Gerald Long

Gerald Long (born July 9, 1944), is a rare Republican member of the traditionally Democratic Long political dynasty in the U.S. state of Louisiana. Specifically, he is a third cousin of the late Governors Huey Pierce Long, Jr., and Earl Kemp Long.^[1]

Long was elected on October 20, 2007, to the Louisiana State Senate District 31, which includes Grant and Natchitoches parishes and parts of Rapides, Red River, Sabine, and Winn parishes in the north central portion and western portion of the state. Long and former State Representative Rick Nowlin are the first two Republicans since Reconstruction to represent Natchitoches Parish in the Louisiana legislature. Nowlin was subsequently defeated in a revised districting plan in 2011 but rebounded the next year as the first elected president of Natchitoches Parish.

After he won his third Senate term in 2015 without opposition, Long's colleagues elected him as Louisiana State Senate President Pro Tempore.^[2]

Long political dynasty

Gerald Long is the only Long family member holding high office in Louisiana. Most Longites remained in the Democratic Party over the years. Another exception was the late Secretary of State W. Fox McKeithen, who switched parties and won four statewide elections as a Republican. Fox McKeithen's father, the late Governor John McKeithen, was a leading Long figure in the 1960s and 1970s, but the McKeithens were not relatives of the Longs.

Long and his twin brother, Carroll Long, were the last of eight sons born to Reuben Ray Long (1900–1966) and the former Ruby Smith (1906–1984). Ruby Smith's brother, P.K. Smith, later an automobile dealer in Winnfield, was a member of the Louisiana House from Winn Parish from 1960 to 1964. P.K. Smith's son, Mike Smith, served twelve years in the Louisiana State Senate as a Democrat from 1996 to 2008. Term-limited, Mike Smith preceded his cousin, Gerald Long, in the state Senate.

Reuben Long was originally a Winn Parish sharecropper. Long's paternal grandparents were Thomas Jefferson Long (1861–1948) and the former Mary Ella Wright (1864–1902). Gillis William Long, a former U.S. representative of Louisiana's 8th congressional district, since disbanded, was also a paternal grandson of Thomas Jefferson Long and hence Gerald Long's first cousin. An older brother of Gerald Long, Jimmy D. Long, served in the Louisiana House of Representatives from 1968 to 2000 as a Democrat from Natchitoches. In that capacity, Jimmy Long became known as a leading legislative authority on education, an area which would also become important in Gerald Long's career as an educator and a motivational speaker. Another brother is Dr. William Jackson "Bill" Long (born 1940), a former planning commission executive in Alexandria, the seat of Rapides Parish, who was the publisher of "The Louisiana Business Journal" and a former weekly newspaper in Pineville known as the Red River Journal. Bill Long also owned Sunbelt Research Corporation. He ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor in 1983. Gerald Long was a distant cousin of former Pineville Mayor Floyd W. Smith, Jr. (1932–2010), whose mother was a Long. Floyd Smith spent his later years near his native Winnfield in Winn Parish.^[3]

Though he is often cited as a resident of Winnfield, Gerald Long is listed to vote in Natchitoches Parish, according to the office of Louisiana Secretary of State Tom Schedler.^[4]

Education, work history

Like his brothers, Long was educated in the Winn Parish public schools. In 1962, he graduated from Winnfield Senior High School and entered Northwestern State University in Natchitoches on a football scholarship. He obtained his Bachelor of Science degree in education in 1966, the year that his father died. For the next four years, Long (1) taught at Houma Junior High School at Houma in Terrebonne Parish in south Louisiana and (2) taught and coached at Leesville High School in Leesville, the seat of Vernon Parish in western Louisiana.^[5]

Long left teaching to become an insurance agent, a representative of the State Farm Company. He is a lifetime member of the President’s Club, which is earned by fewer than 2 percent of insurance agents nationally. While in the insurance business, Long was for nine years a volunteer for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes at Northwestern State University. FCA, a national organization devoted to college, high school and junior-high students, attempts to instill moral and spiritual values in young people to prepare them for their future. In July 1999, Long retired from business to serve full-time as the FCA representative for Rapides, Grant, Winn, Natchitoches, Sabine, and five other parishes.^[5]

In the summer of 1966, Long married the former Rose Landry. The couple has three grown children, Andrea Phillips, Pamela Jordan, and Richard Gerald Long (born 1976). They also had eight grandsons as of November 2007.

Long has spoken before schools, civic organizations, churches, and senior citizens organizations. He has also been an interim Baptist pastor for four churches in the Natchitoches area. He is considered both a fiscal and social conservative.^[6]

Election to the state senate

In the 2007 campaign, Long defeated the Democratic State Representative Thomas Taylor Townsend, a nephew and law partner of former State Senator Donald G. Kelly of Natchitoches. Townsend had unseated Jimmy Long in the 1999 nonpartisan blanket primary for the Louisiana House. Townsend, who ran to the political "left" of Long, did not seek a third term in the House but instead sought the open Senate seat vacated by his cousin, Mike Smith, a businessman in Winnfield.^[7] Long procured 20,609 votes (54 percent) to Townsend's 17,699 (46 percent). Long won five of the six parishes in the district, having lost only in Natchitoches, the home of both candidates. He even won in Red River Parish, one of only two north Louisiana parishes that did not support the successful Republican gubernatorial candidate, Bobby Jindal, in the October 20 primary.^[8]

Potential gubernatorial bid

Long was elected without opposition in 2011 to a second term in the state Senate. In May 2012, he indicated in an interview with The Piney Woods Journal in Winnfield that he is considering a gubernatorial bid of his own in 2015, when Jindal will be prohibited from seeking a third consecutive term. However, he never sought the governorship. In that interview Long criticized a bill submitted by then State Senator Elbert Guillory, an Opelousas Democrat, who later switched parties, which would freeze cost of living adjustments to state retirees until an overhaul of the pension system is established. Long, a member of the Senate Retirement Committee said that the Guillory plan is "a really bad bill" and if implemented could mean that retirees might never obtain a COLA.^[9]

In 2013, Long introduced legislation to provide tax incentives to encourage the younger generation of farm families and loggers to remain in business after their parents reach retirement age. Such family businesses, Long noted, are often passed down to the upcoming generation.^[10]

References