It didn't take long for Huey Long had decided that he was ready for greater things than his post on the Railroad Commission offered, and on his 30th birthday, the flamboyant populist announced that he was a candidate for governor. It was an ill-fated venture. An August 1966 article in American Heritage magazine described Long's first defeat this way: "It rained hard on the day of the Democratic primary in 1924. When the first rural ballot box was opened, the vote was 60 to 1 for Long."
Despite the lopsided results, Long, with his native political savvy and his grasp of electoral arithmetic, knew at once that had been defeated. "There should have been one hundred for me and one against. Forty percent of my country vote is lost in that box," he is reported to have said.
He had made a decent showing, coming in third statewide in the primary, which in the politics of Louisiana at the time was the only election that truly mattered.
The next time, however, he made up for the loss. In 1926, he had thrown his support behind U.S. Sen. Edwin Boussard, and when Broussard eked out a narrow victory, Long ostentatiously claimed credit for the win. He used that claim to fan the flames of his popular support, to rally his money men, and most importantly, perhaps, to reinvigorate his old friends in the "courthouse rings," and when the 1928 gubernatorial election campaign began, Long was ready. In the first primary of the season, Long took almost 44 percent of the vote, and though that alone was not enough to avoid a runoff and guarantee him the Democratic nomination, and in effect, the governorship, Long eventually managed to force his runoff opponent to withdraw from the race.
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| U.S. Sen. Edwin Boussard |
Long had managed to steamroll over his opposition, and in 1928, when he was not yet 35, Huey Long became the youngest governor in Louisiana's history.
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