Blanche Long
Encyclopedia
Blanche Beulah Revere Long (December 17, 1902–May 11, 1998) was the first lady of Louisiana
from 1939–1940, 1948–1952, and 1956-1960. She was also a "partner in power" to her husband, Governor Earl Kemp Long. From 1956-1963, she was the Democratic
national committeewoman from Louisiana. Thereafter, in 1963-1964, she was the campaign manager of Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Julian McKeithen
, the presumed heir to Earl Long.
Mrs. Long was born in Covington
in St. Tammany Parish, across Lake Pontchartrain
from New Orleans, to Robert H. Revere and the former Beulah Talley. The Reveres were a lower middle class
family, and Blanche was a public stenographer at the Monteleone Hotel in New Orleans. She married Earl Long on August 17, 1932; they had no children. Mrs. Long was protective of her several sisters and her only brother—she helped him to obtain and maintain state employment in Baton Rouge.
In his Peapatch Politics: The Earl Long Era in Louisiana Politics, Dodd, a keen observer of state political developments, declared "Miss Blanche," as most addressed her, "a major factor in Governor Earl Long's political life. . . . Miss Blanche knew as much about the mechanics of politics as her husband. In many ways she complemented Earl's qualities; together they made a unique political team. Miss Blanche, a better judge of people, recognized con artists and phonies more quickly than Earl. She also handled them better. . . . She saved Earl from many mistaken appraisals of people and subsequent errors in the treatment of them. Miss Blanche was motivated by as strong a desire to become the first lady of Louisiana as Earl was to become its governor."
Dodd found that Mrs. Long had "influence on Earl Long that he didn't recognize. She knew how to get him to do what she wanted. Sometimes Earl would just let her have her way to shut her up. But she was a power in his administration, and every appointee and favor-seeking person soon learned that and acted accordingly. I tried to stay in her good graces, but she chose her political friends, and I never got on her favored list.
"She was not highly educated, nor was she a philosophical thinker. She looked at problems as an engineer or a lawyer would, usually solving them correctly, but always in her and Earl's favor. She wasn't solid oak or mahogany, but her veneer was stain smooth, double thick, and never cracked, even under the most extreme stress".
Dodd said that he was never on Mrs. Long's "favored list" because he had gubernatorial ambitions of his own, and Earl and Blanche Long did not want another potential governor to come from their own faction. Earl Long felt that he would gain nothing if one of his weaker lieutenants were to be elected governor: he always wanted to head the Long faction, both as governor and as former governor in waiting.
Later that year, Long gave a speech defending the right of blacks to register to vote. Coincidentally, at that time, Mrs. Long had her husband committed to the John Sealy Mental Hospital in Galveston, Texas
, for an alleged mental breakdown. Perhaps, she feared that Earl would have harmed her when he was in an agitated state. Dodd says that Blanche "conspired" with Senator Russell B. Long
, Earl's nephew, and Dr. Arthur Long, a cousin, to have Earl Long committed. Television cameras showed Long being taken to the institution amid his hurling of profanities. He was quickly released because there was deemed no mental breakdown but sensational political actions on the part of the governor. Time magazine reported that to obtain his release, Earl Long promised Blanche that he "would submit to psychiatric treatment in New Orleans, actually the state mental hospital in Mandeville
. When Jesse Bankston
, the director of the Department of Hospitals, refused to release Long from the Mandeville facility, Long had Bankston, a loyal member of the administration, dismissed. Bankston and Mrs. Long professed concern about Long's loss of weight and feared for his weak heart, for he had a major heart attack in late 1950.
Earl and Blanche Long separated after the mental hospital incident, and there was no reconciliation prior to his death in September 1960.
In May 1960, outgoing Governor Long attended the inauguration of his successor, Jimmie Davis
, in the company of a 23-year-old stripper and burlesque dancer named Blaze Starr
, whom he had first met in 1958. Apparently, Mrs. Long believed that the mental hospital confinement would compel Earl to recognize his troubles and cause him to end his affair with Starr. Dodd, however, discounts the importance of Starr in Long's last months of life and was particularly critical of the 1989 film Blaze, which he dismissed as "fiction."
Dodd also relates in his memoirs that Long accused Blanche of hiring the prominent Baton Rouge attorney Theodore F. "Theo" Cangelosi
to represent her in a separation suit against Earl Long. Cangelosi was a state legislator from 1940–1944, having served with Dodd in the Louisiana House. "He [Earl Long] cussed Theo and then bragged on how smart and slick Theo was and how he could suck up $100 bills like an anteater takes his dinner. He even accused his wife of having an affair with Theo and then said he didn't mean it, for she could do better and besides that the long-footed (He had very long feet.) Cangelosi had fifteen or twenty children, and Miss Blanche didn't like children. And Earl raved and talked bad for a few minutes, he got sweet again and signed off by wishing Miss Blanche well and promising to beat the hell out of Harold [B.] McSween [in the pending congressional campaign]."
Cangelosi in fact tried to get Earl and Blanche reconciled, but the clock ran out on Earl Long. Dodd called Cangelosi "one of the finest gentlemen and ablest lawyers in Louisiana."
for renomination. In a hard-fought runoff election, Long defeated McSween though he had trailed him in the first primary. It was a pyrrhic victory, for Long was dead a few days later, and the Democratic State Central Committee returned McSween to the ballot as the unopposed Democratic nominee in the general election
. In a way, one may say that the committee nullified the results of Long's last campaign.
Dodd was the only one of Earl Long's former lieutenants who came into the Eighth District to help him to campaign. He was deserted by both Russell Long and AFL-CIO President Victor Bussie
. Dodd said that he came to Earl's pleas for aid despite the wishes of Mrs. Dodd and Dodd's law partners. Moreover, Dodd himself was challenging incumbent Merle Welsh for the Baton Rouge-based Sixth Congressional District seat on the Louisiana Board of Education in that same primary. Dodd said that he called Mrs. Long to inform her of his intentions to assist Earl, and she thanked him for helping her husband. Dodd said that Earl Long was fighting the "banking interests, the corporations, the normal anti-Long people, and all the big news media, fighting with hardly any money and no statewide politicians to help him." Dodd was also able to demonstrate to Long that he was loyal, whereas "disloyal" Earl Long had opposed Dodd's two bids for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination—1952 and 1959.
Dodd recalls in his memoirs that he once placed a call to Blanche at Earl's request in which Blanche "spoke very kindly about Earl and said she knew he was sick and fighting for both his physical and political life. She said [that] she had asked some of their old friends in New Orleans and elsewhere to send Earl some campaign money, and she sort of apologized for not being able to help personally. Before Earl took over the phone, she thanked me for helping him and for being the only one of his old lieutenants to come to his aid."
Moreover, according to Dodd, Long never intended to serve in Congress beyond two terms, for he was planning to enter the 1963 Democratic primary for governor. His death of course led Blanche Long to support McKeithen as her Long factional candidate for governor. The estranged Russell Long, however, endorsed a second "Long" candidate, the more liberal Congressman Gillis William Long
, who was ridiculed by some critics as "Silly Gilly."
to deliver speeches extolling McKeithen and excoriating his chief Democratic foe, former New Orleans Mayor deLesseps Story Morrison, Sr. Mrs. Long proved successful in getting the governorship for McKeithen, whom she had known since 1948, when he came to Baton Rouge as a young legislator from Caldwell Parish. In 1951-1952, the Longs had attempted unsuccessfully to get McKeithen elected lieutenant governor. He lost in the primary runoff to C. E. "Cap" Barham of Ruston
in Lincoln Parish.
After his election, McKeithen named Mrs. Long to a state job on the Tax Commission. Dodd said that she handled the position very well.
in Jefferson Parish at the time of her death at the age of ninety-five. She was a Methodist, while her husband was baptized into the First Baptist Church of Baton Rouge when he was sixty years of age. He is buried in the Earl K. Long Memorial in Winnfield. She is buried in Lake Lawn Cemetery in Metairie.
Bill Dodd, who was seven years Mrs. Long's junior and died seven years before she did, summed up her career in his memoirs: "What she thought about governmental philosophies or forms, I do not know. But she understood and practiced practical politics better than any man I've ever known, except her husband, Earl Long."
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
from 1939–1940, 1948–1952, and 1956-1960. She was also a "partner in power" to her husband, Governor Earl Kemp Long. From 1956-1963, she was the Democratic
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
national committeewoman from Louisiana. Thereafter, in 1963-1964, she was the campaign manager of Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Julian McKeithen
John McKeithen
John Julian McKeithen was the 49th Governor of Louisiana, serving from 1964 to 1972. A Democrat from the town of Columbia, he was the first governor of his state in the twentieth century to serve two consecutive terms...
, the presumed heir to Earl Long.
Mrs. Long was born in Covington
Covington, Louisiana
Covington is a city in and the parish seat of St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, United States. The population was 8,483 at the 2000 census. It is located at a fork of the Bogue Falaya and the Tchefuncte River....
in St. Tammany Parish, across Lake Pontchartrain
Lake Pontchartrain
Lake Pontchartrain is a brackish estuary located in southeastern Louisiana. It is the second-largest inland saltwater body of water in the United States, after the Great Salt Lake in Utah, and the largest lake in Louisiana. As an estuary, Pontchartrain is not a true lake.It covers an area of with...
from New Orleans, to Robert H. Revere and the former Beulah Talley. The Reveres were a lower middle class
Lower middle class
In developed nations across the world, the lower middle class is a sub-division of the greater middle class. Universally the term refers to the group of middle class households or individuals who have not attained the status of the upper middle class associated with the higher realms of the middle...
family, and Blanche was a public stenographer at the Monteleone Hotel in New Orleans. She married Earl Long on August 17, 1932; they had no children. Mrs. Long was protective of her several sisters and her only brother—she helped him to obtain and maintain state employment in Baton Rouge.
Blanche Long's political persona
According to former Lieutenant Governor and Superintendent of Education William J. "Bill" Dodd (1909–1991), Blanche Revere was "in her young years a true beauty. And she was just as intelligent as she was good-looking. In her political days, her personality came across as either soft and sweet or blue steel and cold, depending not so much on how she felt, but on what the situation demanded."In his Peapatch Politics: The Earl Long Era in Louisiana Politics, Dodd, a keen observer of state political developments, declared "Miss Blanche," as most addressed her, "a major factor in Governor Earl Long's political life. . . . Miss Blanche knew as much about the mechanics of politics as her husband. In many ways she complemented Earl's qualities; together they made a unique political team. Miss Blanche, a better judge of people, recognized con artists and phonies more quickly than Earl. She also handled them better. . . . She saved Earl from many mistaken appraisals of people and subsequent errors in the treatment of them. Miss Blanche was motivated by as strong a desire to become the first lady of Louisiana as Earl was to become its governor."
Dodd found that Mrs. Long had "influence on Earl Long that he didn't recognize. She knew how to get him to do what she wanted. Sometimes Earl would just let her have her way to shut her up. But she was a power in his administration, and every appointee and favor-seeking person soon learned that and acted accordingly. I tried to stay in her good graces, but she chose her political friends, and I never got on her favored list.
"She was not highly educated, nor was she a philosophical thinker. She looked at problems as an engineer or a lawyer would, usually solving them correctly, but always in her and Earl's favor. She wasn't solid oak or mahogany, but her veneer was stain smooth, double thick, and never cracked, even under the most extreme stress".
Managing the 1948 gubernatorial campaign
In the 1947-1948 Earl Long gubernatorial comeback, when Dodd was seeking the lieutenant governorship, Blanche Long ran the state campaign headquarters from the Higgins Building in New Orleans. Dodd said that she "kept about 100 volunteer workers happily and effectively working twelve to sixteen hours a day. They got their literature out, arranged for millions of cards and circulars to be printed and mailed, and took care of our speaking dates out in the state and on radio. No business was ever operated more smoothly or effectively than Miss Blanche ran Earl's campaign headquarters. The workers and the public loved her and worked for her."Dodd said that he was never on Mrs. Long's "favored list" because he had gubernatorial ambitions of his own, and Earl and Blanche Long did not want another potential governor to come from their own faction. Earl Long felt that he would gain nothing if one of his weaker lieutenants were to be elected governor: he always wanted to head the Long faction, both as governor and as former governor in waiting.
The terrible fight with Earl
In 1959, Mrs. Long angered her husband, when she purchased land near the little-known Hot Wells resort in northern Rapides Parish. Moreover, she built a mansion on Capitol Lake in Baton Rouge right behind the new governor's mansion, which the pair would vacate in 1960 because Earl Long was again term-limited by the Louisiana constitution, a restriction which John McKeithen got changed in 1966 through his "Amendment 1." Earl Long was furious that Blanche bought the properties without telling him, and he also feared outrage from some of his supporters who did not know that the Longs were wealthy enough to purchase such properties.Later that year, Long gave a speech defending the right of blacks to register to vote. Coincidentally, at that time, Mrs. Long had her husband committed to the John Sealy Mental Hospital in Galveston, Texas
Galveston, Texas
Galveston is a coastal city located on Galveston Island in the U.S. state of Texas. , the city had a total population of 47,743 within an area of...
, for an alleged mental breakdown. Perhaps, she feared that Earl would have harmed her when he was in an agitated state. Dodd says that Blanche "conspired" with Senator Russell B. Long
Russell B. Long
Russell Billiu Long was an American Democratic politician and United States Senator from Louisiana from 1948 until 1987.-Early life:...
, Earl's nephew, and Dr. Arthur Long, a cousin, to have Earl Long committed. Television cameras showed Long being taken to the institution amid his hurling of profanities. He was quickly released because there was deemed no mental breakdown but sensational political actions on the part of the governor. Time magazine reported that to obtain his release, Earl Long promised Blanche that he "would submit to psychiatric treatment in New Orleans, actually the state mental hospital in Mandeville
Mandeville, Louisiana
Mandeville is a city in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, United States. The population was 12,421 in 2008. Mandeville is located on the North Shore of Lake Pontchartrain, south of Interstate 12. It is across the lake from the city of New Orleans and its southshore suburbs...
. When Jesse Bankston
Jesse Bankston
Jesse Homer Bankston, Sr. was a politician within the Democratic Party of Louisiana, a businessman, and, at his death at the age of 103, a member of the board of Louisiana Public Broadcasting...
, the director of the Department of Hospitals, refused to release Long from the Mandeville facility, Long had Bankston, a loyal member of the administration, dismissed. Bankston and Mrs. Long professed concern about Long's loss of weight and feared for his weak heart, for he had a major heart attack in late 1950.
Earl and Blanche Long separated after the mental hospital incident, and there was no reconciliation prior to his death in September 1960.
In May 1960, outgoing Governor Long attended the inauguration of his successor, Jimmie Davis
Jimmie Davis
James Houston Davis , better known as Jimmie Davis, was a noted singer of both sacred and popular songs who served two nonconsecutive terms as the 47th Governor of Louisiana...
, in the company of a 23-year-old stripper and burlesque dancer named Blaze Starr
Blaze Starr
Blaze Starr is an American former stripper and American burlesque star. Her vivacious presence and inventive use of stage props earned her the nickname "The Hottest Blaze in Burlesque"...
, whom he had first met in 1958. Apparently, Mrs. Long believed that the mental hospital confinement would compel Earl to recognize his troubles and cause him to end his affair with Starr. Dodd, however, discounts the importance of Starr in Long's last months of life and was particularly critical of the 1989 film Blaze, which he dismissed as "fiction."
Dodd also relates in his memoirs that Long accused Blanche of hiring the prominent Baton Rouge attorney Theodore F. "Theo" Cangelosi
Theo Cangelosi
Theodore F. "Theo" Cangelosi was a Baton Rouge attorney, banker, businessman, a former Democratic member of the Louisiana House of Representatives, and a confidant of Governors Earl Kemp Long and John J. McKeithen....
to represent her in a separation suit against Earl Long. Cangelosi was a state legislator from 1940–1944, having served with Dodd in the Louisiana House. "He [Earl Long] cussed Theo and then bragged on how smart and slick Theo was and how he could suck up $100 bills like an anteater takes his dinner. He even accused his wife of having an affair with Theo and then said he didn't mean it, for she could do better and besides that the long-footed (He had very long feet.) Cangelosi had fifteen or twenty children, and Miss Blanche didn't like children. And Earl raved and talked bad for a few minutes, he got sweet again and signed off by wishing Miss Blanche well and promising to beat the hell out of Harold [B.] McSween [in the pending congressional campaign]."
Cangelosi in fact tried to get Earl and Blanche reconciled, but the clock ran out on Earl Long. Dodd called Cangelosi "one of the finest gentlemen and ablest lawyers in Louisiana."
The 1960 congressional race
After he left the governorship in 1960, Earl Long decided to challenge freshman Eighth District Congressman McSween of AlexandriaAlexandria, Louisiana
Alexandria is a city in and the parish seat of Rapides Parish, Louisiana, United States. It lies on the south bank of the Red River in almost the exact geographic center of the state. It is the principal city of the Alexandria metropolitan area which encompasses all of Rapides and Grant parishes....
for renomination. In a hard-fought runoff election, Long defeated McSween though he had trailed him in the first primary. It was a pyrrhic victory, for Long was dead a few days later, and the Democratic State Central Committee returned McSween to the ballot as the unopposed Democratic nominee in the general election
General election
In a parliamentary political system, a general election is an election in which all or most members of a given political body are chosen. The term is usually used to refer to elections held for a nation's primary legislative body, as distinguished from by-elections and local elections.The term...
. In a way, one may say that the committee nullified the results of Long's last campaign.
Dodd was the only one of Earl Long's former lieutenants who came into the Eighth District to help him to campaign. He was deserted by both Russell Long and AFL-CIO President Victor Bussie
Victor Bussie
Victor V. Bussie was until his retirement in 1997 the 41-year unopposed president of the Louisiana AFL-CIO, having first assumed the mantle of union leadership in 1956. Journalists often described him as the most significant non-elected "official" in his state's politics...
. Dodd said that he came to Earl's pleas for aid despite the wishes of Mrs. Dodd and Dodd's law partners. Moreover, Dodd himself was challenging incumbent Merle Welsh for the Baton Rouge-based Sixth Congressional District seat on the Louisiana Board of Education in that same primary. Dodd said that he called Mrs. Long to inform her of his intentions to assist Earl, and she thanked him for helping her husband. Dodd said that Earl Long was fighting the "banking interests, the corporations, the normal anti-Long people, and all the big news media, fighting with hardly any money and no statewide politicians to help him." Dodd was also able to demonstrate to Long that he was loyal, whereas "disloyal" Earl Long had opposed Dodd's two bids for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination—1952 and 1959.
Dodd recalls in his memoirs that he once placed a call to Blanche at Earl's request in which Blanche "spoke very kindly about Earl and said she knew he was sick and fighting for both his physical and political life. She said [that] she had asked some of their old friends in New Orleans and elsewhere to send Earl some campaign money, and she sort of apologized for not being able to help personally. Before Earl took over the phone, she thanked me for helping him and for being the only one of his old lieutenants to come to his aid."
Moreover, according to Dodd, Long never intended to serve in Congress beyond two terms, for he was planning to enter the 1963 Democratic primary for governor. His death of course led Blanche Long to support McKeithen as her Long factional candidate for governor. The estranged Russell Long, however, endorsed a second "Long" candidate, the more liberal Congressman Gillis William Long
Gillis William Long
Gillis William Long was a Democratic U.S. Representative from Louisiana and member of the Long family. Long served seven non-consecutive terms in the United States House of Representatives but placed third in two campaigns for the Democratic gubernatorial nominations in 1963 and 1971...
, who was ridiculed by some critics as "Silly Gilly."
Managing the 1964 gubernatorial campaign
John McKeithen chose Blanche Long as his campaign manager, not out of sentiment for the deceased Earl Long but because Mrs. Long had real experience from earlier Long campaigns. In the McKeithen campaign, Blanche Long recruited an old friend, Mary Evelyn Dickerson ParkerMary Evelyn Parker
Mary Evelyn Dickerson Parker is a former Democratic state treasurer of Louisiana, having served from 1968-1987. She was the first woman to have held the position. Prior to her tenure as treasurer, she held several appointed positions in state government...
to deliver speeches extolling McKeithen and excoriating his chief Democratic foe, former New Orleans Mayor deLesseps Story Morrison, Sr. Mrs. Long proved successful in getting the governorship for McKeithen, whom she had known since 1948, when he came to Baton Rouge as a young legislator from Caldwell Parish. In 1951-1952, the Longs had attempted unsuccessfully to get McKeithen elected lieutenant governor. He lost in the primary runoff to C. E. "Cap" Barham of Ruston
Ruston, Louisiana
Ruston is a city in and the parish seat of Lincoln Parish, Louisiana, United States. The population was 20,546 at the 2000 census. Ruston is near the eastern border of the Ark-La-Tex and is the home of Louisiana Tech University. Its economy caters to its college population...
in Lincoln Parish.
After his election, McKeithen named Mrs. Long to a state job on the Tax Commission. Dodd said that she handled the position very well.
A $163,000 mistake?
Dodd said that Blanche Long erred badly in how she handled two Long supporters, Frank and Ruth Matthews. She forced the Matthewses to "repay" $163,000 to her. This was compensation for funds that Earl Long had left with them for "safekeeping." Dodd took the view that the Matthewses had repaid Earl the money during the congressional campaign but could find no receipt to present to Mrs. Long. Mrs. Long, however, had the original "IOU" from the Matthewses. Dodd said he was convinced that the $163,000 was paid twice.Blanche Long's legacy
Mrs. Long was living in MetairieMetairie, Louisiana
Metairie is a census-designated place in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, United States and is a major part of the New Orleans Metropolitan Area. Metairie is the largest community in Jefferson Parish. It is an unincorporated area that would be larger than most of the state's cities if it were...
in Jefferson Parish at the time of her death at the age of ninety-five. She was a Methodist, while her husband was baptized into the First Baptist Church of Baton Rouge when he was sixty years of age. He is buried in the Earl K. Long Memorial in Winnfield. She is buried in Lake Lawn Cemetery in Metairie.
Bill Dodd, who was seven years Mrs. Long's junior and died seven years before she did, summed up her career in his memoirs: "What she thought about governmental philosophies or forms, I do not know. But she understood and practiced practical politics better than any man I've ever known, except her husband, Earl Long."