Earl Long.
The prestigious Russell B. Long Service Award is named in his honor. Among the recipients is the state legislator Ronnie Johns of Sulphur in Calcasieu Parish.
Dr. Bruce Gold and Ralph Newsome are alumni of the Senator Russell B. Long Foundation in Joseph Heller's 1979 novel, Good as Gold.