Revolting Parishes

To add a new character to his political puppet show, Louisiana's Huey Pierce ("Kingfish") Long went up to Arkansas last year, stumped the State with a motorcade and sound truck, elected Hattie Caraway to the Senate seat of her late husband. Wild was the uproar of outraged Louisianans last week when button-nosed, pugnacious Senator Long set out to ride Lallie Conner Kemp into Congress on his ruthless machine.

Representative Bolivar Kemp of the 6th Louisiana District died in June. In accordance with unwritten Congressional custom, Widow Lallie Kemp was endorsed by the Long faction to succeed him. Four other candidates also prepared to enter the primary to win a Democratic nomination which in Louisiana is the same thing as an election. Suddenly last fortnight, Governor Oscar Kelly Allen, a Longster, called a special election, to be held eight days after his proclamation. He boldly named Widow Kemp as "the unopposed Democratic nominee because there will not be time to hold a primary." At this latest piece of the "Kingfish's" political audacity, the 6th District was hopping mad. At mass meetings voters shouted "Hitlerism!", screamed that Messrs. Long and Allen should be lynched.

Of the twelve parishes in the election district, balloting was held only in nine last week. Injunctions prevented voting in the rest. In Livingston parish, masked men seized ballots at Centerville, burned them. In nine precincts of West Feliciana and Washington parishes, citizens marched to the polls, seized ballot boxes borrowed from New Orleans, dumped their contents into the street, set them afire. At St. Francisville seven boxes were emptied and spiked on the courthouse fence.

Tangipahoa parishioners showed more invention. Only "ballot box'' they provided was a garbage can on Hammond's main street, labeled "Vote here if you want to." On a gallows in the Hammond town square they hanged a two-faced effigy. One face was that of the local Longster, Judge Amos Lee Ponder Jr. The other had a black eye and was labeled: LONG ISLAND HUEY LONG, Every Dog Has His Day. When the sun set on the revolting parishes, Mrs. Kemp had received 5,000 votes. Normal vote: 45,000.

Mrs. Kemp, fiftyish, mother of two children, herself daughter of one of the first families of Tangipahoa Parish, a woman who had never put her hand into political mud, looked on with dismay at the whole scandalous proceeding. Then she took a hand herself, offered to resign as Congresswoman to stand for nomination in regular primaries if her opponents would abandon their plan to hold a "citizens' election." To the Kingfish, sitting in his New Orleans hotel room surrounded by bodyguards, the news of her offer was a severe jolt.

Outcome of the mix-up will be an election contest before the House of Representatives. In Washington Speaker Rainey declared that if any other candidate were elected in a second election, that candidate could not obtain any election certificate which would be lawful. He promised that Mrs. Kemp would go on the payroll as soon as her election certificate was presented. But if, as seems certain, some Congressman objects to her taking the oath when Congress meets, the House will decide the contest. "I shall go to Washington," said Mrs. Kemp, "and present my own case in the contest. I proclaim my independence in thought and actions of all factions."

The 34th Congressional District of New York is just as Republican as the 6th Louisiana is Democratic. Last week it was far more placid as another Congressional widow, Mrs. Marian Clarke, was nominated by Republicans to take her late husband's place in the House. So certain was she of election on Dec. 28 that she was already packing to go to Washington.

Week before, another dead Congressman's shoes were filled in the 3rd West Virginia District where Republicans and Democrats are almost equally divided. Democratic candidate to succeed the late Democrat Lynn Sedwick Homer was Col. Andrew Edmiston Jr. Colonel Edmiston, a popular publisher of Weston, was once Democratic state chairman. He spent his boyhood in Washington, went to Friends School with Archie Roosevelt. Some years later they met each other again, across hospital beds in France.

No political straw man was Colonel Edmiston's opponent: Howard Mason Gore, onetime (1925-29) Governor of the State and for four months (in 1924-25) President Coolidge's Secretary of Agriculture. When the votes were counted, Candidate Edmiston had won handily by 6,000.

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