After the death of Huey Long, his political friends sought for control of the organization he had built. No one was able to consolidate support, so the organization higher-ups agreed to attempt to make a show of a united front to the public. They chose an obscure judge from New Orleans, Richard Leche, for a candidate for governor with Earl Long for name appeal as lieutenant governor on the ticket. In 1936, this ticket easily beat the opposition.
Richard Leche had remarked, "When I took the oath of office, I didn't take any vows of poverty. His administration was marked by personal scandal. In June 1939, Leche resigned as governor. Over $100 million of state funds had disappeared during Leche's administration.
Becoming governor, Earl Long stopped the disappearance of state funds but continued the deduct system his brother had initiated. The deduct system provided that state employees donate a percentage of their salary to the Long political machine.
The Leche administration had been a time of continuation of the construction of public works that Huey Long had started. But the state probably would not have benefited from this kind of construction, except it was paid for by the federal government through the Works Progress Administration. The state received tens of millions of dollars from the Roosevelt administration because Leche said he would support Roosevelt for re-election.
Reform candidates won the elections of 1940 and '44, but Earl Long was elected governor in 1948. Earl continued the traditional Long interests in welfare initiatives and asked the legislature to increase the sales tax. It was doubled. Vice taxes and severance taxes were also increased. With the increased revenue, the state continued old age pensions, expanded the school lunch program, increased teacher salaries (black teachers now received the same as whites.) Construction of schools, hospitals, and roads was carried out as it had been under his brother, Huey Long.
Earl Long sought to dominate state agencies as his brother had and repealed a civil service system that had been instituted so that he could use state jobs as patronage as his brother had. The public fought back. Few were ready to return to the politics of the Huey Long days, so Earl Long had to back off fro some of his political plans to consolidate power in the same manner that his brother had.
And the end of the Leche/Long administration in 1940, the reform movement in Louisiana was able to win the governor's mansion. It was hard to find a politician with name recognition in the state who had never been a part in anything scandalous, so the reform movement settled on a little known attorney from Lakes Charles names Sam Jones. Jones was elected over Earl Long and instituted major civil service reforms. The deduct system was abolished, as was the practice of allowing a person to hold more than one job. Nepotism was ended and voter registration rolls were opened for public inspection. Modern budgeting and accounting procedures were introduced to the state government.
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